Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Polley, I will take that interjection. The unions support the Labor Party. What about the New South Wales Teachers Federation? What do they say about the importance of looking into the waste and mismanagement of this program? They say that it is shocking throughout New South Wales. They want the Auditor-General in New South Wales—they have written to the Auditor-General in New South Wales—to conduct an inquiry to see if they can get to the bottom of it and say, ‘It’s not good enough.’ It is in writing. In fact, Ray Hadley had an excellent program on 2GB. I know Senator Heffernan was referring to this yesterday. I spoke to him today. He was telling us about a fence that needed to be fixed next to a school, and it was on Ray Hadley’s program this morning. It was a $1,000 project, and they said, ‘No, we can’t do it.’ The farmer wanted to fix the fence for $1,000 or thereabouts, or the farmer’s neighbour did, and the cost was $76,000. Let us get to the bottom of that: is it right or not? It was on Ray Hadley’s show this morning. Talk to Ray, and we will check it out. We will see what comes up on 2GB.

This is the sort of example of waste and mismanagement that you can see. The front page of the Australian today had a beauty: ‘School “Building the Education Revolution” costs double quoted price’. Double the quoted price! Senator Polley and her colleagues on the other side should understand that this is a waste revolution. It is affecting Australian families. You are spending Australia into debt, and that is the problem. The waste and mismanagement is something shocking. It has gone from bad to worse.

In the couple of minutes that are available I want to refer to one of the worst examples of waste and mismanagement. It is not GROCERYchoice—that is bad enough, with over $8 million wasted. It is not the school stimulus debacle, with the $1.7 billion blow-out. Guess what—it is not in the laptops in schools, with the $800 million blow-out, where the promises have been breached and broken and kids in grades 9 to 12 have not received the laptops that they were promised prior to the election. It is not the Northern Territory housing program, under which $45 million was spent and not one house built. It is not the tax bonus waste, whereby $40 million went to dead people and to Australians living overseas. It is not the stimulus advertising, whereby $50 million in the current budget was spent on advertising the government program. It is not the broadband tender and the associated waste under that program. With the National Broadband Network there is that $30 million that was wasted as a result of the totally inappropriate behaviour by Senator Conroy, as the manager of that program. It goes on and on. It is not the climate change advertising—$10 million was wasted on that. It is not the 2020 Summit—$2 million was wasted on that. With all those recommendations they have come up with only nine, and we have not yet seen what the funding for those will be. Watch this space! We will be watching for a while to get outcomes from the 2020 Summit.

I will conclude on this promise relating to consultancies: this is an overarching, whole-of-government approach. This is typical Labor. In funding for consultancies, they have now hit the jackpot. They have hit $1 billion since they came into government.