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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1216 ..

MS GALLAGHER (continuing):

government schools have enjoyed between 28 to 29 per cent increases in Commonwealth funding. This has happened at a time when Commonwealth money to government schools has remained static. Did we know all that? I do not think so. And that is where the data in this report is useful to inform debates in the ACT about how best to meet the needs of students across the sector.

Ms Connors has provided ample opportunity for the education community to participate and, according to Ms Connors, they all did so to a substantial extent. They took the inquiry seriously.

Mr Pratt said that Radford College was not visited by Connors. I notice in the back of the report that Radford College did not provide a submission to the inquiry. Ms Connors visited 31 schools across the sector and she met with all the groups relating to the non-government sector. If Radford College chose not to participate in a public process and provide a submission then that was a choice they made.

The recommendations Ms Connors made are significant and they warrant careful consideration, and that is what I am currently doing. As I said when I released the report on 14 February, as part of my consideration-and certainly before I report to my cabinet colleagues-I am keen to hear what the education community stakeholders have to say about it. I have met with 11 stakeholders so far and I believe I have a couple more meetings to go. I am in the process of putting their comments into a cabinet submission that I can take it to my cabinet colleagues to discus how we as a government respond to Connors.

The meetings have been an opportunity to hear first-hand from the various peak interest groups about where they may have disagreed with some aspects of the Connors report, and to find out the reasons why they disagreed. It was a useful process. There is broad support, certainly from some of the people I spoke to at the meetings, for Ms Connors' comments. There are recommendations that are supported across the sector. There are recommendations that the government sector agrees with and the non-government sector disagrees with, and vice versa.

It was important that once this independent report was given to me I had the opportunity to hear first-hand what people were saying about it. This has been a useful process, and certainly the discussions I have had right across the sector have supported the way that this government has been handling its response to Connors.

Mr Speaker, I will now turn to Mr Pratt's view that the inquiry has allowed the government to prevaricate over the spending of the remaining $7.4 million of the $27 million. What a nonsense. In the Stanhope government's first budget we earmarked $19.6 million expenditure for specific projects over the four years, including provision of $1 million for IT in Catholic systemic schools. But we did factor the $7.4 into the forward estimates. The reason not to use all the money immediately was to give the education community an opportunity to have a say about how that $7.4 million was carved up. They are the discussions I have been having. Connors will help inform those decisions.

Connors was not asked to tell us how we should use the $7.4 million, but certainly some of the information in the report is useful. I have also spoken to the Government School

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