Monday 31 October 2016

Buying Day's vote

Discredited, bankrupt ex liberal (still a Liberal) senator Bob Day seems to have been handsomely rewarded for his vote on the ACCC Bill.

The federal government handed a $2 million grant to a small trades training school chaired for a decade by senator Bob Day, the crossbencher whose business woes are a threat to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's bid to resurrect the building industry watchdog.

The one-off allocation, made without any competitive tender process, will let the vocational college in Adelaide's north trial Senator Day's pet project, a new apprenticeship system known as "student builders".

The program takes the financial burden for apprentices off employers in the construction sector by funding them as tertiary students.

According to a trove of government documents, Senator Day began lobbying government ministers in 2015 for $1.4 million to trial the program with 20 apprentices from North East Vocational College, where he is a current director and former chairman of 10 years.

Six months later, he was told in a letter from the then assistant minister for education and training, Luke Hartsuyker, that the college would receive $1.84 million - nearly $500,000 more than he asked for.

STOP PRESS

Day seems to have got the message and has now resigned. I guess egg is on Birmingham's face now!

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