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

In the article, Mr Rudd says this:

Neither governments nor the peoples they represent any longer have confidence in an unregulated system of extreme capitalism. … Or, as China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan reportedly said, somewhat more elliptically: “The teachers now have some problems.”

That is Mr Rudd quoting the Chinese. I wonder what the Chinese say about Mr Rudd and his global vision, now that the Chinese really know what Mr Rudd really thinks about them.

The next part of the great global structure—his attempts to save the world and redesign the globe—was to save the world through the emissions trading scheme, the CPRS. It was the fifth way he was going to save the world. It was the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time’. I do not have any problem believing in the sincerity of Mr Garrett, Senator Wong and others, but I never even for a second believed in the sincerity of Mr Rudd. All he wanted to use Copenhagen and the entire debate for was to (1) wedge the opposition and (2) when he was made ‘friend of the chair’ in Copenhagen, run around Copenhagen securing support for his UN bid and make a big man of himself. Now he has not got a friend in the world—literally, the world. That was the aim of the entire process. This unctuous, pathetic, insincere view that we had to have an ETS and it was worth everything. Not to do so was a cancer on democracy. It was the greatest moral issue of our time. He was going to redesign the globe and save the planet. And it collapsed in a heap. No-one in this chamber—Labor, Liberal or crossbenchers—believes anymore in Mr Rudd’s sincerity on that issue, or indeed on any others. It was an appalling moral failure on behalf of the Prime Minister. None of us on this side objects to the proposition that the CPRS is a policy that could potentially be pursued in the future. I do not mind the strongest arguments—as you well know, sir—but what I cannot stand is the political opportunism and the weak opportunism displayed by the Prime Minister on the issue. It has done him no end of harm.

With the Prime Minister it ended up like this: if you cannot have a pan-Asian union, if you cannot save the whales, if you cannot disarm the nuclear weapons, if you cannot restructure the world’s financial system, if you cannot have an ETS—if you cannot save the world—what do you do? You let the rest of the world in. Then border protection becomes an issue and immigration becomes an issue. We had 340,00 people in last year—that is about the size of Canberra—about 1,000 people a week. As soon as the population in this country decided that was a bad thing—and they did—he decided to set up a department of population. It was a pathetic performance. In border protection, my colleagues are far more eloquent than me. Suffice to say this: when the coalition left office, there was not a problem; when the Labor Party, the government, sent out the wrong signals, there was a problem. That is what the Australian public knows. He could not save the world so he thought he would just let it in.

The paradox of all this—and my friend Senator Abetz discussed this before in his contribution—is that while Mr Rudd was running around the world trying to save it he could not even monitor the price of two cauliflowers, one in Brisbane and one in Toowoomba. He could not even monitor the price of vegetables with GroceryWatch. That was a total and embarrassing failure. We then had Fuelwatch and he could not even do that properly; so who would have expected him to save the world? What is worse is that Fuelwatch and GroceryWatch were the two great propositions put forward by the Rudd government to support working families with cost-of-living pressures. You may recall that. They both failed dismally. Still, it was true to form for the government to totally fail in the decent implementation of policy.

What is worse than when Mr Rudd fails to keep his promises? What is worse than when he breaks his promises? I will tell you what is worse: it is when he keeps them. The pink batts fiasco—the batts from hell fiasco—has been one of the greatest shambles in federal history. What did it cost—about $2.3 billion? Now we have got hundreds of thousands of homes with potentially lethal material in their roofs. We have about one fire every day and we have had four deaths—and this was supposedly a successful policy because he kept his promise. It was an absolutely abject failure. I just wish he had broken his promise and not implemented it.

What about the $43 billion National Broadband Network? As my friends have said this week in their contributions, about 16 per cent are subscribing, it is costing $43 billion and there has not even been a business viability study on it. This is an absolute shambles. I wish that Mr Rudd would break his promise and scrap it because we as a nation would be better off. I understand that it is not even going to be finished until 2017, by which time I suppose Mr Rudd will be off at the UN and Senator Conroy will be playing football for Australia. Of course, all this is the Senate’s fault! All these grand failures are the Senate’s fault! All of our obstructionism is the problem! It is not Mr Rudd’s fault, it is not this disgusting and pathetic implementation; it is all the Senate’s fault!

You would know, Mr Acting Deputy President, that my particular area of interest is the Building the Education Revolution. That has been the greatest shambles since 1901. We have had $16 billion spent on this program. Who would think it was possible to spend $16 billion and make principals, teachers, students and even teacher unions unhappy? Mr Rudd has done the impossible: he has spent $16 billion and made all the stakeholders unhappy. That is a great gift. Why? We now know what the problems are. One problem is the notorious templates. My friend Senator Carr loves these templates because they have this whiff of central planning about them. Senator Carr loves the Brezhnev Russia sort of stuff. There has been enormous failure in the Building the Education Revolution program not only because of the templates but also because of the lack of flexibility. There is no flexibility in the process. School communities want to know how the money is to be spent and for what purpose it will be spent and they want control over it. All the indications to the Senate over the last few months have been: ‘If we have control over the money we can spend it properly.’ I do not care whether it is government schools, independent schools or Catholic schools, all people want is control over the money.

So what has happened? There has not been a complaint or concern expressed by virtually any Catholic or independent school in the country. These are thousands of schools. This is not just one, two or three but thousands of schools with no complaints. Do you know why? Because they have been able to spend the money on their own priorities and manage the projects. All of them have done it well, virtually without exception. But what happens when the money goes to state governments for state schools? What is the evidence there? I will tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President, what the evidence is. When money goes through state governments, state schools are paying too much. They are paying too much by one, two, three, four or five times what they should be paying. Why? Because the Commonwealth does not have the oversight mechanisms that it should have. This is a systemic problem. What is happening is that state governments are giving out huge contracts throughout the state and there are not sufficient oversight mechanisms to control the process. This is what is facing this nation over the next little while: with the so-called new federalism, the national partnerships, the Commonwealth government does not have the capacity to effectively oversight the expenditure of Commonwealth money by state instrumentalities. That is the problem in a sentence, according to the Auditor-General’s report and the evidence given recently in the estimates committees.

Mr Cahill was responsible for the report, Building the education revolution: primary schools for the 21st century. In estimates he said that the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace did not have sufficient oversight mechanisms to ensure that Commonwealth money spent by state instrumentalities secured value for money. The Commonwealth government cannot be sure that state governments are getting good value for money. That is not what I am saying; that is what the Auditor-General said in evidence. The Commonwealth parliament, including the Senate, votes money to the executive to spend on programs. This parliament cannot be certain that that money is securing value for money. That is the problem. We cannot be certain that state governments are getting value for money for the money they are spending on school projects in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. This is a huge problem. It has implications for every single thing the government is doing.

If you think it is bad in relation to education—and, sure, there are significant implications—what about the new health proposals? What about health reform? Education might have cost $16 billion over the last couple of years, but health will cost billions more—several multiples more. The Commonwealth government cannot be certain that state parliaments are spending the money well. Our Auditor-General gave evidence that he cannot follow the money trail into state instrumentalities; he does not have the power. State parliaments are supposed to be the responsible entity. How responsible are they? It is not in their interests to disclose the fact that they have failed. None of the state auditors-general, who do have the power, have taken up the challenge. Apparently it is left to state estimates processes. In Queensland, it is nine hours a year and the opposition gets half—4½ hours a year in estimates. These are the so-called responsible oversight mechanisms of the expenditure of $16 billion. It is outrageous.

Quite frankly, Mr Rudd can complain about the Senate, but my home state of Queensland has a unicameral system. He might be comfortable in the unicameral system, but the Australian people are a hell of a lot better off with a bicameral system. They are much, much better off. Imagine if this government had operated in a unicameral system.