Dr Bruce Flegg
Member for Moggill

The long term Queensland Labor Government has been the slowest state to deliver promised new school buildings with nearly half of the projects yet to start, a Federal Government taskforce has found.

LNP Shadow Minister for Education and Training Dr Bruce Flegg said the Orgill interim report released today blasted the way Labor Governments at the Federal and state levels had administered the Building the Education Revolution program.

"The LNP has long raised concerns about how money is being wasted in this disgraced program, with millions of dollars blown on sub-standard overpriced facilities at schools right throughout the country," he said.

"This interim report confirms the Labor Governments have sacrificed value for money and restricted schools’ ability to individualise projects to ensure the buildings delivered are relevant and delivered quickly."

Dr Flegg said the report had some damning findings for the long term Labor Government in Queensland.

"The Queensland Labor Government was the slowest to deliver with amazingly 40 per cent of projects not even started," he said.

"Incompetent administration has robbed taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars so school building projects could be started quickly as an economic stimulus, but the Bligh Labor Government has failed to even do that."

Dr Flegg said the taskforce had also called on education authorities to release school specific cost data and that Queensland’s agency, management and design costs were double that of Western Australia.

"It’s probably not surprising that the two worst performing states are New South Wales and Queensland which both have incompetent long term Labor Governments," he said.

"The Bligh and Gillard Labor Governments must take heed of the recommendations of this taskforce so more taxpayers’ money isn’t wasted unnecessarily."