Page 2278 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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The motion before the Assembly is about truth. On 29 July the ACT ALP gathered in force and people who are members here took particular public stances in a public forum. This motion uses exactly the same words as those used on 29 July. This motion today gives members the opportunity to be truthful to the community.
If any of those members vote differently, they do not have to account to me, to Dr Foskey or to any member of the opposition. They have to account to the parents, teachers and supporters of schools like Hall primary school, Flynn primary school, Gilmore primary school and all the schools in Kambah that this minister is proposing to close.
It is up to them what they do when the time comes. They have been to the meetings, they have talked the talk and they have said they are not happy. It is now time to take the vote in the same way they took the vote the other day and vote in favour of the same motion that they were prepared to put their hands up for at their state conference. If they cannot do that, they have a lot of accounting to do to the community.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.32): The government will be opposing the motion tabled by Mrs Dunne. We do so on the basis, as has been referred to in this debate, of the resolution of the Labor Party annual conference that did not support such a resolution.
Mrs Dunne’s motion seeks to do two things—extend the already extensive consultation period to towards the end of first term next year and then delay the proposed amalgamations until the end of 2007. The community and members of the Assembly are aware of the issues facing our education system. We have declining enrolments, ageing infrastructure, changing demographics and too many schools in the ACT.
The government is tackling these issues not by seeking to run down schools or talk schools down, but by engaging in a genuine consultation process on the future of public education and, most importantly, by making record investments in school infrastructure and information technology. The government’s approach is to put forward a real proposal and engage in a process of genuine consultation on that proposal.
As I indicated, the government is making a massive investment in the infrastructure of our schools—$90 million—the single largest investment in public education in the history of ACT self-government. This government is absolutely committed to providing the Canberra community with the highest possible quality learning environments.
The investment we are injecting will have significant educational benefits for children across Canberra for the next 10, 20, 30 or 40 years. We want to ensure that schools remain viable and provide a breadth of diversity of programs for students by addressing ageing infrastructure and changing demographics. The Towards 2020 proposal offers students and their families a more diverse range of education options in government schools, including early childhood schools, middle schools and comprehensive high schools that offer specialist programs in technology, vocational training and the arts.
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