Page 3075 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007

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that there may have been. Any little bit of fat anywhere has all gone in the approach of “we won’t kill you, but we’ll cut you till you bleed”, which has been adopted by the Stanhope government. This motion is a disgrace. If Ms Porter is so interested in education, she should be more assertive than she has been. Therefore, I commend my amendment to the house.

DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (5.05): I was going to support Ms Porter, but I think that Mrs Dunne has given me a better offer! In fact, her amendment covers most of the issues and concerns that I would have raised. While Ms Porter’s motion is open ended and indicates that there is a sort of approval by the government of the Atelier Learning Solution’s report, we are yet to see the government’s response to that report, and the business plan is still being anticipated.

Mr Barr: It was actually released a month ago, Deb, but that’s okay. Don’t worry about the detail. It’s on the website; I put the media release out.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Dr Foskey, do not respond to Mr Barr’s interjection.

Mr Barr: You’re not interested enough to pay any attention.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Dr Foskey.

DR FOSKEY: Thank you very much. I look forward to reading that, and, no doubt, Mr Barr will comment on it and Ms Porter will summarise it in her closing speech. It is interesting the manner in which information like that is offered to members. I just do not know whether that kind of “gotcha there” approach is really helpful.

Mr Barr: Well, I put a media release out, and it’s been on the website for a month.

DR FOSKEY: Thank you very much.

Mr Barr: And then you make inaccurate statements.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Barr, Dr Foskey has the floor; you can speak later.

DR FOSKEY: Yes, and Dr Foskey is one member who currently does not have an education adviser and tries very hard to keep on top of things and will very definitely go and read the government’s business plan. However, there are issues in Ms Porter’s motion which can be addressed, I believe, without reading the business plan. The first one is the assertion that the ACT senior secondary system has a high success rate of delivering quality educational outcomes to the young people of the ACT. Well, that does depend, does it not, on how one measures success?

I will not go into details about concerns that have been raised about the UAI, because it is fairly clear that the government does not plan to respond to those in this term. In fact, it has turned a deaf ear to them, which is a little odd, because, in fact, I think we would probably have a higher success rate if we looked at the way the UAI was calculated. I am convinced by assertions that our students are actually disadvantaged by the way we calculate the UAI. I do not feel it has ever been dealt with adequately, despite the fact that there have been a number of reports and inquiries and responses.


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