Page 4188 - Week 13 - Thursday, 14 December 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
have one school that would be the most amazingly equipped of all. We have to find a point along that continuum where we are able to provide quality education facilities.
I have made the point time and time again that at the moment the way the education system in the ACT is currently constructed, the public system educates around 60 per cent of students at over 180 sites. The private system educates the remaining 40 per cent at 44 sites. Forty-four sites educate 40 per cent; 180 sites educate the other 60 per cent. Clearly, that is not sustainable. It might well have been when the commonwealth government was funding education prior to self-government, but it is not sustainable now. It is not sustainable when there are only 35,000 students in our system and the number continues to decline.
That is what is happening in our community. We are seeing an ageing of the population. We have seen a 45 per cent growth in the number of people over 65 in the last decade and an eight per cent reduction in the school age population. That is a fact, an absolute fact. Mr Pratt, in his media release prior to the 2004 election, acknowledged that women were generally not giving birth to their first child until their late twenties and early thirties and having one or two children, not four, five or six, and that we were seeing demographic change in our community.
At that time my predecessor, Ms Gallagher, was interviewed for the Canberra Times and asked a direct question, “Minister, could you rule out any school closures?” She said, “No. No minister, no responsible minister could rule out school closures.” I invite those opposite to look at that article in the Canberra Times, from memory, from the middle of August 2004, two months in advance of the election.
Fundamentally, Mr Speaker, what those opposite are effectively arguing today is that we should do nothing about reforming our public education system, that we should not be investing these record amounts of money, that students in public education facilities across this territory do not deserve high quality education or access to the best information technology and that the ACT should not be the leader in the use of IT in schools across the country and, quite likely, the world. We have a unique opportunity in this city state to have optical fibre broadband access to every school. This is something that we can do in this jurisdiction that is much harder for the Western Australian education minister or the Queensland education minister to be able to deliver within those systems because of the sheer distances involved. This is a great opportunity and a comparative advantage, if you like, for this jurisdiction.
But, simply put, we needed to make some changes. We have had the courage to go out and consult with the community over six months about these changes. We have listened to them. We have responded to the issues they have raised. We have sought to adjust our original proposal back to the final decisions that I announced yesterday. Those opposite have been irrelevant in this debate. They have had nothing positive at all to say about the future of public education in this city. Their solution has been to sit on their hands for six years and do nothing, absolutely nothing!
There is the folly of the shadow Treasurer, who says that the long-term economic viability of the territory is in doubt, then coming out with this one-off $10 million capital fund, presumably, that will take money away from upgrades for other schools to reopen schools that are not viable. Of course, as we heard Mrs Dunne say yesterday,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .