Page 2869 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 August 2008
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not back it. He was embarrassed because he had not done anything apart from close schools. Of course, he talks about capital investment but he has not fundamentally taken the time, used the academic research, talked to communities and to teachers, and come up with a policy that would actually improve education.
When he gets up he will no doubt say, “Well, we’ve closed schools, which has been our investment in education because we’ve been able to build bigger schools.” The super school concept is one on which we will reserve judgement, but there is considerable concern about whether this is the great panacea and answer to our educational questions that the government would have us believe. That has been the focus. The focus has been on closing schools and pushing students into larger schools. That is this government’s answer to our educational issues. That is this government’s idea for improving the education system in the ACT.
The Liberal Party has a different approach. We believe that we can get quality outcomes. But this is a demonstration of our commitment to public education. Yes, it is an important step; yes, it will cost some money. But there are a lot of things that this government has spent money on over the last few years that we would not have spent money on. This government is still spending, I believe, about $180,000 a month on an empty building at Fairbairn. This is a government that believes spending $5 million on a busway that is never going to happen is a good use of expenditure. This is a government that believes $800,000 on artwork on the side of Gungahlin Drive is a good use of taxpayers’ money. We can go through all of the examples.
We have different priorities, and one of our fundamental priorities is reducing class sizes. The reason we believe in reducing class sizes is because it does deliver better educational outcomes. In fact, I will be fascinated to hear what the minister has to say about the merits of reducing class sizes, given that he has now backed away from the bipartisan consensus that this is something governments should be doing, and that we should be aspiring to reduce class sizes. We have a plan to do it. He opposes it, partly because it is not his idea. He opposes it because there have not been any ideas from this government in education, other than the closure of schools, over the last four years.
It is worth going into the costings. I am sure that the minister will touch on this, and I look forward to him repeating some of the fallacies that have been put forward by the Treasurer in relation to costings. Unlike the government, unlike the Labor Party in this place, when we make election announcements, we actually provide the costings, year to year. We have seen two announcements recently from this government where they have not provided costings. We have seen the Gungahlin Drive extension duplication promise—the rushed, embarrassing announcement where they panicked and put out a press release at 5.45 pm. But there was no costing on that. And we saw it again yesterday, with a promise for a pool, with no costing: “It’ll cost somewhere between $10 million and $20 million, it’ll be built some time in the next few years. We don’t exactly know how it will be built, how it will be delivered, who will deliver it or how much it will cost us, but we’re going to put it out there as an election commitment anyway.”
We have taken a different approach. We have been transparent with our costings. Even being as transparent as we are, we still have the Chief Minister coming back
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