Govt to probe school stimulus rorts

A task force to crack down on rorting and cost blowouts in the federal government's
$16 billion school building program is an admission of failure, the opposition says.
Education Minister Julia Gillard says the $14 million operation to deal with
complaints will be an extra "layer of insurance".
The task force, set up within the Department of Education, will refer complaints and
possible evidence of profiteering among contractors to the relevant authorities.
It will also have the power to assess the value for money of individual projects and
recommend policy changes to the department.
"We believe this is the right time to build in an extra layer of insurance," Ms
Gillard told reporters in Canberra.
"I've looked at the experience and some of the claims made, and determined that we
do need this further level of insurance."
The deputy prime minister said Monday's announcement was timed to come before a
meeting of state education ministers later this week.
But it also follows media reports of massive cost blowouts in the program, including
a case where a project to build a covered outdoor learning centre was scrapped
because the bill more than doubled to almost $1 million.
It also came a day after the Seven Network's Sunday Night program ran a prime-time
story about problems in the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution scheme,
one of the government's economic stimulus measures.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott described the task force as a Claytons inquiry that
wouldn't be able to compel witnesses to give evidence.
"This is an inquiry that is designed to cover things up, not to get to the truth,"
he told reporters at Thredbo in southern NSW.
Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said the government could have set
up an independent judicial inquiry for the same price as a task force.
"This task force, while an enormous backdown and admission of failure on behalf of
the government, still reports directly to the minister," he told reporters in
Adelaide.
"This is a cynical election-year fix designed to get them out of a spot of bother."
The government has asked former UBS Investment Bank chief Brad Orgill to present an
interim report within three months, and then every six months thereafter.
"I will look at particularly also at those cases which have taken media attention
... that I think will be a good starting point," he said.
In one case highlighted by The Australian newspaper, the NSW government scrapped the
building of a covered outdoor learning area at Hastings Public School, on the
state's mid-north coast, after the project cost ballooned from $400,000 to $954,000.
The task force will investigate complaints about overcharging, price gouging and
excessive price quotations that are sent to the department's website.
It may then take the complaints to state authorities and advise them how to proceed.
Ms Gillard said she was not aware of allegations of criminal behaviour on the part
of contractors.
She said the school building program, which still had two years to run, was needed
to prop up employment in the non-residential building sector.
Asked about the program's failings, she said no government in Australia had ever
co-ordinated 24,000 projects in 9,500 schools.