Transcript - 2GB Ray Hadley - 5 May 2010

SUBJECTS: ANAO report on School Hall rip-off

RAY HADLEY:

The Shadow Education Minister Christopher Pyne is like me, he's reading through the report, as he's about to talk to me about it. Christopher, g'day.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

G'day, Ray.

RAY HADLEY:

Look, what concerns me, I'll just have to get my sheet here in front of me. We've had this report by the Auditor-General and I go to page 13 first up. He had no capacity to look at the individual projects 'an examination of individual BER projects was outside the scope of the audit' then when he talks about value for money which is what everyone's been screaming about, not the fact that we didn't need the infrastructure about the value for money and in conducting the audit, the Auditor-General was aware of issues raised by stakeholders concerning whether value for money was being achieved in relation to the infrastructure being delivered under the BER to specific schools. However, under the BER, education authorities are responsible for service delivery which includes responsibility for achieving value for money. So he makes no ruling or guide on that.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

No. Look, the Australian National Audit Office report is not designed to enquire into value for money and as a consequence it's limited in that respect but what it has been designed to do is to decide whether the guidelines and the implementation has been properly carried out and what it shows, if you read between the lines, is that very similar to the insulation or the pink batts debacle. The department of education was undertaking a programme for which they didn't have the skills and that this was a programme that was designed for failure from the beginning.

What the report shows is that schools didn't get what they wanted or needed but there was a prescriptive, top-down approach forcing them to have things that they didn't want or need which is what the Opposition and you have been saying all along, but it expanded the department of education's role in the service delivery but it doesn't have the skills to do that which is exactly the same as the insulation debacle that there's no evidence, that there's any data which shows that jobs have been created or saved because of the school hall rip-off which of course is what Julia Gillard always says over and over again was the reason for the project.

I mean, for example, on page 18 it says administrative arrangements put in place by the Department were unduly complicated and time consuming and that there was too many over layers of bureaucracy, and I think generally speaking the report is a scathing one for the Government. Of course, Julia Gillard will dismiss this report and say that she now has a taskforce set up, but I'd remind you the taskforce isn't looking into value for money either. The only thing that can actually resolve who is responsible for this extraordinary waste of taxpayers' money is a judicial inquiry and the Opposition will continue to push for that.

RAY HADLEY:

See one of the things, and you can help me here because you know what happens in Canberra, we had our own reporter say at ten o'clock and I'm looking at it and listening to her - the audit office looked into the Rudd Government's school stimulus spending after cases of emerged where schools weren't getting value for money, well they didn't look into it about value for money because the auditor's told us that and then I would imagine what's happened because none of the reporters at ten o'clock would've had time to look at it. They've been handed something by the department and then handed something by the Minister responsible from Julia Gillard's office and the catch is however the report says the scheme has boosted the construction industry as planned and that 95 per cent of principals surveyed say they're confident the funding will improve their schools. Thank you scoop! I mean of course they're going to say, I'm surprised there's not 100 per cent saying it's improving our schools and what I'm asking you is, do the reporters that report this on mass simply get a sheet from the Minister as a summary of what she thinks the report says?

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Well, that's exactly what happens and the Government spin doctors try and get the message out as quickly as they can, that they want the public to hear and then of course over the course of today and tomorrow reporters will have a lot more time to actually consider this report and even in a short thirty minutes that I've had to read it. There is, reading between the lines, a scathing assessment of a program that was designed for failure. For example, just to give you one very good example, the Australian National Audit Office says that the ministers knew from the moment the scheme began there would be a blow out of $1.7 billion and that the kitchen cabinet, Rudd's kitchen cabinet of Tanner, Gillard, Swan and Rudd, took over essentially how to find the extra money for a blow out they knew would happen from the moment the scheme began. Now, what sort of government plans for a blow out?

RAY HADLEY:

Well, one that wants to get it out there very, very quickly and it doesn't have time to dot the I's and cross the T's I'd imagine.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

$1.7 billion, they knew it was going to blow out from the moment it was announced and I can't imagine a business running that way.

RAY HADLEY:

Yeah, anyway we'll make that we don't carry the report in future, that the Audit Office has found most schools are happy because they didn't investigate they weren't getting value for money because that's factually incorrect, the auditor general was never looking at getting value for money.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

No, the Auditor-General has not looked for value for money. What he has delivered is a scathing assessment of how the department managed this program and of course it was all very much shades of the insulation debacle. The only thing missing from this, from this debacle are any deaths or any house fires. So basically we're dealing with taxpayers' money and for that reason people probably see it as being less important but in fact if you've wasted $8 billion of taxpayers' money, somebody has to be responsible.

RAY HADLEY:

Alright, I appreciate your time and I'll get time to read this a bit later this afternoon. Thank you.

CHRISTOPHER PYNE:

Thank you.

[ends]