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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2516 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

This is in relation to teacher cuts, Mr Wood, which you were going to make. You went on:

Our opponents would have Canberra people believe that quality is conditional upon the preservation of a certain industrial configuration that serves those who are paid to serve the system. As I have shown, that is not necessarily so. Quality does not need to suffer because there will be about 80 fewer positions in a teaching force of more than 3,000. On the one hand, our funding from the Commonwealth will continue to shrink. On the other, we are determined to maintain and raise quality. The people of the ACT know that our opponents will see the necessity for the reconciliation of those two imperatives. I trust that they will do that today. In the end, goodwill and intelligence should prevail.

I do not think even you people are suggesting that anything we are doing will see anything like 80 positions go, Mr Wood.

Ms McRae: About 60, I have calculated.

MR STEFANIAK: I thought you were suggesting 36 the other day.

Ms McRae: Yes, that is in colleges.

MR STEFANIAK: Is it? That is interesting.

Ms McRae: And then the rest.

MR STEFANIAK: Yes, and the rest. We will see what happens when it all comes out in the wash, Ms McRae.

Ms McRae: You are talking about an increase; you are not talking about cuts.

MR STEFANIAK: You people were, too, actually. I will come to that, Ms McRae. Let us go on now to Ms Follett, the then Chief Minister. In the last paragraph on page 4144, she said:

Madam Speaker, what the Government's schooling program is being asked to do is to achieve savings of $3.5m in an appropriation, as we see before us today, of $203,569,100.

We will come to that in a minute. She continued:

That is hardly an unachievable objective, in my view. As we have managed reducing budgets over several years now, I can tell you that this is a long way from being the hardest task faced by a program within the ACT administration. It is a very modest target; it is an achievable target; and it is a target which will maintain the quality of the service that is being delivered to the community ...

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