Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Hansard source

Or a tuckshop that was overpriced. What did the Auditor-General find? The Auditor-General found that the Commonwealth government, in particular the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, did not have sufficient oversight mechanisms to ensure that the Commonwealth knew that state governments were getting value for money when they were building state schools. They did not have sufficient oversight mechanisms. The result of that has cost this country billions and billions of dollars. Do not believe me; believe Mr Orgill. What did he say in his report? Look at the government’s own data in the Orgill report. Take the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. If state schools in those three states—the three biggest states with more than 70 per cent of schools—were built as efficiently as independent and Catholic schools in those three states, billions would have been saved. If government schools were built with the same efficiency as independent schools, the government would have saved $2.6 billion. If state schools in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales were built with the same efficiency as Catholic schools, the Commonwealth government would have saved $1.5 billion and there would be no need for a flood levy. There would be no need for a flood levy if the Commonwealth government had built those schools with the efficiency of independent schools or Catholic schools.

I am told, ‘Brett, you are too negative. The government is doing great things—don’t worry, Senator Conroy has it all under control. The NBN is going to sort it out. That’s going to be the great new infrastructure project.’ Senator Conroy is the great white hope but the problem is that the NBN is likely to be the great white elephant. As the debate in this chamber has so often asked, has the NBN passed a cost-benefit analysis? No, it has not. There is still no cost-benefit analysis. How much is it going to cost? All up, about $43 billion to $46 billion, with a Commonwealth contribution of around $23 billion. There is no cost-benefit analysis even for the expenditure of that much money. Then again, pink batts and the BER would not have passed a cost-benefit analysis either, would they? The irony is that Telstra goes off to Hong Kong and builds a wireless scheme there that is doing extremely well, and in Australia six times as many people are accessing broadband through the wireless scheme as through direct connectivity.

Taking all this levy issue it is a disgrace that the closest the federal government came to seemingly sharing the community spirit—Senator McLucas was right, the great community spirit—was their very crude and jarring appropriation of the word ‘mateship’. They appropriated the word mateship, the use of an iconic Australian term, to spin the imposition of yet another tax. Imagine using the words ‘mate’ and ‘mateship’ to spin the imposition of yet another tax—yet that is what this government has done. Perhaps if the government had properly managed the pink batts disaster and the school halls program fiasco, there would not be any need for this confection of mateship from the federal government. Real mates help each other; they do not tax each other. The government should be building levees, not imposing levies. Let us call this for what it is—it is not a mateship levy; it is a financial mismanagement levy. What people are paying for is not the damage wrought by the flood but the damage that Julia Gillard’s government has done to our nation’s economy. That, plain and simple, is the reason for this levy.