House of Assembly Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1) 52 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Building the Education Revolution BUILDING THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION Ms CHAPMAN House of Assembly Bragg BUILDING THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (17:00): I have a similar question for the Minister for Education. Why is $103,000 of federal funding being used to install state government required water tanks for firefighting purposes under the Building the Education Revolution funding program? In this instance, it relates to a contribution—and I note the minister's previous answer—for gym facilities, but they were required to upgrade the water storage tanks to provide for these firefighting services. That is different from what the minister has just answered. Now, of course, that is a responsibility, they are being told, of the minister's government. The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL House of Assembly Cheltenham Minister for Education Minister for Early Childhood Development BUILDING THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Education, Minister for Early Childhood Development) (17:00): Can I just respond to the member for Bragg's question by adding some further information, so she can treat the answer that I gave to the previous question as substantially answering her question. To elaborate, an assessment was done, I am advised, of all the school sites across South Australia to make various schools safe. The state government funded that work. Upgrades were made of various school facilities around the state. There was another category of schools which did not fall into that category of work that needed to be done, but the CFS guidelines provided that, if additional buildings were put in place in that school environment, it would trigger the requirement for the upgrade of the firefighting facilities. That, as I understand it, is the reason the new works have triggered the need for the extra firefighting capacity in those schools. Essentially, if a school building was built on a site and some soil remediation work was needed, that also would be the cost of the project, and it would be met by the proponent—in this case, the commonwealth, because it is a BER project. Here you have the unusual situation where there is a need for upgrading the firefighting capacity; that becomes a cost of the project. Of course, schools want to maximise the education bang for the buck they get out of every project, but the truth is that each site has its own complexities. Some of the sites are sloping, some of them have soil remediation, some of them have the need to upgrade the firefighting equipment. That is the cost of doing the project and it is met by the commonwealth. The truth is that I spoke to a private school in my electorate just the other day and they described it as 'manna from heaven'. These would otherwise be facilities that they would have to fund through fetes and fundraisers. They have long-term strategic plans, where many of them imagine seeing these buildings in 10 years' time. What they see is a federal government motivated by two things, one of which is the global financial crisis that was going to threaten jobs. They said, 'We won't stand for that; we're going to defend Australian jobs.' And when they thought about how they were going to stimulate the economy, when they decided which construction jobs they should stimulate, they, in a classically Labor way, said, 'We're going to invest in the most important thing we can imagine, that is, our children's future.'