Article - Education - Sunday Mail - 2 May 2010

HARRY HOUDINI, the world's most famous magician, was known for extraordinary illusions and escapes. One of the most acclaimed tricks was to make an entire elephant disappear in front of an audience of New Yorkers in 1923.

Perhaps not so remarkable by today's standards, where daily we are astounded by the disappearing act performed by the “Harriet Houdini” of Australian politics, the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I invite you now to consider the feats of Ms Houdini. Please hold your anger to the end. You may recall a time, before the last election, when the then Federal Labor Opposition, led by our own Ms Houdini and ably assisted by her sidekick, Mr Rudd, promised a revolution in education.

We were to have a trade training centre built in all 2650 high schools. We were to have a laptop computer for every student in Years 9-12. We were to have 260 child care centres across this great land to end the ‘double drop-off'.

But since the election, the stage has been set, the curtains raised, for Ms Houdini, the Mistress of Mystery and her feats of illusion.

We have seen her shrink the promised trade training centre for all 2650 high schools into one for every tenth high school.

Behold the Computers in Schools program; three years into a four-year program only a quarter of the promised computers have been delivered and none are connected to the high-speed broadband that was promised. The program has also doubled in price, from $1 billion to $2.2 billion.

And for a final flourish, the promised 260 child care centres? Transformed into 38! According to Ms Houdini child care places are in abundance, and the centres are no longer needed.

But that is not the end of the show. Like all good magicians Ms Houdini has saved her greatest trick till last.

Let me draw your attention now, Ladies and Gentlemen, to perhaps the most gargantuan disappearing act in the history of this country. Known as the School Hall Rip-off, it is a program of diabolical complexity, where Ms Houdini, with a wave of her wand, has made a $16 billion spend deliver only $8 billion in value. Plagued by rorting, price gouging, waste and mismanagement, the money borrowed on the taxpayers' credit card has evaporated before the eyes of school communities.

YOU'LL be astounded as a covered outdoor learning area (a pergola) worth $150,000 blows out to cost $1 million. Or compare these two buildings at the same school: One a solid brick building built a year ago costing $300,000, and the other a School Hall Ripoff building, prefabricated and delivered on the back of a truck, costing $980,000. Now, watch as Ms Houdini spends more taxpayer money to turn light switches the right way around, and extend foundations that don't fit.

Be astonished by state governments fessing up to paying as much as 21 per cent in management fees to contractors and construction companies when the Government's guidelines call for a maximum payment of only 4 per cent.

This has been an amazing debacle by anyone's standards.

Given the multitude of disasters, many would be wondering why Peter Garrett, the minister who had carriage of the Government's insulation program, which resulted in deaths,

housefires and was eventually cancelled costing the taxpayer billions, found himself demoted by the Prime Minister, while Ms Houdini remains unscathed.

Well, Harry Houdini was also very well known for his ability to escape from tricky situations.

Consider his most famous escape from the Chinese Water Torture chamber – Houdini would be suspended upside down and lowered into a glass tank full of water. Locked in, with feet protruding from the top, Houdini, dramatically concealed behind a curtain, would take only moments to emerge free and clear.

Not unlike the real Houdini, Ms Gillard, aka Harriet Houdini, has been allowed to escape free and clear from the broken promises, bungles and backflips that have plagued her portfolio.

The Prime Minister needs to hold Ms Houdini to account for her performance. The school hall program is already under investigation by the Auditor General, who is due to report this week, so we may finally begin to get an idea of why it has gone so badly wrong.

Perhaps, finally, it will lead to one escape not even Ms Houdini can manage.