Transcript - 2UE - 5 May 2010

SUBJECTS: ANAO Report; Implementation Taskforce

David Oldfield: Christopher Pyne is the Opposition Education Spokesman, he's on the line. How are you Christopher?

Christopher Pyne: Good thanks David, nice to talk to you. Long time no see.

Oldfield: Indeed, look, give us your spin on it straight away. And I know it's probably not spin. I've seen your release. Clearly, look, we all know about these problems Christopher. If I can just raise two of them that come to mind for me here in New South Wales. I've done a little bit of building and I know what costs are where building is concerned. We had a canteen; you'll probably know the story. It was five metres by five metres; a 25 square metre canteen for a school. It's like the size of a medium-large to big bedroom. Nearly 600 thousand dollars; you could build three apartments for that.

Pyne: Yeah I know, it is absurd. And the Auditor General's report has not cleared the Government as much as Julia Gillard would like to pretend that it has. The Auditor General's report is scathing in its criticism of the effectiveness of the Department of Education in rolling out this program. And that is in spite of the fact that the Auditor General did not enquire into value for money. But what he has found is that schools got things they didn't' want, and didn't need. That the department didn't have the skills to manage the maintenance of this program, that they weren't a program delivery department and yet they were oversighting a program delivery which was beyond their capacity.

That they therefore imposed very prescriptive terms on the education authorities and that meant that schools had to build resource centres or libraries or COLA's or whatever in spite the fact that they didn't need them. There is a litany of complaint. One of the most interesting aspects though is that the Minister continues to say that this program created 200 thousand jobs. The Auditor General specifically says there is no data and no information that supports those claims. It's also very interesting that the one point seven billion dollar blow-out, which Ms Gillard claimed was because of a huge take-up by schools. The Auditor General specifically said that the Kitchen Cabinet - Swan, Tanner, Rudd and Gillard - knew that there'd be a blow-out from the beginning of the program. So their claims that it was because of a take-up by schools are manifestly untrue.

Oldfield: Now, also Christopher, I understand that the report indeed shows that guidelines and rollout of the program actually made it possible for rorting, price gouging, waste and mismanagement; they actually allowed that to flourish.

Pyne: Well the Auditor General's report says there were difficulties created for educational authorities in rolling out this program. Including I quote, "ambiguous definitions, operational rules not clearly stated and detailed levels of prescription and control at a funding/allocation decisions." And in that environment therefore, waste and mismanagement was allowed to flourish, and that is the point that we have been making.

Oldfield: The Government is saying that the Parliamentary Inquiry building is obviously not going to be of any great consequence. Tony Abbott says the report shows Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard always knew there were going to be blowouts. And you just told us that.

Pyne: Sure. What the Auditor General's report does is clearly indicate that a full judicial inquiry is needed. That is independent, that can summon witnesses, it can subpoena documents and can therefore decide who is responsible for the taxpayers getting 50 per cent of value out 16 billion dollars of spending.

Oldfield: This planned taskforce that the Government has set up; it clearly can't really be independent can it?

Pyne: Well the current taskforce headed by Brad Orgill.

Oldfield: We had him on the other day.

Pyne: It's part of the Department of Education. What concerns me is that in the first week of Mr Orgill starting his investigation, rather than hiring the floor of a building in Canberra, hiring the best investigators available, and going through every document from top to bottom to determine waste, mismanagement, skimming and gouging, he is instead donning a fluorescent jacket and hard hat and tripping over television cables in a school building, which, quite frankly has nothing to do with whether his investigation is successful or not, it goes directly to his credibility as an independent taskforce investigating the claims about this school hall rip-off.

Oldfield: Well he is being paid by the Government who are responsible for the policy and the implementation that he is investigating.

Pyne: Quite frankly he is not a pseudo Minister in the Rudd/Gillard Government; he needs to act like an independent taskforce, not like someone who thinks they are part of the media unit of the Rudd Government.

Oldfield:... has there been any suggestion, or is there anyone looking at whether some of this (BER) money has been passed to the Unions and back to the Labor Party for campaign purposes?

Pyne: Well that is something a judicial inquiry would be able to investigate. We have to remember that the taskforce established by the Minister has been given a terms of reference by the Government. A judicial inquiry would be entitled to investigate whatever they thought was appropriate, and that would be the contractors who have received the vast majority of the projects and the donations they might have given to the Labor Party over the past few years, the role of the Union movement, for example, in Victoria we know that the Unions forced employers to group together developments at schools to claim extra funds for major development status in Victoria. So these are the things a judicial inquiry needs to investigate.

ENDS