Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. I even got a call asking for my phone details. I thought, ‘That’s good of her, she’s going to ring.’ I did not go to the media, as others did in due course, but what did I get? No call. That is silly. The first issue there was to say: ‘You’d better have a look at this. It needs some special assistance. It’s got history, it’s got heritage and it does a good job. I think its financial difficulties are more to do with a couple of failed crops than the fact that only 100 or so kids turn up there.’

You can have all the legislation in the world, you can have all the talk at that desk about the money you are going to allocate, but if it does not turn up in results it is a tragedy, particularly when it comes to giving basic education to all children. I do not think Literacy and Numeracy Week is an occasion to blackguard someone over here. I am pretty good at that—I do not mind—but I do not think you need that as an excuse. Julia Gillard thinks she is Mick Young. I was here when Mick Young was here. Mick Young was genuinely funny. I have walked up and down this side of the place pleading with my own side not to laugh. They were being caused to laugh at one of us. She is not of that status. She should stick to going around seeing that the state governments are not ripping her money off under IOSP.

What happened? We dictated that it was the school principal and the school P&C—or whatever it might be called—who made the decisions. But the minute they went anywhere near repairs to the building or anything the Department of Housing and Works in Perth said, ‘We have to be involved.’ What did the school do? It had to go through the department for all the work involved. They have their chosen contractors. One job went from $2½ thousand to $7½ thousand when the local contractor could not do the work. They escalated the values and then took 17½ per cent for their help. Nobody who went down the road of having to use their services—and there were some options to get out of it—got $150,000. The best they could get was $150,000 less 17 per cent, which is about $120,000.

Why would a state government do that when this parliament decided—I am sure it had the support of the opposition at the time—to send them money? It all comes down to this same arrangement. The first and required step—call it the blame game, if you like—is for state education agencies to employ sufficient truancy inspectors for the purpose, but that then should be in agreement with Centrelink to use the effective proposed reduction in Centrelink payments. At the same time, and even more importantly, it is not a bad idea to see that some of those Centrelink payments are paid so a kid gets breakfast before they go to school and that the reason for their truancy is not that they are running around trying to steal food. These are the fundamental issues and this is where this legislation fails. It gives no guarantee that it will be implemented. That is the position. (Time expired)

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