Page 505 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 18 February 2015

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I will hold you accountable on that. But why can’t you provide the details, minister, that we are asking for? We are not asking for anything that is impossible. The amendment goes on to say:

(b) continue its work in providing safe and healthy school environments …

That is what the minister said in the previous amendment last September, when there was a commitment to deliver improvements to all schools. Again the minister is making the same commitment in this amendment. Obviously it is just a rehash of what we went through before. We are calling on the government to carry out some concrete actions for the benefit of the community. Our call to action for the government within our motion is based on communication with the community and with the education community specifically on these areas.

I am very disappointed, once again, in Mr Rattenbury, who could really make a difference to education in our city just by keeping this government accountable, as we are trying to do. I think he had another perfect opportunity this time to not totally go against the government, which is his partner, but to keep it accountable on some of the issues that are becoming very important in education in the ACT—important in the sense of understanding what the commitment of this government is. At this stage we have not heard what has happened to the 2012 election education commitment to invest $70 million in new funding for school infrastructure maintenance. We have still not had an answer from the minister.

We will not be supporting the minister’s amendment to the motion. It is basically window-dressing for looking at things and not actually delivering on the requirements we have detailed in the motion. Once again I stress my disappointment that, even though Mr Rattenbury alluded to the fact that we make some sense in trying to achieve these changes, he cannot bring himself to totally commit to the action items that we call on the government to do. We will not be supporting the amendment.

Question put:

That the amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

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