Page 157 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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a number of these measures—and would be concerned and would say: “We are going to fix it. This is unacceptable. We are going to do better. We are going to turn around this massive increase in elective surgery waiting times, the problems with our emergency departments.” But instead all we heard was the attack, the denial that there is a problem and the attack.
Mr Barr had 10 minutes to tell us how he, as education minister, was going to respond to these issues. He has pointed the finger at some schools—he will not say which—but he is pulling the blame away from himself. He is saying some of our schools are coasting. Which schools and what are you doing about it? Is it not, in fact, the ACT Labor government that has been coasting? He had 10 minutes to tell us what reforms he was going to put in place to ensure that our schools do not coast, that they do not rest on their laurels, that we are endlessly striving for improvement.
But he spent eight minutes on personal attacks. He had 10 minutes to give us an outline. But we know that when it comes to education policy he does not have any; he just copies ours. We have seen it. He copies ours. He criticised our policy when we came out with it for the election but then he copied it. He copied it because he knew it; he knew that he had to. He knew that he had no choice because it was the right policy, because people responded well to it because it was the right policy. So it is probably no surprise that he spent eight minutes of his 10 minutes on personal attacks rather than giving us the answers to how he was going to ensure that the laziness in education that has been evident from him and his predecessors as ministers and his government was going to change. He has acknowledged the coasting but, of course, has pointed the finger at schools and said it was going to change.
We did not hear that, unfortunately. We did not hear the plan. And it is perhaps because of that approach—we heard the approach from the Chief Minister and the approach from Mr Barr—that we do get such poor outcomes. But maybe the focus is not actually on reforming, improving and fixing some of these serious problems, it is simply on launching attacks.
We got the usual sell-out from Meredith Hunter. Ms Hunter, of course, accepted whatever the government says. “Nothing to see here, no scrutiny needed here,” and in her seven or so minutes she lectured us for daring to bring on motions boldly criticising the government. How dare we bring forward a motion criticising the government! And that was what we have come to expect. Whether it is endorsing the budget on day one, whether it is caving in on school closures, whatever the issue is, we are seeing more and more, as time goes on, the Greens, particularly through their Parliamentary Convenor saying to us: “If the government says it, we accept it. Criticisms of the government? No, we do not really need to bother with those.”
The Productivity Commission’s findings are serious; they are objective findings; they are not something we made up; they are something presented. And they make for a damning assessment of this government and for the last eight years. It unfortunately is summed up by the fact that we are paying more and getting less. After 8½ years of ACT Labor, we are paying more and getting less. And no amount of prevaricating, no amount of spin, will change that fact. The Productivity Commission has delivered a damning assessment of ACT Labor’s time in office.
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