Page 124 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 1990
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Canberra if the land has been designated as national land or if it in future is designated for planning purposes by the NCPA. The answer to the question is yes - that is, if we agree with its interpretations, or if we do not agree we can negotiate with the National Capital Planning Authority on where its interests lie and how far we agree that it can go.
Skills Testing
MR MOORE: My question is directed to the Minister for Health, Education and the Arts. Considering several announcements that he has made favouring a system-wide skills testing, will he tell this Assembly the projected costs of such a move and which part of his education department will be reduced to provide that funding?
MR HUMPHRIES: I thank the member for his question. The simple answer is no, I cannot provide information of that kind because it is not yet available. It is not available at this time because the Government, as he has no doubt heard, is in the process of developing a green paper on literacy and numeracy issues in the ACT education system. If I were to rise in this place and announce that the Government was going to do certain things and that those things were going to cost a certain amount of money, it would rather pre-empt the basis on which we have proceeded so far - that is, a green paper to be issued for public discussion and comment, canvassing a number of options, not just one preferred government option, as the basis for the Government moving later, if that is the result of that process, to implement some form of literacy or numeracy or both types of testing in the ACT. I cannot, therefore, indicate to him what the cost would be. It would be a question of the community of the ACT commenting on what particular options are available and indicating which costs it is prepared to pay as a community for those sorts of things.
MR MOORE: I wish to ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. Would the Minister like to comment then on the current skills testing method in the ACT and why the Alliance Government would consider it unsatisfactory so that it would have to put out a green paper on it.
MR HUMPHRIES: The simple answer to that is that if we treat any part of our education system as a sacred cow and assume that it cannot be improved upon, we make a very grave and erroneous assumption about the future development of our system.
Mr Moore: Do you know what the current system is?
MR HUMPHRIES: There is concern in certain quarters of our community about the level of literacy and numeracy - - -
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