Orgill contradicts his own report

The Implementation Taskforce head, Mr Brad Orgill, has appeared to be in conflict today with his own interim report, claiming there is no evidence of waste in the Building the Education Revolution.

Under questioning by Senator Brett Mason at the Parliamentary Inquiry into the school hall program, Mr Orgill said:

'...there is no evidence to say that value for money has not been achieved...'.

The Taskforce interim report, released during the election campaign, states several times that evidence exists where value for money was not achieved, including:

'From our investigations to date, the majority of complaints raise very valid concerns, particularly about value for money.' (BER Interim Report pg 7)

'There is evidence to suggest that some education authorities have achieved better value for money than others.' (BER Interim Report pg 8)

'We have... reached an interim conclusion that in each case value for money has not been achieved.' (BER Interim Report pg 31)

Mr Orgill seems to have become the Government's new BER spokesman, Christopher Pyne, Shadow Minister for Education said in response to Mr Orgill's claims.

"The implementation taskforce was asked to find out whether value for money had been achieved, and to stop the waste in this program, but instead seems to be going out of the way to cover for the Prime Minister," he said.

This is a growing farce and should be replaced with a judicial inquiry, but we need the support of the crossbenches for this to occur.

"Senator Mason and I will be using the coming weeks and months to convince crossbench Members and Senators of the need for a judicial inquiry into the BER," Mr Pyne said.

November 1, 2010

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