Page 522 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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commitment to increasing and enhancing employment opportunities for Indigenous people within the ACT public service.
We undertook to provide additional support for grandparents who provide primary care for their extended families, and we have met that commitment. We undertook to provide funding to allow the elected Indigenous body to fulfil its statutory responsibilities, an election commitment that we have met. Indeed, in the context of the support by any government for its Indigenous community, it still remains the fact that the only democratically elected Indigenous representative body in Australia remains the elected Indigenous body. It is a commitment, a policy position—a commitment to Indigenous people and to their aspirations for self-determination—that this government takes seriously.
We undertook to fund a genealogy project for the Ngunnawal people within the territory, and that project has commenced. We undertook to fund and to provide Indigenous teachers and teachers’ assistants, to attract them into our schools and to provide career paths for Indigenous people. That commitment has been funded and is currently executed.
We undertook to provide an additional 12 community fire units over the term of this particular Assembly, and we are in the process of meeting that commitment. Five, I believe, were established after the first budget. We have made promises in relation to the revision of the strategic bushfire management plan, and they have been funded and completed.
We undertook to provide support for gifted and talented students and to provide support for their parents. We undertook to provide additional grants for school parent groups to the tune of $2.1 million, and we have done that. We undertook to provide more teachers to provide for smaller class sizes—$22 million over four years—and we have met that commitment.
We undertook to provide a performing arts centre for Canberra college at a cost of $5 million, and we met that commitment. We undertook to build a high school in Harrison. It is under construction and being fully funded. We undertook to provide additional IT for non-government schools to the tune of $2.5 million, and we have done so.
We undertook to cluster literacy and numeracy experts throughout our schools as a result of a determination that the ACT maintain its place as the best performing education system in Australia, and we see the results just this week of how successful that devotion and that commitment has been. We undertook to provide additional equity funds for disability, literacy and numeracy within our schools to the tune of $4.1 million, and we have funded that.
As you can see, I am not yet 10 per cent of the way through the 192 commitments made. I will perhaps need an hour or two to do justice to the fantastic and massive work that has been done in relation to these promises.
We undertook to provide additional bus seats and bus shelters and we are rolling out that program, I think, to the tune, to date, of somewhere in the order of $1 million just
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