The Australian just keeps on pointing out problems with Julia Gillard’s BER programme and she just keeps on ignoring it. The frightening thing is NSW is the only state providing detailed costings. All the other state governments could be just as bad.
At the very least it looks like Queensland is;
Nine months after Education Minister Julia Gillard told federal parliament that Holland Park State School was “delighted” with the “once-in-a-lifetime enhancement of its facilities”, her department has quietly agreed to let the school swap the unneeded buildings for eight new classrooms.
P&C president Craig Mayne – who has since quit the post – blew the whistle on cost blowouts last year in two letters to Mr Rudd and five phone calls to his Griffith electorate office.
“My issue is not with the program but how it is being implemented,” he wrote in June. “We have a situation where the Queensland Public Works Department is proposing and implementing a system that is open to massive rorting.”
And that’s my point: My issue is not with the program but how it is being implemented.
In the land of amazing circumstances nine schools in NSW have identical costings for different projects in different areas with different site considerations.
The link is to a .pdf but worth having a quick look.
Rudd and Gillard ignore this problem at their peril. They really need to get on top of it and convince the electorate that the program is being managed. It’s one thing to say school principals are ecstatic about their new buildings but of course they will be. Their responsibility is to their school, not to the fiscal management of tax payers money.
And in the centuries old advice of follow the money I’m reliably informed by insiders that the flow of money is to the large companies and middle men, not the worker. The ute guys are picking up work but I bet they aren’t picking up millions for jam.
Someone is but I wonder if we’ll ever know exactly who.
Most probably not.
