Local Community Deserves More than Gillard Government

The visit by the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, was an important opportunity to highlight the waste of the Gillard Government’s Building the Education Revolution program, and to announce the Coalition’s Real Action Plan to Stop Labor’s School Halls Waste, said the Federal Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke.

Under the Coalition’s plan principals will decide on the priorities for each school, not the state bureaucracy. In addition, once the planned construction is complete, schools will retain any remaining money for other education or infrastructure initiatives.

“The Building the Education Revolution has seen a significant waste of taxpayer funds here at Annangrove, and right around Australia,” Mr Hawke said. 

“At Annangrove, the school community was seeking a new hall, but was offered a library, despite already having a library.  Nothing was done to ensure the many hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money was spent wisely and produced good quality outcomes for the school.”

“If this is how local P & Cs are treated by Ms Gillard as Education Minister, what can we expect from Julia Gillard as Prime Minister?”

Mr Hawke said the scale of the mismanagement of public funds right around Australia was potentially enormous. The Building the Education Revolution was initially a $14.7 billion program, which within six months had blown out by a further $1.5 billion.

“Finding out the true extent of the waste still does not appear to be a Gillard Government priority,” Mr Hawke said.

“The waste in these programs must stop now. What more could we have been able to build in the Hills with these taxpayers’ funds?”

Mr Hawke said it was frustrating and galling that many of the problems with these programs were brought to the attention of the Rudd Government throughout last year and in the early months of 2010, yet the Government still will not conduct a full judicial inquiry.

“I asked questions of the then Minister, Julia Gillard, in the Parliament last September about Annangrove Public School,” Mr Hawke said. “Yet instead of sincerely addressing these concerns, and those of schools right around the nation, Minister Gillard seemed more intent on attacking the messenger.

“No-one is begrudging or arguing the merit of new school facilities. But our local schools have been locked into the inflexible Building the Education Revolution program and have not had their priorities addressed.”

“They see staggering examples of waste and mismanagement. It is an awful irony that the children going to local schools today will be paying off the massive debt incurred by the Rudd/Gillard Government to fund this program,” Mr Hawke said.