Tag Archives: building the education revolution

Labor Can’t Balance Fiddled Books

28 Apr

It seems Rudd Labor’s massive, panicked, and bungled response to the first wave of the GFC – roof insulation, the horrendously wasteful school buildings rort – is now making it difficult for them to keep yet another promise, to keep spending growth below 2% of GDP.

From The Australian:

The government is facing a battle to keep costs under its self-imposed 2 per cent growth cap, with blowouts in some programs and higher interest payments adding to the deficit.

Spending in the federal budget, to be released in two weeks, could be at least $10 billion higher in 2010-11 than was forecast when Treasury updated the government’s accounts last November.

Government officials confirm that the budget will forecast economic growth in excess of 3 per cent, which will trigger the rules devised by Treasury for returning the budget to surplus.

These rules dictate that once growth returns to normal, the government will keep spending growth below 2 per cent after allowing for inflation. They also require it to cover the cost of new spending with savings elsewhere in the budget and to bank any increase in tax revenue.

When the mid-year budget update was released six months ago, it looked as though the spending growth target would be easy to reach in 2010-11 because spending on the stimulus program was expected to fall by about $9bn in that year.

In one of the most popular articles I’ve written – “Labor Fakes GDP By 4.5%” – I showed from the government’s own budget documents how Rudd Labor have “revised” the historical data to artificially increase Australia’s GDP figures. Why is that important?

Because it has allowed the government to hoodwink the public and the lazy “we-check-nothing” media that they can keep spending growth below 2% of GDP.  That seems like an easy promise to make, when you’ve simply faked the GDP numbers upwards.

I also showed in “Labor: Hide The Increase” that, according to the government’s own “adjustments”, if they were required to abide by the previous traditional deflator method for calculating the effect of inflation on government spending, they would fail to meet their own 2% spending cap.

Now, we see from today’s article in The Australian, that even with all their massive fiddling of the nation’s accounts and historical records, the government is still struggling to balance their books.

Perhaps they might ask for the assistance of a qualified, experienced, and honest Accountant?

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Barnaby Attacks Julia’s BER

12 Apr

Last night Senator Barnaby Joyce appeared on Channel 7’s Sunday Night program, and blasted the massive waste in Julia Gillard’s “Building The Education Revolution” program (click here for the shocking video) –

The Building Education Revolution (BER) has become the Blatant Enormous Rip-off. This is money borrowed from overseas and off other Australians that you, the taxpayer, are going to have to repay. You repay it by going to work and paying your taxes, which are then sent off to the people we owe the money to.

When the Government does not control costs on these projects you end up working a lot longer than you needed to, to pay the debt back.

It is well worth the question whether many of the BER projects stacked around school yards are needed at all.

Are they really going to make your kids better at mathematics or english? Are they going to help them learn a second language? Or are they, in many instances, just over priced trinkets?

The big black signs that are adorning the perimeters of these schools where these projects are, say that this is part of an “Economic Stimulus Package”.

Now I don’t know whether you are getting stimulated by it but you are certainly getting touched.

People have seen the Labor Government coming and they are taking them for all that they are worth.

A fool and his funds are soon parted friends. Every week our nation borrows a billion dollars extra. When you look at projects such as these, it becomes really frightening as to where the management of our nation is off to.

While travelling around the countryside and in the cities, I am shocked at how easily we have been ripped off. It appears that no one in the Government wants to ask the hard question as to whether we are getting value for money and because others know the Government are not asking the questions, the bills for these buildings go unchallenged.

Like quarter of a million dollar shade cloths over playgrounds and millions of dollars in demountables.

Local builders are asking why they did not get a better go at the major contracts, rather than having to build them second hand, as subcontractors.

P&C’s are asking why the Government did not listen to them when they said they would prefer some other form of expenditure rather than a hall. Many are saying we just didn’t need it at all and we are really worried of the debt we are getting because of this.

On a positive note, it is good to see that Australians do care about the waste of money. Australians truly understand that there is something wrong with the mindless throwing of money to the wind for the shrewd and the cunning to take advantage of. This is what happens when you do not properly control costs.

How on earth is this waste helping any body?

How will you feel about it when you are sitting back late at night stacking shelves or driving cabs or stacking bricks in real buildings for real people or shearing sheep or driving earthmoving equipment, to pay off this complete waste of money where even in the waste you have been ripped off.

Barnaby is right.

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The BER: Blatant Enormous Rip-off

23 Mar

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 23 March 2010:

The BER (Building Education Revolution) is quickly turning into the Blatant Enormous Rip-off.  They are talking to us in the shopping malls, they are writing to us, they are ringing us and emailing, the results are in. Australians do not like being financially “touched” and they feel the Labor Party has once more proven that economically it could not manage a chook raffle in a pub on a Friday night.

A civil engineer has told Senator Barnaby Joyce today that he is astounded that the public purse is being rorted to such a massive extent. He gives the example that at the Hendra State School in Brisbane, a proposed library is set to cost $628,000 for construction. This means that the library is costing the taxpayers of Australia over $4000 per square metre. On top of this is another $194,362 for consultant fees and design costs. Compare this to the average house. A private builder would be happy with $1500 per square metre and provide a better finished product.  The library will not be air-conditioned and is just a basic design. So how on earth does anyone get a cost at over twice the going rate?

How can Mr Tanner Mr Rudd and Mr Swan laud their economic management expertise and hold a straight face at the same time? You would have thought that after the ceiling insulation debacle and the ever escalating mountainous debt that prudence would have made them slightly more cautious in how they dealt with the money being borrowed to finance the school hall jaunt, as silly as the idea is. But the proof is in the pudding. No one seems to care. The curtains are open but no one’s financially home. They don’t care how the money is spent and they don’t know how the money will be repaid and they have no idea what money is actually worth. The mantra of go hard, go early, go household also must have included go into debt into your eyeballs and fall out of your financial tree.

More information- Jenny Swan 0438 578402

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