From really little things big things have grown.
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Yesterday Tottenham’s Rick Bennett took, from his tiny central western town, what has become the symbol of waste under the Federal Government’s school buildings program to the steps of Parliament House.
Ten people from Tottenham Central School’s Parents and Citizens Association helped construct a replica of their new canteen at the front of Parliament so people could judge for themselves the value for money in a $600,000 tuckshop, that Mr Bennett said couldn’t even be equipped with a pie warmer.
The school’s P&C president attacked the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution (BER) and urged education minister Julia Gillard to reconsider before signing off on $5.5 billion more in BER funding.
“They can’t be putting overpriced, undersized buildings in the schools and expect people to be happy with them,” he said.
With Opposition leader Tony Abbott, Parkes MP Mark Coulton highlighted the plight of Dubbo businesses which had gone unpaid after working on the BER.
“In Dubbo, more than a dozen businesses are facing severe cash-flow problems and jobs are under threat after the Government continually refuses to pay them the $1.7 million they are owed for work carried out under the BER,” he said.
Mr Coulton labelled Ms Gillard’s absence from the rally as an “act of great cowardice”.
“She had the ideal opportunity to explain to parents from Tottenham Central School ... why she believes projects costing $25,000 a square metre - 10 times the industry standard - is ‘good value for money’,” he said.
Ms Gillard told the Daily Liberal the BER taskforce would investigate the Tottenham canteen.
“We said from day one that you can’t do that much construction - 24,000 projects in 9500 schools - without encountering some problems but the important thing is dealing with them,” she said.
On Tuesday Ms Gillard told Sky News the Tottenham canteen was not as expensive as it seemed.
She said an “allocation error” made the canteen look more costly than it actually was.
Mr Bennett was told the education minister would be contacting him yesterday however at the time of going to print he had not received a call.
“We are just going to push this cause until we get something our school can be proud of and our students can use,” he said.
