Senator MASON (3:19 PM) —One of the issues raised by the minister in a rather rambling answer in question time this afternoon was the issue of education. I had to concede—I will give the government this—that the education revolution was a marvellous election gimmick. The problem, of course, is that it has been a disaster in implementation. It is becoming a theme of this government that they take policy ideas from the Blair government and from the great state of New York in the United States—great policy ideas but they are disasters when it comes to implementation, as is the notorious computers in schools program here in Australia.

The initial promise was one computer for each student. All of a sudden that marvellous election time promise morphed into access to a computer for every student. And then it got worse. The promise morphed again. What we now learn from the last estimates program is that the government’s aim is to have one computer for every two students.

Senator Parry —Or half of one each!

Senator MASON —Or half of one each! In fact, the government are going to provide half as many computers as they said they would. What we also learnt was this: the government are budgeting $1,000 for each unit. That is roughly $500 for capital costs—the cost of a computer—leaving $500 for all the infrastructure costs. You might remember that, Mr Deputy President. That $500 will have to cover all the start-up costs such as wiring, connection to the internet, networking computers, cabling and so forth. And then there are the ongoing costs, such as maintenance, repair, insurance, security costs, storage costs, ongoing internet costs, air-conditioning costs and on, and on and on—let alone, of course, the money to retrain teachers to better use this new technology. For all these costs the government have allowed $500. That is ridiculous. The best estimates are that the ratio is about one to four—the unit cost being one and the ongoing cost being roughly $2,000. You might say, ‘Oh look, Senator Mason is prattling on in a typical partisan way.’ Well, what did Mr Carpenter, the beleaguered Premier of Western Australia, say? He said, ‘The government have underbudgeted by about $3 billion.’ That is what Mr Carpenter said. And what did Mr Iemma say in New South Wales? In Mr Iemma’s budget papers the New South Wales government explicitly said that they would not pay for the ongoing costs of the Rudd government’s computers in schools program. Why? Because the $500 budget for ongoing costs is nowhere near enough.

What is worse is that we learned about a month ago that Mr Costa, the New South Wales Treasurer, was putting the squeeze on Mr Rudd for a $245 million secret deal to pay the New South Wales government for the costs of computer infrastructure. On page 1 of the Sydney Morning Herald of 30 June 2008 it was revealed in an article titled: ‘How Costa put squeeze on Rudd: School computer debacle’. The article stated:

The article went on to state:

extra computer—

What a fiasco!

So what have we learnt from all of this? What is the moral of the story? We know two things: that this farce will be resolved in October in COAG and that the moral of the story is that when Mr Rudd turns up with his bright, gleaming computers for every student, leaving the states and parents to pay the ongoing costs, we now know to beware of geeks bearing gifts.