Goldstein News
November-December 2010
More evidence of Government’s profligacy and incompetence
Evidence of the Labor Government’s wasteful spending and incompetent management piled up last month in Parliament after hours of Senate estimates hearings.
Although there are too many examples to include them all here, there were several astonishing instances of government profligacy and ineptitude that are worth mentioning.
Senator Brett Mason uncovered shocking double standards in the Government’s embattled Building the Education Revolution, whereby independent schools can be punished by the Government far more severely for breaching the BER Program Agreement than can public schools.
It was also revealed after questions from Senator Mason that despite Labor’s promise to give every student in senior secondary school a laptop, less than 350,000 have actually been delivered, which is only one computer between every three students.
Meanwhile, Senator Eric Abetz discovered evidence of the Government’s anti-business bias, revealing that the Government has stacked the adjudicators’ bench of Fair Work Australia with ex-trade union officials. Of the 25 union officials that applied for the six positions, five were successful. Of the 45 applicants from a business or employment background, zero were successful.
In my own portfolio of disabilities, I uncovered evidence of broken promises and a disturbing lack of transparency. The Government has promised 313 new supported accommodation places for people with a disability and is spending $100 million to deliver them. However, it was revealed that the Government had only managed to deliver 142 of these places. Even more worrying is the fact that the Commonwealth is in the dark as to the exact location of the beds they have supposedly delivered the Government could only provide the state or territory in which the places are located, and not an exact location.
And as if the Government’s wasteful spending wasn’t clear enough, I discovered that the Government has wasted over $110,000 on a report on social inclusion whose key findings were pretty self evident – that Australians are pretty happy, enjoy catching up with family and friends, their family sometimes annoy them and some people are afraid after dark.
Senate estimates provides more evidence that this Government wastes money, breaks promises, fails to maintain basic accountability in its spending, favours unions at the expense of small business and opposes choice in education.
Only the Coalition can provide competent, accountable and fair government for Australia. We continue to work to this end.