The Rudd factor

Many Australians did believe Rudd at the 2007 federal election when he offered ideas, hope and a desire to address old and new problems. Perhaps many believed that Rudd could be both a fiscal conservative and social democrat, although his government’s record achieved little substantive change in accordance to both terms.

In terms of the economic stimulus package, intended to offset lower private sector activity, there was much waste. The Home Insulation Program (HIP), indeed one of Australia’s worst ever federal policy debacles, resulted in four deaths and widespread rorting and cost $1 billion to address its mistakes. The $1 billion represents nearly 40 per cent of the total $2.45 billion spent on the HIP.

A taskforce also concluded that most of the 254 complaints made towards the Rudd government’s Building the Education Revolution raised valid concerns about value for money, and that shortcomings of the program that could have been avoided.

In April 2010, it was reported that “minor refurbishments of the Pleasant Hills Primary School near Wagga have been quoted at $275,000, including GST; $900,000 for a government-provided prefabricated library at Berridale State School, in southern New South Wales (NSW); $200,000 to a government-approved contractor to move a sewer and stormwater drain at Berwick Lodge Primary School in Victoria; and nearly $900,000 for a two-room prefabricated concrete building, supplied by the State Education Department to Eungai Public School, in northern New South Wales”.

The NSW Teachers Federation was so alarmed that it called on the NSW Auditor-General for an independent public inquiry into the scheme.

A NSW principal noted in an e-mail, “I am sitting here staring at my beautiful new $425,000 library that cost the taxpayers of Australia $850,000. The internet is not connected - the fans can’t be turned on because they hit the ceilings, and the light switches are upside down”.

Even on traditional Labor policy strengths, the Rudd government was hardly a success, unless emulating the Coalition’s policies now reflects Labor’s prowess.

Take education. Dr Jim McMorrow, a former senior education bureaucrat, conducted analysis of federal government education spending between 2009 and 2013 and concluded that private schools will have received $47 billion for computers, new buildings and general running costs, compared with $35 billion for government schools. This is despite two-thirds of Australian students being in government schools.

With the private school share of federal funding predicted to increase to 64 per cent by 2013, it was calculated that an extra investment of $1.5 billion a year was needed to return public schools to the 43 per cent share of funding achieved under the last Labor government.

It was also argued that if new Commonwealth money for trades training centres and school computers was distributed on the basis of need, public schools would need an additional $500 million more than they are now receiving (Emma Macdonald, “Funding boost for private schools”, Canberra Times, January 18, 2010).

Rudd was not a great Labor politician trying to buck or temper recent trends.

Long before Rudd’s rhetoric hoodwinked the Australian electorate and Labor in 2007 into believing that he was something different, he was known as Dr Death: this was when he was running the Queensland cabinet office and was responsible for cutting 2,000 hospital beds, shutting down operating theatres and allowing mental health waiting lists to blow out to three years.