Steve Gibbons (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to inform the House of the botched implementation of the Howard government’s Investing in Our Schools program. Most, if not all, central Victorian schools are still waiting for their funding allocation after being assured by the coalition government that the funds would be initially available in late December 2005. The department’s own website stated in early January that the funding would become available at the new time of mid-January. We are now at the end of February and there is still no sign that the funds will be available soon. Some schools, acting on the advice of the department, have made purchases or commissioned works and are now being pressed for payment by contractors and suppliers. In fact, contractors in my electorate have undertaken work for the various schools to the tune of over $100,000 and still have no idea when they will be paid. These are small businesses with limited capacity to carry this kind of debt, especially given that the funds are supposed to be government backed.

The Howard government have constantly chanted that they are the champions of small business, and now they are about to cause some small businesses severe financial difficulty or, worse, possibly send some of them to the wall. This is causing major problems for schools with limited financial resources, and many have had to use their own funds or simply to wait for the Investing in Our Schools funding to arrive. They commissioned the works in good faith, on instructions from the Department of Education, Science and Technology and in anticipation of the funds being available in December, the original time frame set out by the department. Now they are experiencing difficulties in meeting those commitments because of the Howard government’s incompetence. This funding scheme was a much trumpeted Howard government election announcement, but they have completely botched the administration and we still do not know when the funds will be available.

On top of all this mismanagement, the Howard government has clearly rorted the Investing in Our Schools program, channelling twice as much money into coalition seats as Labor seats. If ever there were to be a television program called Australia’s Greatest Rorters, the Howard government would be in a class of its own and would easily take the Gold Logie. Sixty-nine million dollars out of a total of $105 million in round 1 of the Investing in Our Schools program was poured into coalition seats; 19 of the 20 electorates receiving the highest funding are held by the coalition. The Howard government just cannot help turning everything it does into an outrageous pork-barrelling exercise in order to shore up its support in its own constituencies. Coalition MPs and duty senators were notified of successful schools days before Labor MPs, because the Howard government directed public servants to supply draft media releases to coalition MPs and senators only. These figures clearly show that politics was the motivation behind the Investing in Our Schools program. Nineteen of the top 20 electorates, in terms of total funding to an electorate, are coalition held.

This is an outrageous breach of the electorate’s confidence. The program has continued along the same lines as all the other rorts we have seen from this government—in the AusLink exercise and in all of the other programs that the National Party have had carriage of, which have resulted in rorts to the tune of many millions of dollars at the expense of hardworking electorates all around Australia. (Time expired)