Page 2296 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video


This piece of legislation does not give any community the opportunity to have that decision independently reviewed. The last piece of legislation that I introduced into this place, which was opposed by Andrew Barr, did just that. The reason I say that if Andrew Barr supports this we should be very afraid is quite simply that. Andrew Barr actually, actively and consistently opposed the sorts of reforms that I advocated over two or three years. They were real reforms that required the minister to take account of the information that came before him and gave the communities the power to have that decision independently reviewed. The fact that today we are proposing to put into legislation something that does not do that shows that the Labor Party and the Greens have sold out the community. Future school communities have been sold out by the unholy alliance between ACT Labor and the ACT Greens.

Mr Barr can attempt to verbal me all he likes. After his four-odd years in this place, I am completely used to it and it does not offend me one iota. It is again the case. I did not say that we were opposing it because Andrew Barr was in favour of it. I said that we needed to be concerned because he was in favour of it. We need to be concerned and the people of the ACT community need to be very afraid if Andrew Barr is in favour of this, because Andrew Barr has been consistently—and I always give credit for his consistency—opposed as a minister for education to having to have regard to what the community consultation actually says and actually take into account the results of the community consultation.

He refused to do it in 2006. If perchance in 2012 he were the minister and he wanted to close a school, he would choose to do it again under this flawed legislation. Under this flawed legislation, if Andrew Barr in 2012 wanted to close a school, the affected school community could not seek an independent review of the decision. Until the Greens and the Labor Party agree that the community should have available to them an independent review of the decision, we will not support their sham consultation process. Unless there is a proper review process, this is a sham and this is why the Canberra Liberals are refusing to support this unholy alliance today.

MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (4.14): I would like to speak just briefly to the amendments in particular because, as Ms Hunter has already mentioned today, they very much go to the recommendations that were in the report from the education committee. Mrs Dunne has been getting a little bit hysterical, so I am not quite sure what has been going on here. But Mr Doszpot said that Ms Hunter’s bill amendments had not considered the education committee report whereas, as Ms Hunter has said, they do.

In fact, as we have already noted today, the committee inquiry actually examined the Education Amendment Bill, and the amendments that were put forward by Ms Hunter are very much due to the findings of the committee report. These are particularly around, as Ms Hunter has already spoken about, the time frame for consultation and the need to consider the wider social impacts of school closures on the community.

The committee did hear from Dr Alison Ziller, an expert in social planning and social impact assessment, who very much spoke about the importance of having that as a part of the process when you are looking at these sorts of changes to the community and also in terms of the type of consultation that you need to undertake.


Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video