Page 4010 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.51): The opposition has decided that it will be opposing all the amendments proposed today. A couple of them are straightforward and could, in normal circumstances, be supported, but there are two amendments that we are going to oppose.
The minister now wishes to oppose the amendments to section 26. That was the raison d’etre for introducing this bill in the first place. My experience in 2½ years-odd as the shadow minister for education is that the issues around the charging of fees—should we charge fees, and under what conditions—are matters of ongoing contention. These should be addressed in the way proposed in the bill.
There are people who have the capacity to contribute to their child’s education and who get off scot-free by not contributing to voluntary fees, study levies and the like. As I have said this morning, I am concerned about study levies or subject levies. It should be made perfectly clear that it is the job of the department of education to fund subject levies and that subjects should be either properly funded or not run.
Cases have been brought to me where, basically, the home economics people are running on less than $5 a head per child in their home economics classes. In a sense it is a waste of time. Short of learning how to boil an egg and make toast, there is not much you can do on $5 a head or less for each child in your class. This leads to the question of whether or not subject areas are properly funded. It is an issue for the department, for the government and for school boards to decide which programs they will run and how they will be funded. I think the proposed amendments to section 26 were good; they went a long way to helping to address the issue.
This was a matter that was originally agreed to and signed off on by the P&C council, but they appear to have had second thoughts after the introduction of this bill. In the early days they said they were happy with it. I am disappointed that they have shied from—and that the government has been implicit in shying from—making a strong and definitive statement about school fees and when they are and are not compulsory. The matters relating to the registration of other sites for non-government schools may or may not be matters of contention, but today the opposition is opposing these amendments simply because of lack of time.
The minister has said here, and he has said to me privately, “We consulted on this back in 2003.” Back in 2003 I was not the shadow minister for education. I did not have the benefit of having discussions with organisations like the Catholic Education Office and the Association of Independent Schools about their understanding of the provisions in and around section 88 of the Education Act, what they really mean and whether they relate to an extra campus for the same school.
I will give you an example, Mr Speaker. For instance, Trinity Christian School runs on a particular ethos. It decides by mutual agreement that it will take over another school with a similar ethos and that they will be run together. It is possible that, if these amendments come into play, the school that is taken over, which is already an operating school, may have to cease to operate for two years because of the provisions in this legislation. That may or may not be the case. At this moment I do not know,
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