Page 3080 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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Mrs Dunne: And they told you it couldn’t be done, and the students told you it couldn’t be done.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Barr, resume your chair. Mrs Dunne, I have called you to order three or four times.
Ms MacDonald: Try five or six.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not need an interjection from you, Ms MacDonald. Carry on, Mr Barr.
MR BARR: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The government sought through the latest EBA appropriate productivity gains in the teaching profession. As I indicated in my answer to Dr Foskey’s question yesterday, we still have the lowest face-to-face teaching hours, we have the highest paid teachers, and we have record amounts of interest in terms of teaching in our system, with more than 1,000 applicants for this year’s round. Like all jurisdictions in some specialist areas, we can always do with more teachers. I table the following paper:
ACT College Business Plan 2007-2009, prepared by the Department of Education and Training.
(Time expired.)
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (5.26): I thank members for their comments. We will not be supporting the amendment, but I must say that I was surprised at one of the arguments the opposition used earlier today to undermine the positive motion in relation to college education, and that was the unfounded accusation in terms of this government’s commitment to non-government education.
We all know the strength of conviction the shadow minister for education, Mrs Dunne, has for public education. She is all but absent in her contribution to these matters in this place, unless, of course, she is making outrageous statements about throwing good money after bad or going back to the future with her federal colleagues and today labelling a motion about the implementation of the review of college education as “paltry”. Listening to Mr Seselja earlier, we could have been forgiven for imagining that we were on a totally different motion. Never mind, the opposition is stuck in negative gear and is totally unable to get out of it. As Mr Corbell commented a little while ago, the view of the world from the opposition is always that the glass is half empty.
Where is the opposition’s positive policy? Where are their positive remarks? Where is their acknowledgement of what this government is doing in providing fantastic college education through the implementation of the recommendations already? I did say earlier, even though Mrs Dunne was not able to listen because she was not here, that all but two recommendations have been agreed to, as Mr Barr has already said. All we heard this morning in response to the motion was a regurgitation of the opposition’s version of history and one should not be surprised.
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