APPROPRIATION BILL (No. 1) 2010-2011
Consideration in Detail:
EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS PORTFOLIO
Proposed expenditure, $7,112,296,000
June 15, 2010
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland) (6.09 pm) — I too want to raise some questions to the minister in relation to the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program. I believe I first wrote to the minister in about March last year to reflect the concerns put to me by several members of my community from within the building trade, the primary school sector and the school councils. I do thank the minister because, on most occasions, she responds very promptly to my correspondence. Though some other ministers are nowhere near as prompt, I do get responses. I am sorry that the paper warfare probably will continue in the future.
There were several concerns presented to the minister at that time, and many of them have come to fruition in relation to the valuation for money of this program. The schools in Gippsland that I have had much to do with are very concerned about the way this program was rolled out in terms of the template designs which were forced upon them and which were not necessarily what they wanted. In the Victorian sense, and certainly in the Gippsland sense, many of the schools had not done a master planning process to the extent that probably some of the independent and Catholic schools had and so they probably were not as well placed when the time came to roll out this program in the manner and time frames forced upon the school communities. I do not believe we necessarily got the value for money that we could have received if we had had a little more control of the funding at the local level. That has been a real concern for the state schools in my electorate.
The actual contracting process and the way in which the projects were packaged together also created some very serious anomalies in Gippsland. One of the most obvious ones was the Bairnsdale situation, where we had two Bairnsdale building firms given the opportunity to tender for three jobs. The three jobs were located in Foster, San Remo and Wonthaggi. Each of those towns is two or three hours away from Bairnsdale. The two Bairnsdale firms involved were not given the opportunity to tender for jobs in the state school system in their immediate area. Naturally, they did not even bother tendering for the jobs in Foster, San Remo and Wonthaggi and waited until the local Catholic primary school had jobs available for them to tender for, and they went through that process.
One of the other areas I want to raise with the minister relates to the issue of portable buildings. I believe many of my smaller communities could have leveraged off far more results for their school communities if—
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms JA Saffin) — Excuse me, member for Gippsland, would you stop for a minute. We cannot hear.
Mr CHESTER — I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will talk a bit louder. Certainly in our smaller communities there is no doubt that having access to that money along the lines of the Investing in our Schools Program and the National School Pride Program, where the school councils had control of the money and, particularly those small school councils, were able to leverage off through their local parents and friends associations. What we have instead are demountable buildings on the backs of trucks being dropped off at some of these primary schools and, quite frankly, it has not been satisfactory.
The common remarks I have been getting from the school principals are that they have been happy to get some money but have been bitterly disappointed with the lack of value and the lack of transparency. Many of the schools have been worried about speaking out because they have basically been threatened by the departmental staff with, ‘You don’t want to go back down the pecking order, do you?’ I believe they have been intimidated into not speaking out on every issue they wanted to raise.
I have a couple of specific examples where people have spoken out and have contacted my office. I want to relate to the minister the experience of the Bairnsdale West Primary School, whose principal, Doug Vickers, wrote in his school newsletter quite recently:
Bairnsdale West decided that, to maximise its allocation of $2 million, we needed to design our own building rather than by a state government template. We were not encouraged to follow this method. However, our end result, our plans which have now gone to tender indicate that we’ll get a building which contains a canteen, foyer area, toilets, full-size basketball court with seating and a music room for $1 million less than the template design which was taken up by Lucknow Primary School.
Lucknow Primary School is about four kilometres away. My questions to you, Minister, really relate to the issue of delivering value for money.
Mr Danby interjecting —
Mr CHESTER — It did not work. The Lucknow Primary School has paid $1 million more for something that Bairnsdale West Primary School was able to achieve. If you think that worked, you are not much of a genius, pal. Minister, do you now agree that we have not got value for money in many of these schools? If we had our time again, would we give more control to the state school councils themselves? Do you acknowledge that this onesize- fits-all approach with these template designs has resulted in some very poor outcomes for some of the regional state schools?
I want to speak about one primary school and the issue of demountable buildings. I recently visited the Gormandale Primary School, which had a demountable building delivered in February. When I visited the school last week, I was surprised to find that the school has no access to the building. There is no ramp and there are no steps. There is a gaping hole between the building and the existing pathway. There are two stumps under the building that do not have bolts connected to them and one broken concrete pad. The workmanship is quite shoddy. The reason I am surprised is that, on the government’s website, it is said that the project is complete. The power has not been connected but the project is complete, according to the government’s website. I ask the minister whether she can understand why there is a lot of anger and frustration in regional communities that we have not got value for money for taxpayers’ dollars.
Mr DANBY (Melbourne Ports) (6.14 pm) — Can the minister please explain the Teach for Australia program that is underway in Victorian schools?
Ms GILLARD (Lalor — Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion) (6.14 pm) — Given we are starting to move towards the latter half, it might suit if I keep responding to questions—and I will respond to that one. I was addressing some of the questions from the shadow minister covering child care and early learning and I did want to correct a statement she made about the costs of the quality agenda. The claims made by her are simply incorrect. The modelling undertaken by Access Economics for COAG shows that the reforms are expected to result in an average out-of-pocket cost increase for a family on $80,000 of 57c per week in 2010-11—
Dr Stone — That is not what the sector is saying.
Ms GILLARD — The shadow minister is now shaking her head. If she wants to produce alternative modelling, she may. These are not my figures. Let me just clarify this for her: this is Access Economics modelling. It is 57c a week for a family on $80,000 in 2010-11 rising to $8.67 per week by 2014-15 for one child who attends full-time, long day care—that is, 50 hours per week.
Dr Stone interjecting —
Ms GILLARD — The shadow minister is saying to me that that is absurd. I am giving her the Access Economics modelling figures. If she wants to have an argument with Access Economics, I suggest she get them on the phone. She might want to then look at how many times the Howard government used Access Economics for modelling before she gets into this debate.
I will also correct a completely incorrect statement that the shadow minister made about the childcare tax rebate. Obviously the costs of the quality agenda are important. Surely, everybody would agree that having rigorous quality standards for child care is appropriate. We are talking about the care of children, for goodness sake! Rigorous quality standards are appropriate. The costs as modelled by Access Economics are as I have outlined them. The government, by increasing the childcare tax rebate to 50 per cent, is obviously partnering in those costs, and you see the consequences of that in the budget.
Dr Stone — But you just reduced the childcare tax rebate.
Ms GILLARD — The shadow minister, right on cue, now makes a comment about the childcare tax rebate. Let me give her the real figures, because she should think about the real figures. When she was sitting on the government side of the chamber, the maximum that a family could claim from the childcare tax rebate for out-of-pocket costs was $4,354. We came to office and increased it to $7,500. That is a difference of $3,146 for those families who are very high childcare users. That is not the normal pattern of care, but there are families that use that much care. For those families, the maximum amount has gone to $7,500. So I would ask the shadow minister in relation to the childcare tax rebate to perhaps explain to the Australian community why it was when she was a government member she thought $4,354 was an appropriate maximum but now she criticises the government for a $7,500 maximum. Heavens above people understand hypocrisy, and the stench of it is rising!
On the question of Building the Education Revolution, I genuinely appreciate the problem that you have raised. My advice is that there are some legal questions here. So I would prefer to be a bit careful about what I say on the public record in relation to this, but obviously I do acknowledge that there are some real concerns in your local community.
My frequent correspondent friend, the member for Gippsland, does write a lot of letters and I do my best to keep up with him. I say this to him: I am all for better empowering principles. This government has undertaken more reforms in the empowerment of principles in 2½ years than occurred in the 12 long years before, including the independent public schools trial in Western Australia. We have done more in this area than was done in 12 years before. In terms of delivering economic stimulus, we relied—because we needed to deliver it quickly—on the ways of delivering school capital that were being used at that point, including through working through state departments for the delivery of that capital.
(Time expired)