Page 4624 - Week 12 - Thursday, 15 October 2009

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enrichment’. Education for anything outside of preparation for the workforce meets with a blank stare, hence his grim prescription of ‘earning or learning’.

The Canberra Liberals support good policy for the education of our children. We support policy that provides the best outcome for a learning environment that fulfils the aim of developing everyone’s potential and equips the children of today for a rapidly changing tomorrow. I thank Ms Porter for bringing us this MPI today.

MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Planning and Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation) (5.15): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for bringing forward this motion this afternoon.

Labor has always been a party of education, and in this territory in 2006 we undertook the biggest reform of the ACT education system in the history of self-government in the territory. These reforms have seen the ACT Labor government invest a record $370 million in improving every ACT public school. These reforms have seen us build new state-of-the-art schools where they are most needed, in Belconnen, in Gungahlin and in Tuggeranong. We look forward to the development of new schools in what will be the ACT’s newest residential area, the Molonglo Valley.

Now that the Howard Liberal government is gone, it is fair to say that education is no longer treated as a political football kicked between different levels of government. This ACT government is now able to work very effectively with the federal government and we have seen an investment from the federal government for ACT schools of over $200 million, taking the total level of investment in ACT education over the last three years, and projecting forward over the next two, to more than half a billion dollars. That level of investment was just unthinkable under the previous federal government and previous Liberal governments in the ACT.

It is worth reflecting for a moment on the totality of that investment in our education system: more than half a billion dollars. In the context of the ACT budget, that is very significant. This is an investment in the future of young Canberrans and it is an investment that has been welcomed by educators, by parents and by school communities. I think it is fair to say that the investment has been welcomed almost universally, except perhaps by those who sit opposite. Across the education system and across all school systems this government is delivering on policies that advance education for every territory student.

I would like to spend a little bit of time this afternoon talking about our investment in the very earliest years of a child’s education. Examples of this are the new early childhood schools that were opened officially about a month ago at Southern Cross, Narrabundah and Isabella Plains, and one soon to be officially opened in Lyons. The recent opening of these early childhood centres attracted many hundreds of Canberrans who were keen to see what the forefront of early childhood education in this country looks like.

The schools are regional hubs providing integrated services for children from birth to eight years and of course they provide quality education—great education for those earliest and important years. They are, in short, inviting and friendly one-stop shops


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