Page 1973 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012
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What is fundamental to our education system is the contribution made by the commonwealth government, both financially and otherwise. If it were not for the Gonski review, this government would have nothing to hang their hat on. The government have put all their eggs in that basket. They are totally dependent on the Gonski review for all their policy ideas. What they have, in effect, done is outsource the fundamental responsibility of the territory government for education to the federal government. They have said: “It’s too hard for us. We’re either going to stuff it up or we’ll be forced to do something that we do not want to do. Therefore we’ll buck pass to the commonwealth government and they can be responsible.”
They try to do this with health all the time. They are doing it with education. Who knows what is next on the agenda when it comes to buck passing to the commonwealth government? When it comes down to it, the territory government fails. They shift it to the commonwealth and try their luck with what is a failing Labor government at a federal level as well.
Fundamentally, the recommendations in Gonski will affect non-government schools. They will affect their funding, and the government in the ACT has failed to provide any assurances that no ACT school will be disadvantaged if the recommendations of the Gonski reviewed are implemented.
It is important to note that we cannot just blame Dr Bourke for education failures in the ACT. Unfortunately, there have been a few ministers, successive ministers, who have failed in this role in the ACT—whether it is ministers that see students as a photo opp and at every opportunity leap into a school to have a happy snap, or whether it is Ms Gallagher’s outright misleading of the community when she said she would not be closing down schools.
Let us not forget that it was Ms Burch when she was a backbencher who went into a high school in the ACT with Labor Party show bags, trying to entice them to join the Labor Club and put money into poker machines to put more money into her own campaign. These are the ulterior motives of those on that side of this place. They have a vested interest in the Labor Club reaping as much as possible from problem gamblers, and it is no wonder, given their greed and given their selfishness, that they want to promote the Labor Club to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, she totally abused her powers as a member of this place when she went into a school with Labor Party show bags and handed them out.
In addition to the obvious ethical problems with doing that, it shows a complete error in judgement. How could anybody think that that was a good idea? How could anybody actually walk into Campbell high with a box full of Labor Party show bags and think, “Yeah, this is going to be great”? Obviously you did. Obviously you thought it was a good idea. Obviously you thought it would be a winner. Obviously you thought giving out Labor Party and Labor Club membership forms was going to give you some brownie points in the party. Well, it has not. It certainly has not given you brownie points in the community.
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