Page 527 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 February 2010
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Ms Hunter put forward a number of statistics, none of which I believe proves the case put by the Greens for the “do nothing” option in this case. The average of 1.76 days in high school does not actually go to whether or not principals have felt that they are able to take the action that they need to in certain circumstances. We are not talking about many circumstances; we are talking about a small number of circumstances, and we are talking about disruptive children.
We also heard Ms Hunter say that 4.69 per cent of high school students get suspended. That is not insignificant, unfortunately. That is higher than I think any of us would want to see. We know that, if you have five per cent who are disruptive, that can be seriously disruptive for a lot of people, for a lot of other students. The question then becomes: are we serious about dealing with disruptive students? This is one tool. Is it the be-all and end-all? No. And no-one in this place has ever argued that somehow suspension powers in and of themselves are going to be enough to deal with the complex issues that are dealt with by teachers on a day-to-day basis. But they are one part of the equation.
The question in whether to change this particular provision is: do you trust principals? Do you trust them to be able to make some of these decisions? We say yes. That is our position. That is the position of the Canberra Liberals, that we trust them. We believe we can trust them as much as New South Wales principals are trusted. But what we are going to get to today with the compromise is a significant step forward for principals in the ACT, for our education system.
We do not in any way pretend that this is the most important thing or indeed that this is the be-all and end-all. Mr Doszpot has long argued that there are other measures: counselling—we note the pilot program—looking at other ways of addressing these issues, getting to these kids early and hopefully turning them around so that they do not end up in juvenile justice, so they do not end up in our prison system later on. But that does sometimes require tough decisions and it does require decisions made not just in the best interests of those students but, of course, in the best interests of the school communities. We make no apology for arguing in favour of that.
I commend Mr Doszpot for his approach on this. There were people in the community who wanted stronger powers for principals who would have said: “Well, just accept 10 days. Accept 10 days, because you’re not going to get anything else.” I think Mr Doszpot made the right decision to say: “No. If we are going to change it, we should go for a substantial change.” Whilst he argued very strongly for parity with New South Wales, I think where we are going to end up today, with 15 days, is a significant step forward. It may be that it works very well, and it may be that Mr Doszpot’s legislation, which no doubt will sit there, does not have to come back. Maybe it will have to come back. That is something that we will look at over the next couple of years. But I commend Mr Doszpot, and I am pleased that a compromise was able to be reached.
But I do not accept the “don’t change anything, do nothing” option. I think the only way you can argue in favour of that is if at some level you believe principals are going to abuse this; if you believe that at some level principals are likely to start suspending kids when they should not be suspending kids. And I do not believe that is the case.
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