Transcript - 2UE Jason Morrison - 10 February 2011

SUBJECTS: BER

Jason Morrison: Christopher Pyne is the Federal Shadow Education Minister is with me. Good morning.

Christopher Pyne: Good morning, Jason.

Morrison: Look, it's sort of déjà vu isn't it?

Pyne: The tragedy of the latest story you've recounted this morning of Willoughby is that it's not an isolated incident. If only it was. The problem is that billions of dollars have been wasted on the school hall program now going over two years, and Julia Gillard as Education Minister simply turned a blind eye to these failures and insisted that in fact in many cases the Opposition was making them up. It only became when the cacophony of noise was so great that she couldn't avoid it anymore that she appointed the Orgill taskforce to investigate it. And even on the figures from the Orgill taskforce, which was her hand picked group of people, they said that up to 2.6 billion dollars could have been wasted. Now, the flood levy, the flood tax is 1.8 billion dollars. It makes you weep when you realise this Government has wasted so much money and now have to introduce new taxes because they still can't manage the budget.

Morrison: Let me go to the heart of the problem; say at Willoughby. How can you have a government organisation and we all know how bureaucratic they can be, federal then to state then be overseen through a building company that deals every day with fire regulations - build a building in a school that's not capable of that? And it's not just this; this is just the one we're talking about today.

Pyne: This is just the one we're talking about today. There was another very celebrated incident at Berridale Public School in the south of New South Wales which Tony Abbott and I visited where the parents and the school community voted not to use the building because it only had one entrance and exit. They thought that it was dangerous in a zone that has been used to fires over decades didn't contain the necessary equipment to protect them from a fire and they refused to even occupy the building.

There are buildings in New South Wales where a cheap and nasty carpet is being laid down which is not meeting safety regulations, as in it emits toxins and is highly combustible in school classrooms. Now, why is the New South Wales Government allowing these incidents to occur and why is it that you require from a school community to get the attention that the minister should be giving these communities from the get go?

Morrison: And yet, even now there would be parents who have pupils at Willoughby that are cringing that we're talking about it because there's almost this guilt complex that's gone across school communities that they are somehow to blame for these screw-ups, which they're not. And people feel bad about even putting their hand up and they say, "Well, look, we're happy we got this but could the job be done properly?"

Pyne: Sure, and I don't think any school community should be in the least bit embarrassed about standing up for their children and their communities. It's their money. This is taxpayers money, so essentially we're spending their money; everyone has a has a share of what is being spent in these schools and so they all have the right to complain if they don't feel they're getting value for money or they're not getting what they wanted. The irony of this is that we start to miss out the wood from the trees; we can't see the wood from the trees. Of course these parents should be raising these concerns because they elect government to manage their funds for the good of the whole state or the nation.

Morrison: Christopher Pyne thanks for joining us this morning.

Pyne: Pleasure.

ENDS