Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Given the scale of the government's maladministration, I might have to confine myself to the shambles of the implementation of the Building the Education Revolution program. Sir, you would think that if a government was to spend, let us say, $16 billion people would be happy, wouldn’t you? What has in fact happened? All the stakeholders—the students, their teachers, even the education union, the P&Cs—are saying this money has not been well spent. There has been a chorus throughout the country that this has been a very, very poor spend. Why? Let me tell you why: because, as Abbotsford Primary School illustrates so well, there is no flexibility. What is happening is that state governments are telling schools what they need to have. It is the old Labor Party story: ‘We will tell you what you want. If you don’t want it you can’t have it.’