Reinforcing failure
KEVIN Rudd has announced a $41.2 million package to soften the blow of job losses in the insulation industry as a result of his government axing its free installation scheme.
God help us!
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I know, it’s amazing isn’t it?
Jump on the bandwagon (not the genuine installers, the fly-by-nighters), and when the scheme crashes-and-burns, you get a nice payoff, er, payout.
The market was artificially inflated by the taxpayer funding and the premature crash of the scheme has damaged quite a few legitimate companies – but how long could the scheme have continued? How many more dollars would have been tossed away, er, spent on the scheme before it collapsed completely – it should have been hit on the head as soon as the safety issues were raised.
The governmenet has a lot to answer for with this scheme… and looking at the debacle of the “School Halls” scheme that’s going to need an investigation, too.
“the debacle of the “School Halls”
Kae,
The students, staff and parents in the bush schools I work in wouldn’t call it a debacle.
From new classrooms at Cunnamulla, to a new assembly hall in St George, they’re up and in daily use. Every school, large or small, has benefited.
A spin-off for kids with disabilities is that the new constructions aren’t approved unless they’re wheelchair accessible, so if the communities are smart, they can also plan for enhanced access, and many have. They’d have been waiting for decades to have these access issues fixed without the scheme. Most bush schools are built on stilts.
This project has been life changing for lots of bush kids, especially those with disabilities.
There’s always good stories but I keep getting the other side as well. Tell me 17 etc, do you read the Australian? If so you must be aware of the problems with overpriced tenders.
I have a young nephew works in the “checque paying department” and his insider info is not at all positive.
A ‘Gillard library’ is being constructed at a school near me for the princely sum of $880,000.
The price does not include furniture or books etc.
There are no bricks, concrete slabs or plumbing, just prefab walls and roof, cheap off the shelf split-system air-con, industrial carpet etc.
The floor area is around 32 squares with two small glass walled offices for staff and it’s built on concrete ‘stilts’.
In the same suburb one can have a 30 square house built of brick on a reinforced slab with plumbing, all light fittings, kitchen with stove, oven and dishwasher, solar-electric hot water system, quality carpets, window coverings, evaporative air-con, ducted gas heating, two fitted out bathrooms, pergola and ‘printed’ concrete outdoor area, double garage with auto roller doors and bitumen driveway for $340,000 which includes a quarter acre block of land.
In other words for more than twice the price of two fitted-out four bedroom houses a primary school will receive an empty shell which it and its hard working P&C committee will have to stock.
The principle tells me he’d rather have had the school’s shabby toilet block replaced, some new computers and books for the existing library and a coat of paint for the rest of the school than the new building which encroaches on scarce playground space.
The new building comes of course with a bill-board sized sign proclaiming the Rudd government’s largesse which unfortunately impedes the view of motorists approaching one of the school’s pedestrian crossings.
Perhaps if Gillard’s stimulus had been better targeted Cunnamulla, St George and other ‘bush schools’ could have been replaced completely rather than just have a couple of new classrooms, a hall and the odd ramp or two tacked onto existing ageing infrastructure.
Now that would be life changing…
Peter W
I don’t know what “principle” you were talking to (would have been an interesting conversation), but maybe you should ask the Principal whether he has any knowledge of project management.
For that money he could have done much better, and maybe the scheme translates differently in Queensland, where we have a Facilities branch (state not federal) which assists school communities to get the best from the financial resources and provides project management advice. This tends to keep the shonks and get-rich-quick merchants in check.
As for the fit-out you describe, I’ve been working on access issues with these same Facilities people since 1982, and one of the things I’ve learned is that comparing home construction with school projects is like comparing apples with oranges. For example – the carpets will of course be industrial – that’s the standard set down for schools.
Ramps would only be used to adapt existing buildings for wheelchair access. New buildings have to comply with ASAs and principles of universal design. (See – http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/universal.html.)
You also have to apply principles (there’s that word again) of equity to any scheme like this. A new school in one discrete location would mean another community would miss out entirely.
But I guess equity and fairness are unknown concepts to some.
Two Whitlam governments in one lifetime. I never thought I could be so lucky.
The truly frightening this is that Whitlam’s government was actually better.
Whitlam was an overwheening self-important and deluded fool, but he did at least have some principles, and he tried to and did implement a number of programmes based upon those principles.
Rudd, on the other hand, is an empty, dangerous lunatic, whose policies are always wrong, and will always cost our country dearly. For the Labor Party to have elected this fool as its leader should be something that will follow the members of that party in shame for dcecades to come.
We cannot, as a nation, afford any more of Rudd and Labor. Between the both of them we will be bankrupted. They have to be tossed out at the next election.
“… but maybe you should ask the Principal whether he has any knowledge of project management.”
Well sadly ‘bobby red-herring’, the school I mentioned, like most schools involved in Julia’s memorial project, had little input into the project foisted upon them.
They were asked to nominate what ‘improvements’ they thought were appropriate.
Unfortunately their list of ‘improvements’ didn’t meet the department’s criteria.
Julia doesn’t want to open a new toilet block and heavens forbid the school being equipped with a CO2 belching air-con – after all there is a planet to save.
The school had to take the department’s ‘suggestion’ or get nothing.
Now as I previously wrote the school desperately needed its red back colony replaced with something clean and sanitary, its interior and exterior paint is flaking, the ageing air-con unit shakes and shudders ejecting alternating flakes of ice and steaming hot air into class rooms and the existing (large) library needs new computers and – wait for it – ‘books’.
But the ‘department’ sternly told the school ‘toilet blocks’ and air conditioning were not going to be considered.
The rest of your post regarding ramps is a usual a net full of red herrings.
The crux of this biscuit is whether or not Julia’s squat and piss of our money is being well spent.
You, because of your unrequited love for all things Labor say yes, whilst those of us in the real world, far from Toowoomba, recognise yet another colossal waste of OUR money.
By the way the cost of ‘industrial carpeting’ as used in the library in question is far less than the ‘per square metre’ equivalent offered to potential home owners.
But I guess equity and fairness are words whose meaning is beyond some.
So throw us another kipper 17 bobby red-herring and whilst you’re at it defend Peter Garrett.
I’m looking forward to that one.
Peter W
Nothing in your one-eyed post changes the following –
Every school in the district I work in has benefited.
A large number of wheelchair bound kids can now independently reach areas of their schools previously inaccessible as a spin-off.
Every principal I work with in the district (and there are over 40) is grateful for the program.
The initiative crosses all sectors and levels.
It has provided employment in remote and rural locations which have been devastated by drought as well as the GFC.
This (whether it be in Toowoomba or not – and Toowoomba is where I live – not where I work) – is the real world. You obviously don’t get out much.
The best the coalition could manage in eleven years was a patchy programme that provided buggerall to kids in special schools and in the bush. We only got enough to build a playground with it at my old school – it was peanuts. By the way, it has a large sign to say that it was opened by the local Liberal federal member.
Put beside what the current Feds have done at this same school in the last three years it is positively embarrassing.
The best the coalition could manage in eleven years was a patchy programme that provided buggerall to kids in special schools and in the bush
All the Libs could do in eleven years was bring in the GST which gave the states billions to spend on, amongst other thing, education. The fact that they chose not to reflects on the ALP state governments not the Feds.
Education is a state responsibility. The only reason the ALP got involved is with their stimulus package and as with Whitlam we will spend decades paying for the largesse.
It probably would have been nice if the current Govt had the money to do what they do…..you know…..spend spend and spend some more. Not only does the Government process for costing cause huge blow-outs in what is actually spent, but you will probable find that the buildings are skeletons erected with a ten to fifteen year useage expectancy.
At both levels of Govt. Labor largesse with finances they seem unable to control, is something indelibly imprinted in my memory, although, at my age I am beginning to notice, that memories fade in and out a bit.
Qld must be different to other States and rely entirely on Federal money, sorry, our collective taxes. It must be terrible. There hasn’t been a Labor Govt either at Federal level or State level overseeing the State of
Qld’s educational services has there? Your incessant blaming of all things that are socially uncomfortable on the Liberals is only an indication that you live life with blinkers on.
Bob
Also indelibly printed on my memory is establishing, as founding principal, a new Special School in Townsville in 1987. This was funded by the last of the Whitlam money, left over from initiatives created by his government’s legislative programme to improve quality of life for tens of thousands of people with disabilities across the country. I’d worked full-time on a planning brief for the same school in 1982, but it took five years and many battles for the project to get through all the barriers created by the Bjelke-Petersen government. They really didn’t want it to happen.
It was opened as the Mundingburra South Special School by Lin Powell, then state Minister for Education in the dying days of the Bjelke Petersen government on 27/01/1987. This school was amalgamated with Aitkenvale Special School to form Townsville Community Learning Centre on 31/12/2001.
Next time you’re in Townsville, drive past this school at 78 Thompson Street Mundingburra and reflect on the fact that it would not exist without Whitlam, and how it significantly improved, and continues to improve, the quality of life of hundreds of kids with severe and multiple impairments in North Queensland. See – http://www.tclcspecs.eq.edu.au/web2/index.php?id=1
The students, back then mostly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids from communities in the Cape and Gulf, went from living in a 1940s style institution where they were penned in small rooms without stimulation, to attending a state-of-the-art school off site, the same as their able-bodied peers.
Some have very positive memories of Whitlam. Often they were the people who had lived on the margins for generations – those with disabilities and their carers, for example.
I don’t blame “all things socially uncomfortable on the Liberals”. I’ve worked with what you call “things socially uncomfortable” for over forty years, and whilst no Commonwealth government has accepted responsibility for people with disabilities, Whitlam came a lot closer to it than anyone else, and Labor is streets ahead of the Coalition on this issue.
Come on Robert, how did you get on to a history lesson about a school that owes its existence to your dogged perseverence and the benevolence of that great man whose presence as Prime Minister was as if a blink of an eye in the history of the world as we know it? He will be remembered for his removal above any good he may have done.
You must be a contortionist as well as a soldier, albeit a conscript, a teacher, and a family man. To be able to give yourself such hearty slaps on the back must take enormous dexterity and flexibility.
You have returned to an isolated incident in your lifes memory, but failed to address the fact that Qld has had a Labor Govt for enough time to have allocated funding for schools but is guilty of the same indifference that you blame the Libs for.
You really should get down off your high horse before you fall down.
Bobby red-herring 0 rest of the world 7.
“Some have very positive memories of Whitlam…”
Ha ha ha ha – says it all really.
“Mind the step, watch your head”
Additional signage on the Julia Gargle Comm. Halls.
Try again.
“Mind the step, watch your head”
Additional signage on the Julia Gargle Comm. Halls.
link:
http://annoyancesandirritations.blogspot.com/2010/02/mind-step-watch-your-head-signs-for.html
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/guess_how_much_rudd_blew_on_this_thing#68029
Hey, its only money and the kids will only be paying it off for decades, this sort of incompetent farce has lowered their long term prospects and opportunities, but go ahead 17etc, tell us this is a good thing or tell us that the Govt had no way of stopping this sort of nonsense if they were competent.