Page 586 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 March 2014
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issues, including all matters considered by the Kefford inquiry process for former and existing staff at the CIT, including how they are being implemented and assessed for their effectiveness.
Recommendation 3 again goes to vocational education, which the committee is particularly interested in at the moment, and asks for a detailed account of the CIT’s role in that area. The committee recommends that the Education and Training Directorate maintain a high level of public information on the development and implementation of the Australian curriculum. We have been talking about this in this place for the last few days, and obviously there is a high level of interest in the curriculum in the ACT. Another matter of great interest to us all and one we have also been discussing here is professional development and career planning for teachers in the ACT, including the most recent planning and professional development and career planning affecting preschool teachers.
The last section deals with youth justice services, and the committee recommends that the CSD annual reports continue to provide full and updated details of outcomes on the administration of youth justice services, particularly providing full details of the implementation of the blueprint for youth justice, which the committee heard quite a lot about in the hearings.
I reiterate my thanks to the committee secretary and the staff in the committee office and my fellow committee members, Ms Berry, Mrs Jones and Mr Doszpot. I thank the minister and her officials and other witnesses that came before us for the time they gave us and the way they responded to questions at the hearings. I apologise again to my fellow committee members that I was unable to be there with you for these hearings for reasons you know, and I thank Ms Berry for chairing the meeting and Mr Gentleman for standing in my stead.
MR DOSZPOT (Molonglo) (10.07): I take this opportunity to speak on the education, training and youth affairs committee’s report on annual and financial reports, specifically recommendation 2 relating to CIT. One of the issues that was addressed through the hearings came in the attendance of senior staff from CIT. It is no secret that I have been less than impressed with how the CIT has addressed the issue of bullying and other workplace harassment, and I am not alone in this. The WorkSafe commissioner, Mark McCabe, issued a damning report and the former education minister imposed an improvement notice on them. Both of those actions, I might add, came after years of complaints falling on the deaf ears of the two former ministers for education. In 2012 the Commissioner for Public Administration agreed to hear those and other complaints, and after more than a year of protracted considerations, in his and the CIT’s view, the matters are now finalised.
I ask, yet again, how is it possible that matters were finalised at the time of these hearings and this annual report when 12 of the 42 complainant cases were still under investigation? It defies logic and perhaps natural justice. I have been approached by many of the 42 complainants, and they all echo their disappointment and frustration with the Kefford inquiry, a process that started with so much promise and ended in abject disappointment. They all wanted and still want the following questions answered: which are the small areas that the report admitted to and what actions are
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