Page 3788 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 22 November 2006
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Mr Barr can say, “It’s all right. We’re working through it. It’s all hunky-dory. Everything will be fine.” I think the only thing of note that Ms Porter said today is that Towards 2020 is a very exciting policy proposal. Come 13 December it will be “fasten your seatbelts everybody”, because in the next three years we will see turmoil brought about by a government that has not had the opportunity or the wit or the skill to think through the implications of its policies.
Here in the preschool policy is one of the places where the government have not seen it through. They have not even addressed the issue of when they amalgamate preschools and primary schools will there still be a preschool parent association. They have not considered in relation to the 16 schools that they propose to close at the end of the year how the 16 parent associations might wind up their affairs in a timely way, how everyone is going to want to get rid of the same sorts of inventory, what they might be able to do with the funds and where they might go. They have not addressed those issues or given good reasons to people like the Gilmore Preschool Association as to why a school with 47 enrolments this year and similar enrolments projected year on year would close.
No-one in this place has said that preschool and early childhood education is not important. No-one has said that we should not do it better than we currently do. We had the usual verballing from Ms Gallagher here—but no-one had said that. Everyone agrees that this is a vitally important issue. But most sensible-thinking people in the community do not consider that coming up with a list of 22 schools to close—16 this year—is a sensible way of having that discussion.
“Well, we have got this many preschools, let us close 22 and we will put that out.” That is what Ms Gallagher said you were doing: “We currently have a list of 22 schools and we put that out for consultation because it is all about quality.” If it is all about quality why is it that the savings projected from the closing of these schools is so small? If we were closing 22 preschools to substantially improve the preschool education, the early childhood education, of children in other preschools, and to improve that year on year, why would the savings over the life of the budget be a mere half a million dollars?
One wit at one community meeting said that the Labor Club could run a raffle and raise that much money if they wanted to keep the preschools open. For $500,000 why would you bother? You could have one dedicated poker machine at each of the Labor Club outlets and you would make that much money for the preschools. Why would you do it for $500,000? If you are doing it to have a more responsible budget—that is what Ms Gallagher said—why would you do it for $500,000? This is the whole point about this: this minister talked about the unprecedented capital investment in schools, but how much of it is going to preschools? Not very much at all.
The minister also talked about the underutilisation of preschools. I would contend that where preschools might have half a program where they were once designed to have a whole program, it does not mean the space is underutilised; it means that it is being filled by playgroups and childcare arrangements, as was the case with Evatt preschool and Taylor preschool. Those are two examples where childcare arrangements will be displaced because the government want to fill up those preschools with children who
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