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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Tuesday, 30 March 2004) . . Page.. 1341 ..

MR CORNWELL (8.31): It is a long time since I have seen such a superfluous clause in a piece of legislation, because everything in subclauses (1) and (2) already goes on in the non-government sector. Subclause (1) states:

The principal of a non-government school must make available to parents of students at the school and to the staff and students of the school information about the school’s educational program and policies, and the operation of the school.

Well, would one not do so?

Ms Gallagher: Well, why are you opposing it?

MR CORNWELL: I am asking: why is this clause here? It just seems to me to be absurd. Mr Pratt has quite rightly said that subclause (2) is again superfluous to subclause (1):

The principal of a non-government school must also consult parents of students at the school about the operation of the school, including its educational programs and policies.

Surely it is self-evident that, if you are going to send your child to a school, particularly to a non-government school, and to pay some fees, you would want to establish just what exactly the programs and policies of that school might be. It seems to me that this is a—

Mr Hargreaves: Like Girls’ Grammar or Marist, yes.

MR CORNWELL: Mr Hargreaves may interject about some of the Catholic schools, but I would prefer him to get up and debate it.

Mr Hargreaves: I said Girls’ Grammar.

MR CORNWELL: I cannot see the point. It just seems to me to be obvious that this is the type of thing that would be done by any non-government school, and the need to put it into legislation is quite superfluous.

MR HARGREAVES (8.33): The reason these sorts of things are in the legislation is that the community out there has no confidence, necessarily, that every single non-government school will be as forthcoming as the ones Mr Cornwell has been associated with. I have very grave doubts about the transparency in some of those schools. In fact, I think some are run by people who would rather people did not know, and so we are going to make sure that they do know.

MR PRATT (8.33): Our aim with amendment No 18 is to substitute the words “appropriate information about the operation of the school and its educational programs” for the words in the bill. The aim of this amendment is not to stop schools providing information to the students’ families; indeed, they will be just as open in the two-way process with their students’ families as government schools should be.

The amendment is aimed at non-government schools perhaps not providing commercial-in-confidence information. I think the minister is quite wrong. Because schools are

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