Page 2548 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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are very few people who say, “I’m a non-government school person,” or “I’m a government school person.” Most people make the choices about their children’s education based on that individual child’s needs. They will send their children to the school of their choice, if they can afford to do so, because that is the school that is best for that child at that time.
I will use myself as an example. From time to time, my children have attended non-government primary schools; other children have attended government primary schools. Some have attended government high schools and some have attended non-government high schools. Some have gone to senior secondary education at non-government schools and others have gone to government senior secondary colleges. I am not an exception; this is what most people in Canberra do. What the Labor Party wants to do is to play wedge politics: “We’re for the government schools and we don’t care about anybody else.” I put on the record here that the Liberal Party is for children who attend school. Our commitment is to ensure sound and good investment and great education for children, irrespective of where they go to school.
We are not going to play the sectarian card. We are not going to play the elitist card. We are about making sure that children have the opportunity to choose which school they go to and that their parents are able to make that choice and it is not unnecessarily constrained by economic factors. When Andrew Barr and the Labor Party can make that commitment, we can have a real discussion about the future of our children’s education in the ACT.
I do not care where children go to school. I care about the fact that they get the best education and the best start in life that they can possibly get. It does not matter whether they are rich or poor. If the people in west Belconnen want the choice of sending their children to a school like Emmaus we should not be standing in their way—and Mr Hargreaves and Mr Barr colluded to do that the other day. We have a school that will become empty and they basically said, “You’re a non-government school; you need not apply.”
Mr Mulcahy: How can you justify that?
MRS DUNNE: There is no justification for this at all, except that they do not want children to have the choice. They do not want parents to have the choice. The children in west Belconnen have the choice of one school—the Katy Gallagher-Andrew Barr-Jon Stanhope super school. There are children and parents who do not want to attend the west Belconnen super school and they will be voting with their feet. They will be going elsewhere, probably at great cost to them. Somebody comes along and says, “I want to offer low-cost, non-government education in an area where there are very few choices for education,” and John Hargreaves and Andrew Barr say, “You need not apply.”
We have seen the fiasco of the government successfully taking back computers from high schools and colleges. There were too many computers in the high schools and colleges because they had reduced the number of teachers. First of all, it indicated a much higher level of reduction in staffing than the minister admitted to in estimates. We still have not got to the bottom of that because the minister will not provide an accurate breakdown year on year. (Time expired)
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