Page 3931 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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reopening schools. But for a school to reopen there must be a demonstrated high level of community support. The Canberra Liberals have set aside $10 million to be put into a schools reinstatement fund to help reopen schools closed by the Stanhope government which meet the criteria set out above.
In addition, we have committed to no school closures during the period from 2008 to 2012. A Liberal government will not initiate any closures in their first term, although, as we have said, the process of closing Higgins and Holt primary schools may be so far down the track that we cannot go back from there and the impacts of the west Belconnen superschool may make that a difficult decision.
We have also decided that we need to be innovative to ensure that Canberrans never find themselves in the situation they have on this occasion. We will institute a future schools committee. A Liberal government will establish a community committee to monitor the health of Canberra’s public school system in terms of current enrolments, future enrolments and general demography, the conditions of buildings and other plant and all other relevant considerations. The committee will be charged with identifying the many schools that may be facing problems such as declining enrolments and to move to give these schools the assistance they need to deal with the problems before they become intractable.
The committee will draw upon and further develop the education community consultation guidelines that were developed by the previous Liberal government and the ACT Parents and Citizens Council and which were part of the Education Act until January 2005. The committee will be made up of community representatives with expertise in such areas as education, finance, demographics and planning and it will seek the advice of the Department of Education and Training, the Treasury and other key policy areas in the ACT government. The committee will make recommendations to the minister for education based on the data mentioned above for specific measures to support and revitalise the schools at risk of closure.
What the Canberra Liberals are about is revitalising the government education system. This is not what the Stanhope government has done. What the Stanhope government has done under Andrew Barr is rip the heart out of the education system. Last year on 13 December we saw what the Stanhope government hoped would be the final chapter in their failed Towards 2020 consultation. We did see a reprieve for some schools and that was because the minister had to give the appearance of listening through the consultation—and I am sure that the minister put on the list some schools that he knew that he would never close, for the very purpose of appearing to consult. But when he let some 13 or 14 schools off the hook it meant that there were some school communities that were put through a sham consultation process so that the government could look good. School communities like Giralang and Melba in my electorate were put through the wringer for six months so that Andrew Barr could look good and magnanimous at the end.
Cook, Page and Macarthur preschools, Cook and Village Creek primary schools and Kambah high school are facing closure in a few weeks time. The figures do not justify the proposal. Last year we were told that we had to tighten our belts everywhere—in education, in health and in all manner of places. The government pointed to the fact that in the past the Liberal Party had attempted to close schools. But when the alliance
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