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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-11 Daily Xml
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SCHOOL COMPUTERS

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:30): I rise to further expand upon the question I asked the education minister in question time about what is now becoming a debacle—the minister's roll-out, if you like, of the Rudd government's funds for computers in schools. I think that one way of describing this process is that this is not about delivering an education outcome: this is about delivering an election promise. If we remember, there was Rudd waving a laptop before the last election saying, 'There'll be one of these for every school child.' And there was Mike Rann, as President of the federal ALP, right behind him saying, 'Yes; that's what we'll be doing.' Of course, after the election we realised that we did not read the fine print. Certainly, kids and parents did not read the fine print. We find that it is now only for years nine to 12, and it is now one computer to share between two students. But, it gets worse than that.

In introducing my comments I would like to read an email that was sent from one principal to another about the difficulties that they are coming across in trying to deliver this program. It states:

For example when doing our planning we have been told that the cost for each laptop is $1,300. The Federal Govt is saying the cost price should be figured at around about $1,000. I cannot believe that given the enormous buying power that we cannot get quality laptops for half that price.

That is in response to an email that was sent a few minutes earlier, which states:

Last week we were visited by DECS ICT to look at their eStrategy to help us prepare for the submissions for the DER.

Don Priest made it clear that schools will have to purchase from a list of computers drawn up by DECS ICT and in particular, TKM.

Don also said off the record that Ross Treadwell has been working hard to keep them flexible.

In my view this is very bad news indeed. Take BHS. We are able to get computers (ACERS) with 4 year guarantees while the DECS purchase list only provides for 3 year guarantees. There are other technical deals that can be done by schools that DECS can't match, not to mention the cost and speed of the ISP.

The work they do at DECS is expensive and they will take money off the top of the overall grant. And, they may organise a worse deal that what we can get. How can we influence this? Shall we just lie down and take it? How can we get our views through to the feds? (I want the money!)

The schools are saying that the education minister has intervened instead of letting the schools manage their own IT, or even having the minister go out and get good deals for schools, as they have done in Victoria. The Australian on Monday in the IT section had an article about the Lenovo deal that the Victorian state government has done, where it purchased laptop computers worth $12,025 for a bigger than 50 per cent discount, for $560. Individual schools can buy computers better than what DECS is offering them for. So, who is getting the discount?

On top of that, DECS is taking a 4 per cent commission for handling the deal for the schools. Not only is DECS removing the schools' flexibility, interfering in their own IT set ups that they did through the very generous grants for investing in our schools by the previous Liberal government in Canberra, they are also restricting what schools can use. DECS is making them buy software that they do not want, and they are not allowed to buy software that they do want with that money. We are seeing a huge centralisation, a huge mess being developed out of the minister's office. On top of that, they are using money from the digital revolution to pay bureaucrats to tell them to deliver to them what they do not want. This is an absolute disaster.

A classic example is Renmark High School: $121 to replace 32 old computers and get 89 additional computers. DECS is taking 20 per cent off the top. If the school purchased 120 computers of its own, it could have an agreement with Microsoft to licence them at no additional cost. Yet the minister has dug into the pockets of the Renmark High School and said, 'Thank you. I will take 20 per cent of that, and perhaps I will send it off to Mr Foley to help me with my savings targets in the department.'

Time expired.

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