Page 3282 - Week 10 - Thursday, 25 September 2014
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money. But we understand that ACT Labor now may be indicating that that figure should be read as capital upgrades—that is to say, it should be understood as standing for an already existing, ongoing, routine recurrent program of maintenance of public schools.
Well, we are still waiting for Minister Burch. We are still waiting, Minister Burch, for you to set the record straight. The silence is deafening.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Lawder): Mr Doszpot, direct your comments through the chair, thank you.
MR DOSZPOT: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Well, we are still waiting, Minister Burch, for you to set the record straight.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Doszpot, direct your comments through the chair, thank you.
MR DOSZPOT: Madam Assistant Speaker, we are still waiting for Minister Burch to set the record straight on the election promise—questions I asked in last week’s motion. So until we hear otherwise, it would appear that ACT Labor’s explanation is that $70 million worth of refurbishment of older schools really meant $70 million already budgeted and programmed as capital upgrades.
Then we had to conclude that ACT Labor’s election commitments are $70 million less, and we are still waiting for Minister Burch to set the record straight. So, while we wait, we address the realities: Majura Primary School, upgrade delayed; Red Hill Primary, an upgrade that took forever to be started and completed. The list is endless, and almost every school has been put on the slow train for much-needed repairs and improvements. Again, poor priority setting.
At the same time there appears to be no delay to upgrades for the jail, with $54 million being spent because Labor got its estimates of needed accommodation wrong, just like it did with the Gungahlin Drive extension. And who can forget the walk-in centre that the ACT Liberals pointed out was the wrong thing in the wrong place? Move to 2014 and guess what? They have just had to move them because indeed they were in the wrong place. More money, another skewed priority.
We heard in question time today another example of poor priority setting. I have berated several education and health ministers over the lack of nurses in our special schools. First it was Woden and now it appears it is Cranleigh. A parent of a child at Cranleigh has been told that her child does not need a nurse—it is like deja vu; what we went through at Woden School—and that a learning support assistant will suffice. Well, it did not in Woden, and it does not suffice at any of these schools, Woden or Cranleigh. At Woden, a child was put at risk because an LSA made an understandable error in a blood glucose reading. And then the minister tries to wipe her hands of the issue, saying that it is a health directorate matter. Another poor choice, another poor priority setting.
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