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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 365 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

some of the things that they reported to me. One child I spoke to talked about having nosebleeds from the high temperatures. Some kids are prone to nosebleeds, but this young child felt that she had been affected by the temperature. It was also reported to me by a couple of children, not just one, that on that very day two kids had fainted in the classroom. That small sample sent a message to me that something is wrong.

The P&C reports that for 23 of the days that the kids had been in the school the temperature inside the portables had been 30 degrees on 19 occasions. I am not sure whether those temperatures were measured at the same time as the minister was measuring them, but they said that it had occurred on 19 occasions and they also said that they had recorded temperatures up to 36 degrees Celsius.

My recollection of the standards which apply to public servants and other workers generally is that once the temperature gets to 32 degrees you start to think about heading off because it is too hot to work. If it is too hot to work once you get to those sorts of temperatures, it seems to me that it is a bit too hot to be being educated as well. It is not hard to imagine that the conditions would be quite unbearable in a classroom of 30 youngsters on a 34-degree day.

Let us forget for a moment the effect on the kids. The kids would be severely affected, but you also have to give due regard to the effect on teachers as well. How are they going to perform their jobs properly in such an environment, whereas if they were in an ordinary public service workplace they would probably have left work for a cooler location? One Gordon student, and I quote again from the press release, said after a day of extreme heat in her classroom, "It was just awful. Something should be done." That was the sentiment of all of the people who confronted the minister at the department last week.

What has been the minister's response? The minister's response has been: "Dig into your own funds. If the school board wants these rooms to be cooler, go and buy an airconditioner." I am just quoting figures that have been reported, but there are something like 90 temporary classrooms around the ACT and the minister has said that it would take $2 million to aircondition the lot of them. That works out at about $22,000 per unit on the figures that I saw reported.

It seems to me that that it is just ridiculous for the minister to put that proposition. How can you say to teachers that the government has abandoned its responsibility for infrastructure in the schools to the extent that they should spend $22,000 on each unit, if it is as high as that and if, indeed, it is indeed necessary to provide some sort of air cooling equipment for all of those units?

I am not for one minute saying that all of the units need an airconditioner or to be fully airconditioned, but you can bet that if you went out into the community you would find some of them that are sited so badly that they are affected by solar gain from the sun. They would all be affected by the 30 children who are inside the building.

My memory of the figure for the heat which is radiated by humans in this environment is that it is about 750 watts per person. If you say that each of these little kiddies is radiating about 500 watts in a classroom that is inadequately ventilated on a 30-degree

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