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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (22 August) . . Page.. 3140 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

government, if it wants to, to attempt to negotiate a different input with tenderers, and allow a schools community-based steering committee to have a say about what goes on in our schools as far as health and fitness is concerned.

If, at the end of the day, this Assembly does not support this approach, then so be it. The government will move on without the involvement of the schools community in the process of developing health and fitness programs in our schools. The problem with that, as I see it, is that there is sufficient heat in the argument to cause tension and disquiet among members of the schools community and parents, and therefore among students in our school system, which will not be advantageous to the program that is being introduced in our schools.

I think you start off on the wrong foot if you start off with antagonism about these issues. I had some experience with these issues in my former employment, where it was decided that there would be a commitment to health and fitness programs. It was a new thing in the fire service in those days, although it is not new any more, happily. The issue concerned deciding where we would start. Of course, most people thought, "You are not going to tell me how fit I am, how fit I will be, or what tests I will go through."

In the union movement, we had to listen to our members. We went through a very long process of engagement with our members, negotiating between them and the fire service management to make sure that everybody was comfortable with an examination of fitness programs, and some testing of members, which was conducted by an outside contractor.

The outside contractor did a range of flexibility, strength and aerobic fitness tests, and members were very concerned about related issues of privacy, and rightly so, because they may have had some sort of fitness problem that they did not want other people to know about. It was extremely important to ensure that the process of engagement for that fire service community was sufficient to relax people about their involvement in the fitness and assessment programs. After that period of engagement, of course, the fitness and assessment programs went ahead, and the rest of it is history. It is commonplace now to see a different emphasis placed on physical fitness in fire services.

I see this in much the same way, certainly in principle. You have to engage the community that is going to be involved in the fitness and assessment schemes in our schools. If there is suspicion about quality issues, if there is suspicion about the contractor, if there is suspicion about the motives of government, or if there is suspicion about the education values that might flow from this, you end up with a war within our education system over health and fitness. What is the point of that? People routinely say yes when asked the question: "Wouldn't you like our kids to be healthier and fitter?" Everybody would say yes to that, but if you asked, "Would you like to force our kids to be healthier and fitter?" you might get a different answer.

I think that, somewhere in between, there is a process of engagement that has been missed, because the complaints I hear tell me that there are tensions building on this issue. There have been tensions building about this government and this minister's approach to health and fitness in our schools, to the point where I think there needs to be some sort of consultation process with the community so that we all go forward together without suspicions about the motives of people in relation to the health and fitness of our

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