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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 2000 ..

MR WOOD: Let me ask my supplementary question, having made that statement.

MR SPEAKER: Please do.

MR WOOD: Minister, there are now 2,500 more people unemployed than there were when you came into office. How many of those would you expect to be building workers in the home building industry, and how many more do you expect to go onto that list in the near future?

MR DE DOMENICO: I thank Mr Wood for his supplementary question. What Mr Wood did not note is that 1,000 more jobs have been created in 18 months by this Government than were created by his Government. That is another fact that he forgot. Last night I did hear that some small businesses in the ACT will close. Yes, that is true. More will open; more will grow. I have to tell you that it is very likely that more will come into this place because of initiatives like increasing the threshold on payroll tax, which you could have done but did not.

Ms McRae: The threshold does not help small business, Mr De Domenico.

MR DE DOMENICO: Ms McRae, what you know about small business you could fit in a ring of calamari. You know zilch. You should not talk about small business. The only thing you know about a small business is how to make it go broke. Mr Wood, this Government has a very healthy record of helping business in this community. We will continue to help business in this community. If you do not believe us, go out there and ask the very people you sat next to last night.

MS TUCKER: My question is for Mr Stefaniak, the Minister for Education. It is about voluntary parent contributions. I have just been looking again at your response to recommendation 3 of the report of the Public Accounts Committee. It states:

Voluntary parent contributions are not part of the school funding base. The Government has consistently emphasised that, while it encourages parents to make contributions to their schools, such contributions are voluntary and represent discretionary funding.

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The revised Government response to that committee report is on the notice paper as an item for future debate, and I think that Ms Tucker might be anticipating that debate by asking this question.

MS TUCKER: Can I ask a question generally about voluntary contributions? I can do without the preamble, if you like. I will just ask the question about the contributions. I wanted to remind the Government of what they have said. I have here another interesting document that I would like to read. One of the schools of Mr Stefaniak's department has said quite clearly:

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