Page 1259 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
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deniability: “Don’t tell me about these things because it’s too awful. I don’t need to know.” Ministers should know, and I have received undertakings from the minister’s office that when serious incidents arise I will be told as a matter of courtesy so that we can deal with these issues and so that they do not become a cause celebre.
It appears that the minister was not told by the department. But he was told by the parents and he was told by my staff, because my staff told his staff, and it was raised with me. He still says that he does not know anything about it. I will forgive the lapse of memory yesterday under the pressure of question time, but this chamber cannot forgive the persistent lack of memory and the persistent failure of good grace by this minister to come in and say quite simply, “When I said X yesterday, that was not strictly true. I am here to say that an incident did occur and I am dealing with it. I am happy to talk to members about that because it is a matter of considerable sensitivity.”
It is not my desire to take the dirty washing of ACT government schools out and air it in public. This is a serious matter and it should have been dealt with seriously by the minister. The minister’s department seems not to have told him when this incident occurred. There seems to have been no briefing. I have worked in a minister’s office and I cannot imagine, if an incident like this occurred, a minister standing up and saying, “I don’t know anything about it. I have no recollection of a breach of protocol.”
There was a clear breach of protocol. The parents raised with the minister the fact that the school authorities did not call the police and asked them not to call the police. My staff raised with the minister’s staff the question of whether this was appropriate behaviour? My office subsequently learned that there is a clear protocol and that the clear protocol seems to have been breached. There is nothing that the minister has done to show that he is either aware of it or cares enough about it to do anything about it.
These are serious matters. The minister said yesterday in question time that acts of violence in schools were serious matters and that there was zero tolerance. If there is a zero tolerance policy, why weren’t the police called if they were not called? If it is the case that the parents were discouraged from calling the police, why were they discouraged from calling the police? And why did the minister say that he was not aware of any flagrant breach of the protocols, when this serious assault, a very serious assault that resulted in the hospitalisation of the boy concerned, took place on his watch? When pressed on it yesterday, he said quite blatantly that he was not aware. When I alerted him to the fact that I had made him aware, that my staff had made him aware and that the parents concerned had made him aware, he did not come into this place, as he should have at 10.30 this morning, and correct the record. Therefore, this minister must be censured.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Minister for Industrial Relations) (10.47): I express my disappointment from the outset that Mrs Dunne has chosen this course of action, given that I have responded to these particular concerns. For the benefit of Assembly members I will read my correspondence to Mrs Dunne:
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