EDITORIAL: Rip-offs provide perspective

By PAUL MITCHELL, Editor

The State Government has little influence on where the Federal Government spends its - or more accurately 'our' – education money.

Nonetheless, the irony of the current Riverland Special School controversy would not be lost on anyone remotely aware of the Federal Government’s $16.2 billion schools stimulus program.
This truly disgraceful program is seeing billions of dollars of taxpayer money rorted on a daily basis.
For example, it has been reported that an 11-student school in Victoria has received $1.2 million to upgrade its library – just one example of hundreds of rip-offs and over-quoting happening right across Australia.
Managing contractors are charging up to three times the rate suggested by the Federal Government, though it is understood South Australia is among the states wasting the least amount of money.
Regardless of whether or not you consider the school stimulus a worthwhile program, no-one should condone such gratuitous waste of money.
The issue has not earned the headlines it has deserved, but is even more of a financial disaster than Kevin Rudd’s pink batts saga.
To put it in context, imagine what even a fraction of that money could do towards the relocation of the Riverland Special School and the creation of better facilities for the school’s students, parents and teachers.