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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1703 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

a system of free school buses. They said that it would cost about $6 million in 1995. From that point forward, the election promise was completely forgotten-for good reason, because it was unaffordable. If cash was available it should have been put into our education system. I must say that I was surprised that Mr Moore would have supported a cabinet move to put education funding into free school buses.

Mr Speaker, this is a plan to provide free school buses to students who predominantly attend non-government schools and the remainder who attend government schools. The plan was formulated in the wake of the government's decision to slug parents by forcing them to double up on the cost of sending kids to school. By introducing the cross-zone fee system, the government has been charging people twice what they used to pay to send their children to school. According to government estimates, on today's figures it is costing families about $400 to go across zones. Of course, that cost has increased from about $200. The figures that have been released on the government's free school bus scheme confirm everybody's worst fears. Seventy-five per cent of school children will receive no benefit from the $27 million election sweetener.

Mr Speaker, I was warmly surprised to see that Mr Rugendyke, after his consultation with schools in the Ginninderra electorate, said publicly that money should be taken from the $27 million plan and put into fixing problems in our schools. This announcement was published on the front page of the Chronicle and went to all readers in the electorate. I will bet that statement from Mr Rugendyke was warmly received by all of the people in the school community in the Ginninderra electorate. Mr Speaker, that announcement has boosted my desire to proceed down the path of having that money put back into our schools. As I said, Mr Speaker, 75 per cent of students will miss out under this plan. What we intend to do, of course, is spread the money across the non-government and government schools.

Let me go to Labor's position in relation to this. We have announced that we will oppose the introduction of free school buses, as set out in the ACT budget. We said that we would move to amend the budget to delete the amount included for the free school bus scheme. We said that we will immediately move for the introduction of a single zone school bus fare system for all school students. We said that we would immediately move for the reallocation of free school bus funds to education in a shared arrangement between the government and non-government sectors. These funds are to be used on a needs basis with a priority on such programs as reducing class sizes in the K to year 3 category and support services for students up to year 12, together with any additional class size reductions which are achievable and appropriate. In many ways, these objectives are very close to the sorts of measures that Mr Rugendyke thought money from the school bus system should be applied to. So, according to his public statements, we are at one on this issue.

Mr Speaker, it became quite obvious to us that if the government was to implement this free school bus scheme, much of the money would be lost to the education system, especially because of the high costs that the government decided upon to make sure that this previously unaffordable election sweetener was implemented before the next election. They know that if they were to say to the electorate in the wake of their 1995 promise, "We will give you free school buses" everybody would say, "Go on, we don't

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