Page 4158 - Week 11 - Thursday, 17 Sept 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR SESELJA: It is a shameful and sorry saga. I note that Ms Burch did not even bother to defend that aspect, because even to Ms Burch, who is sent out there to defend whatever the government does, that betrayal, that dishonest approach to politics, is something that even she cannot defend, because it is indefensible. We have never heard a reasonable explanation as to why this government went to the 2004 election promising not to close schools and, six weeks later, turned around and started that process.
This goes to the heart of the integrity of the ACT Labor Party and the integrity of this government. If you cannot be trusted on something as fundamental as a hand-on-heart promise not to close schools before an election, if you turn around and breach that so fundamentally, not with one school, not with two schools, but with 23 schools, how can you be trusted on anything else? What can the community trust the ACT Labor Party on? I am sure that, at the 2012 election, they will have all sorts of promises on things they are going to do. But how can anyone trust them if they cannot be trusted on the fundamental issue of education and on such a significant issue as school closures?
We see the attitude of this government to some of these communities. We have seen it to the people of Tharwa on so many issues. We see it to the people of Hall, to the people of Flynn, to the people of Cook, and, indeed, to so many other communities which have had their hearts ripped out. We saw the dismissal of their concerns in Ms Burch’s presentation. “Boutique schools”, I think, is the language that she apparently uses to describe some of these schools. We have heard Mr Barr refer to certain schools as “blazer schools”. So there is always a pejorative label for the school communities that do not agree, for whatever reason, with the Labor Party, or who the Labor Party, for whatever reason, does not like.
This is a significant piece of work from this committee and I commend them for it. There were many submissions. And despite the rosy picture that Ms Burch tries to paint, there is still a lot of anger. Have people moved on? Yes, many of them have. They have to; they have no choice but to move on. They did not want to; they did not want to be taken out of their school communities but they responded, they were resilient and they got on with life. But does that make it right that such a fundamental change to our education system should be done through such covert means, that it should be done without being honest about it in an election? Is that a reasonable approach to public policy?
If this was really about reform of the education system, as the minister now claims, wouldn’t you proudly take it to an election? Wouldn’t you proudly say: “We want to reform the education system; that’s going to be our number one priority in the next term of government. And by the way, that will include closing some schools”? That would be the honest approach, but it was not the approach they took because that was never what it was about.
As Mr Hanson put it so succinctly, this was a knee-jerk reaction to a bad budgetary situation. They threw their promises out the window and, in their knee-jerk reaction, not only did they rush it and get it wrong, not only did they gild the lily on the reasons,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .