The Coalition is introducing a bill in Parliament that will establish a full judicial inquiry to investigate the waste and mismanagement that has occurred in the ‘school halls’ (Building the Education Revolution) program.
I will be supporting this call for an inquiry so that we might finally obtain some answers for local schools such as Skipton Primary, Dunkeld Consolidated School, Dartmoor Primary and Cavendish Primary.
The Commission of Inquiry into the Building the Education Revolution Program Bill, if passed, will establish an inquiry with the power to subpoena documents, summons witnesses and recommend charges if appropriate.
Parliamentary inquiries in Victoria, New South Wales and the Senate have seen much evidence of waste and mismanagement, cost overruns, payment of secret fees, preferential treatment and misallocation of resources arising in this program.
The problem was these inquiries didn’t have the necessary powers to further investigate.
The program, which was part of stimulus measures, cost taxpayers $16.2 billion but it is estimated that the taxpayer may have only got about $8 billion worth of value.
The Coalition’s Judicial Inquiry will give the Australian taxpayer a full account of where the money went in the school hall program, and ensure any evidence is acted upon.
If the Government has nothing to hide, they should support this Bill. During the election campaign, Prime Minister Gillard promised to publish all BER costings, but this was yet another broken election promise.
The independents have indicated they support transparency and accountability, passing this Bill is a crucial step to forensically examine all the evidence and get the full picture of what went wrong in the BER.
Billions have potentially evaporated in this program, thousands of schools have missed out on achieving value for the money they were allocated and within the community there is much anger at this lost opportunity.
Our schools know what they could have achieved with their allocated money, but in many cases their delivered projects fall well short of this, if they have been delivered at all.
Wannon’s local schools deserve to know how their grant money was spent and a full judicial inquiry is the only way our School Council Presidents, Principals, parents and children will get the answers.
Copyright © 2010 : Authorised by Dan Tehan, 190 Gray St, Hamilton VIC 3300
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