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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2405 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

They have now made a promise about what they will do. I do not know what they will do, because as soon as the budget is passed the buses will be there. The Labor Party is basically playing catch-up.

I will read a quote from the ACT Teacher, the Australian Education Union magazine. Naturally the union will jump on the bandwagon. I have spoken to their president, Mr Haggar. If I was in his position, with an election coming, I would do the same thing myself and jump on the bandwagon and have a go with something like the school buses, which come under Urban Services. We have the track record. The article reads:

Kindergarten, 1 & 2 to Twenty One!

The Government has committed $25m expenditure over the next three Budgets to reduce class sizes in the early years of primary school, to an average of 21 students per class.

One hundred and forth new positions are to be created by 2004 and 30 new classrooms built in growth areas to accommodate students. Additional and recurrent expenditure from 2004 will amount to $12m per year.

This Government initiative nearly nine months from the ACT election throws down the gauntlet of education improvement and investment to the ALP Opposition, Independents and other parties. It is going to have to be matched, if not bettered, by those seeking the Education vote in October.

We are in a bit of a bidding war now. That is fine. I do not mind. It helps education. But guess who the trend-setters were? Who started it? We did. Comments on what we have spent are very unfair, especially given that most of our budgets have been deficit budgets as we have been getting the economy back on track.

People have tried to compare us with the rest of Australia. Our expenditure was about fifth in the mid to early 1990s. We were second in government schooling up to about 1998. I think the figures in 1999 had us down to fifth. It is difficult to work out those figures. There are things some states count and others do not, so the figures are not super-accurate. Our record is not too bad. I think the opposition has lost track of that. Money is not everything. As I said earlier, I am delighted that other states are starting to spend more. They have a fair bit of catching up to do.

Mr Berry mentioned pay disputes. He mentioned what we did last year with the union. I think the union would agree that that was one of the most civilised and progressive ways you could imagine of handling an industrial dispute. Two hours were lost in August 1999-the dispute was resolved in May 2000-as opposed to 21 days of strike action in New South Wales. It is almost a model of how to conduct industrial relations. I am at a loss to see how Mr Berry thinks that was a problem. I do not think Clive Haggar of the AEU would agree with him.

On the bursars, we were following the law. I am not going to go into those matters any more. I am at a loss to see why Mr Berry used those examples. The bursar example was quite ridiculous. This government has done a huge amount in school education.

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