Energy Efficiency

The Federal Government allowed the controversial Exclusive Brethren schools in Queensland to exploit the Building the Education Revolution (BER) funding.

This year, they granted the Exclusive Brethren’s Brisbane campus, Agnew School, $1.6 million to build a library.

The school (at Wakerley in Brisbane’s east) with just 118 students in years three to 12 (57 primary and 61 secondary), qualified for the funding by spreading its student numbers over six campuses.

The school is in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s electorate of Griffith and has 57 primary and 61 high school students.

But as opposition leader in 2007, Mr Rudd described the Exclusive Brethren as an extremist cult and sect that breaks up families.

A rule is members and non-member students or adults are not allowed to eat together.

NSW Greens Dr Kaye said the federal Education Minister Julia Gillard had allowed the school to legally exploit the loophole and gold plate one of its campuses.

Dr Kaye said many students – for whom this money was allocated – will never see the library that is supposed to serve them.

In 2008, Mr Rudd’s Government continued the Howard years’ funding system, resulting in the Exclusive Brethren schools receiving almost $62 million in recurrent funding for the years 2009 to 2012, up from $37.4 million for 2005 to 2008; in addition, the Rudd Government’s Building the Education Revolution has delivered $6.23 million to the six multi-campus Exclusive Brethren schools around Australia.

Dr Kaye went on to say that the Government would also give more than $68 million over the next four years in BER funding to schools run by an organisation that in the opinion of the Prime Minister displays aberrant behaviour.