Page 2932 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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a pre-delivered speech. It was just: “We will tell you what we think is good for you.” Let us take a step back. Let us try to take a breath. It is not too late. It would take a bigger step back to reverse this than it would to keep going forward. Going forward is easy. We will continue to march on and say: take stock of what is happening; do not be so hasty.
We support Dr Foskey’s bill today. We hope the government and certainly those members of the Labor Party who have already said that they do not agree with what is going on in regard to school closures—you being one of them, sir—will and that we can somehow stop, take a look and really sit down and do this thing properly. The Canberra community deserves no less.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (11.52): Mr Speaker, I thought the Labor Party would take the opportunity to speak on this bill. Instead, there is a thundering silence. Where are Ms MacDonald and Mr Gentleman, who have been out there campaigning, or so they say, for the schools? Why are they not here today giving encouragement to Dr Foskey’s well thought out amendment bill? Mr Hargreaves, why are you not up on your feet speaking about this issue, defending your schools in your area? There is a vacuum, a thundering silence by the government. Some members of the governing party have expressed their sympathy and their concerns for the schools in their electorates, but they have not got the guts to stand up here today and represent their schools. There is a thundering silence from the other side. Let that be noted.
Mrs Dunne: Ms MacDonald is not there.
MR PRATT: Indeed. The government’s program to close 39 schools over a 12-month time frame without any appropriate consultation is an obscenity. This is knee-jerk, panic campaigning by the government. This is badly thought through, last-minute planning, last-minute implementation of school closures after a number of years of absolute silence.
I support Dr Foskey’s amendment bill. There is clearly a need now to simply stop the rot, to put a spoke in the wheels of the government, to pull things up, to take the breathing space required, to look at why the government need to close these schools, the manner in which they are going to close these schools, the number of schools that really need to be closed and then to recommence the entire consultation process in order to consult more fairly with the families of the ACT and provide adequate warning that they will need to make decisions. They cannot do that under your current plan because this telescoped program gives no-one any chance to think rationally about, firstly, the decisions that need to be made about closing down or amalgamating schools and, secondly, the decisions that families need to make that are in the best interests of their kids. This is where you are failing and this is why I commend Dr Foskey’s amendment bill.
This is another failure by the Stanhope government to consult. If the government had decided that there were 39 or 22 or 25 schools to be closed and that process had to commence in early 2007 then this government had a duty to commence that consultation process in early 2005. They did not come out of the last election with a strategic plan to do something about rationalising schools and to commence a consultation process with school communities and broader communities in early 1995 to determine a rational program which might commence two years later. They did not do that.
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