David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate Senator Collins on her contribution to this debate because at least she ran the government lines to some extent—the typical spin that the government puts out about the Building the Education Revolution and the other aspects of it. They go out and tell people that they are delivering in accordance with their promise, particularly the one about the global financial crisis and the need to take action quickly. I also thank her for her acknowledgment that the government admits that it has not got it all right, but what could it do? ‘We needed to take action so quickly and the global financial crisis was upon us. We needed to get in there straightaway. So how about we just take $16 billion that we do not actually have yet and go off and spend it on new school halls and libraries, whether the schools need them or not, because that is a great way of getting $16 billion out of the hands of government and into the hands of the contractors who are going to do all the work and, therefore, we can save all these thousands of jobs.’

Senator Collins, it is great that you acknowledge that the need for speed has resulted in problems, because certainly it has resulted in problems. Today’s debate is not about the global financial crisis. I am aware of your comments about what our motion actually is. In terms of addressing the global financial crisis, you might be interested to know that, at the last economics estimates, Treasury officials acknowledged that there were other ways that money could have been spent in order to deliver the same outcomes. Any outcomes that were achieved by the response to the global financial crisis could have been achieved by any number of options, and they did not need to include this one. Can I tell you that it should not have included this one in all sorts of ways—certainly not in the way it was delivered. This is where we come to the problems that we are highlighting today, which is that the education revolution is not being delivered in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner.

Both Senator Collins and Senator Marshall asked for examples, and I am conscious that Senator Bernardi did provide a very good example, as did my colleague Senator Ferguson. One example that I would like to highlight from my home state of Tasmania is that of Wesley Vale Primary School. This school is situated between Devonport and the commuter town of Port Sorell, which is a rapidly growing area. I think it is probably one of the fastest growing areas in Tasmania. Wesley Vale school has been allocated $900,000 for a new school hall. It sounds fantastic. As noted by Senator Collins, school halls are fantastic things. However, the interesting thing about this particular school is that down the road, in Port Sorell, which is, as I mentioned, one of the fastest growing areas in Tasmania, both the Liberal Party and the Labor Party at a state level have promised to build a brand new school. This is just a couple of kilometres away from Wesley Vale school, which is basically situated in the middle of a farming area, with nothing around it except farms. A few of the farm kids go to Wesley Vale Primary School but the vast majority of the kids who go to it come from Port Sorell, which does not have a school. Regardless of the outcome of the election this Saturday, whoever wins government is going to build a new school at Port Sorell within two years.

Certainly the parents and friends of Wesley Vale have raised this issue with the government, but they have been told, no, they have to build the school. They have to take the $900,000 and build it. The reality is that, within two years or soon after, that school is going to be closed. What a waste of taxpayers’ money. This is $900,000 that we probably do not have yet. We will probably sell some bonds—Senator Joyce is in the chamber—and raise that money from China. We will get that $900,000 and spend it on a new school hall for a school at Wesley Vale which does not need it and which will almost certainly be closed within two years or soon after. And Labor says it is not a waste of money.

The sole defence of any of these examples that I heard from either of the senators who spoke on behalf of the government today was that all the principals in the schools take the money. They all accept it, so therefore it has to be good. But if you turned up and offered somebody a brand-new car, saying to them, ‘In return for the brand-new car, we are going to take your two-year-old one and scrap it.’ They would say, ‘That sounds great! It’s a newer model and a better car. I’ll take it.’ Would it matter to most of those people that you paid twice as much as it was worth? If you are offering to give them a new car and to take away their old one, they are going to take it. It is not really a defence to say that they took it. It is human nature that when schools are offered brand-new buildings they are going to say yes. That is quite apart from situations like Wesley Vale Primary School, where they said, ‘No, we don’t want it’, but were told they had to have it anyway.

Related to that was the point that not many people are complaining, that they have received only 60 complaints. It is probably worth noting that there are terms in the contract for the building work at all of these schools that say that if the principal or anybody associated with the building makes a public statement then they lose the money. I have already established that, of course, if you offer them the money they are going to take it. But, if they make any public statements about the need for it, or the fact that it is a waste of money because they have new classrooms and do not need new ones, then they lose the money. So there is a great built-in disincentive not to make public statements or comment on projects which would be inefficient and not cost-effective.

Then there are concerns, particularly for contractors but also in many schools, about payback and the fear of what would happen to them if they did speak out—not so much in terms of the project but in career advancement and so on. When you are dealing with Labor this is a real concern. I am talking about my own observations in my home state. So 60 complaints in those circumstances is actually pretty high, I would suggest, and demonstrates the courage in the circumstances of the 60 people who have complained.

I would like to have talked about computers in schools because, quite clearly, this is another case where Labor has failed dismally to deliver its promise. I will read a quote from Kevin Rudd’s campaign launch on 14 November 2007:

... Labor will undertake a ground-breaking reform by providing for every Australian secondary school student in years nine to 12 with access to their own computer at school.

Quite clearly, they have failed dismally to deliver this: a tiny percentage of students have computers.