Page 4928 - Week 15 - Thursday, 15 December 2005
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93 per cent of year 7 students at or above the benchmark. These are absolutely outstanding results.
As well, as I am sure all members are aware, the government increased preschool hours from 10.5 to 12 hours per week. That is a fantastic initiative by this government to support families within the ACT. We created the Children and Young People Commissioner, opened the Child and Family Centre in Gungahlin and launched the ACT Women’s Plan.
Mr Hargreaves can take enormous personal pride in the fact that today we have announced the creation of a new headquarters for the Emergency Services Authority. That is another area where we have picked up the neglect of seven years of Liberal government. Today, with enormous pride—and it is appropriate for me to congratulate the minister personally—in an arrangement with Mr Terry Snow and the Capital Airport Group we have achieved an absolutely outstanding result for the Emergency Services Authority.
We opened the new Woden police station and the Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre. The Liberal Party in government always talked about delivering a multicultural centre, but they never could get to do it. There is a raft of amazing achievements by this government that it would take me the rest of the day to deal with.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Stanhope: I ask that all further questions be placed on the notice paper.
Supplementary answers to questions without notice
Education—university admission index
MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, I wish to provide further information in relation to a question asked of me yesterday by Ms Porter. During the answer to that question on education I responded that Mrs Dunne had publicly expressed the view in an attack on government education that in the ACT affluent people will always buy their children a proper education but it was the poor that never had that opportunity. She expressed these words as part of her ideological pursuit against government schools in the ACT.
When I made that comment yesterday, Mrs Dunne challenged me to produce the reference to her comment that affluent parents can always buy their children a proper education and that the poor never had that opportunity. This was, of course, a very direct and vicious attack by Mrs Dunne on public education. She challenged me to produce the evidence of that. Ms MacDonald believes that Mrs Dunne said she would eat the Hansard if I could prove that. I will table a page of the Hansard of 20 September for Mrs Dunne to eat. I present the following paper:
Education—Extract from Hansard, 20 September 2005.
MR SPEAKER: Order! It would be highly disorderly for Mrs Dunne to start eating it.
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