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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2364 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Two other ovals are being brought back by the Grammar School and by Daramalan College, and they will be open to and used by the general public. Two other ovals have gone to urban parks. These are ovals that I think even under Labor were never used as sports grounds. Of course, Duffy oval now will be used for cricket as a result of works. Twenty-seven ovals were made low maintenance by a disastrous Labor decision in 1993. Actually, this was a decision of Mr Berry's. He is being pretty churlish tonight but he had the good grace on ABC radio to say he was pleased the government had brought some back, and I take that as a tacit regret in terms of the stupidity of his government's decision when he was sports minister.

Mr Berry: Why didn't you bring them all back?

MR STEFANIAK: Because of the financial state you left us in, Wayne. I think we have done very well bringing some 13 back.

Of course, I have made no bones about the fact that I would like, in the remaining term of this government, to look at bringing a couple more of those back. In terms of the remaining ones near primary schools, the offer we have made to the primary schools, which has been taken up by eight schools, lays on the table and will remain on the table during the term of this government. So, what has occurred in reality is that nothing has been sold to developers. We have brought 13 of those ovals either back to full maintenance or made them into parks. It is pretty close to 50 per cent. I think that is an excellent record; it speaks for itself.

This is a historic budget. I am very proud of the fact that my department accounts for about 33 per cent of it. Education is crucially important, not only to this territory but to Australia. We pride ourselves on being the clever capital. I am not going to go over the numerous initiatives there are in this budget or the initiatives we have put in over the five years of the Carnell government. They are there for people to see-the IT initiatives, the initiatives for assisting kids with disabilities, and the affirming the high school years initiative. These are excellent initiatives and there are some more in this budget.

Unlike the previous government, which actually cut education, we realise how crucial education is. It is interesting to look at some of the debates that have taken place. On 18 May 1994 Mr Wood, the then education minister, indicated that basically they did not want to cut education too much and that they had cut other things a lot more. At page 1678 of Hansard he is reported as saying:

He said that education funding had not been cut to the same extent that the ACT budget had. What have we done? We have increased it. We have honoured our promise to increase it by CPI. We have gone over and above that-we have increased it to about $40 million over what we promised. Labor found it impossible to increase education funding in its budget. It found it impossible not to decrease education funding. We have done the exact opposite despite inheriting a dreadful deficit of $344 million back in 1995.

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