Page 2576 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
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historical private school preference. If I am forced to vote against the motion in division I will not do so emphatically because, frankly, almost anything would be better than the 2020 process. However, I do not think that is a good enough reason to vote for the motion.
I do not support the opposition’s proposed inquiry into the ACT education system, as I do not believe it asks the right questions. I do not think we can say what are the right questions. We need a moratorium so that school communities and other supporters of public education can continue their good work without the stress of deadlines being placed on them and in the knowledge that at the time they are doing that work their schools have a guillotine hanging over them. We must call in expert advice and, through public consultation, establish what questions we need to ask.
Quite a few things need to be said in debate on this motion. Some of the issues referred to in the motion could well comprise some of the questions that need to be asked, but we should not limit ourselves only to those questions. It is not possible to complete this huge task by 31 March. We need a moratorium, as much has to be done in that time frame. As I said earlier—and this is the opinion of the Greens, not Liberal or Labor members—the motion does not cover all the questions that need to be asked. I do not know whether it even covers the right questions.
The education department was exploring growth in this area in an attempt to strengthen the ACT public education system before the 2020 plan and accompanying budget cuts were unleashed. I said yesterday, and I will probably have to say it again tomorrow, that the functional review established a sense of panic amongst bureaucrats. Apparently that report was completed in April and the budget was released in June, which did not give anyone a great deal of time. It certainly did not allow for any scrutiny of the functional review.
I would love to know, and I will keep asking, what was said in that report as it set the cat among the pigeons and frightened many people. We now have an aborted 2010 plan that was utilising the government’s community engagement process and we have the commencement of consultation. The government had already consulted stakeholders and it was setting up additional consultation. I would be interested in attending the seminar entitled “government schooling—looking into the future” to be held on 29 August. That is one of the seminars mentioned in a letter Mrs Dunne received as a result of a freedom of information request.
What research has been done? Where are the futurologists? Where are the people whose job it is to look to the future to the year 2020, which is only 14 years away? We are in a world that is changing so fast we cannot say with confidence that we know what it and public education will look like then. It was wrong of the government to call its plan Towards 2020. The expression “20:20 vision” means that someone has the ability to see clearly out of both eyes. I do not believe there is any evidence to suggest we can see clearly to the year 2020.
I have said time and again that the 2020 plan is not a plan for a world with oil shortages. We will be trying to take cars off the road and to make people more reliant on public transport. Cities in other states and countries have already moved back to the neighbourhood plan that Mr Corbell said just the other day was old hat. I am concerned
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