Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. I refer to the report in today’s Adelaide Advertiser in relation to the $112,000 in architectural fees for the three campuses of the Kangaroo Island school. Is the Deputy Prime Minister aware that the three so-called concept drawings, costing $112,000, were produced by an architect from Mount Gambier, 600 kilometres away, and took two days to complete, and that two of them were the same and a third was a design that already existed? Does the Deputy Prime Minister believe that $112,000 for two days work represents value for money?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Mayo for his question, and I note that he represents in this parliament an electorate with 73 schools and 212 Building the Education Revolution projects valued at more than $117 million. Despite his having voted against this program in this parliament, we are of course supporting jobs in his local community in South Australia while modernising the schools he purports to represent in this parliament. The member has raised with me, as part of our program, the three campuses of the Kangaroo Island community centre, the schools on Kangaroo Island. As I understand it, that is what he has raised with me. In raising that with me, I am sure he would understand that he is referring to three projects that are part of more than 24,000 projects at around 9,500 schools.

In relation to those three projects, their total value is $3.7 million. There is a project at Kingscote, for $2 million; a project at Penneshaw, a well known holiday destination in South Australia—I was there for school holidays myself once—which is valued at $850,000; and a project at Parndana, for $800,000. Each of these is for a multipurpose hall, and originally it was indicated that a standard design template would be used. However, because the local schools determined that they would prefer to use a non-standard design for their projects, architects were engaged to do the drawings. I understand the force of the member’s question to be that he believes the architects engaged—from Mount Gambier, I think he said—have not charged appropriately for their work. He obviously believes they have charged more than the work is worth.

If the member believes that to be the case and he wants the matter investigated, clearly we are happy to investigate it. I would obviously want him to supply to me the details he apparently has of the drawings. So, should he want to forward the drawings to me so that I can see evidence of the claims he has made about the quality of the drawings and whether or not the drawings are original or are of some sort of standard nature, I would obviously look at that and get back to him. If he would prefer, he can advise the schools on Kangaroo Island that they can deal direct with our Building the Education Revolution coordinator through the email address at my departmental website. I would indicate to him that this is a course that has been taken by 49 other schools out of around 9,500 schools which have had complaints—49 out of around 9,500—and the complaints that have been raised have been addressed.