Page 3307 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 22 August 2012
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Act it was my view that this was a tokenistic change, a change that would have no impact, given that already people in the ACT enjoy access to free education—in fact, there is a requirement to go to school to the age of 17. My first instinct was that this was a tokenistic change that, whilst it may have no negative impact, was unlikely to have any positive impact. I came to it with an open mind, but, on looking more closely at the provisions that have been put forward in this bill, it appears to me that, if left unamended, this legislation could actually have a negative impact on education in the ACT.
The government has chosen in this amendment bill to enshrine a right to free education, but not for all—that is, only a free primary education. Proposed section 27A to be inserted into part 3A of the Human Rights Act says:
Every child has the right to have access to free, primary education appropriate to his or her needs.
It is the contention of the opposition that, if left unamended, this causes some problems and some degree of difficulty. At the moment it is well understood that children in the ACT up until the age of 17 enjoy not just a right but in fact the requirement to be educated. We require that under legislation. It is accepted that there is that right to have a free education, and people have a choice to go to a public school which is free of charge or to go to a non-government school, a school of one’s choice, with the associated charges that go with that.
By enshrining in legislation the right to an education but making it clear that that free education only applies to primary school, the advice we have is that it could certainly be implied that there is not a right to a free high school or college education. That is basic statutory interpretation 101. If you are going to enshrine something in legislation but exclude certain things, statutory interpretation suggests that it would be read as excluding those things you have left out. In this case, the government goes out of its way in this bill to make it clear that there is only a right to a free primary school education.
We in the Canberra Liberals have a different view of the world. We actually believe there should be a right to an education right up until the age when people leave school, at the age of around 17 and move off to either the workplace or further education in the tertiary sector or further training or whatever the case may be. We would not want to see an enshrining of a restriction on free education just to primary school age.
I understand the government has actually taken this from part of the international covenant. The international covenant, it seems to me, in dealing with international conventions and many developing nations, is seeking to lift people out of poverty based on the idea that if we can get people at least a primary school education for free, that will be a major step forward. Unfortunately, in Australia that would be a major step backwards. For many decades and beyond, people in Australia have been educated for free up until the age of 15 in recent years and beyond that now.
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