Page 2544 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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well spent—it absolutely is—but you have to question the timing and the urgency of some of this year’s initiatives.
I am delighted that Calwell High School is on the list for new library and science facilities, but when it is at less than 50 per cent capacity, and with projected declining enrolments in the next few years, where is the prioritisation when a primary school in Garran, with overcrowding going back several years, receives nothing? Well, almost nothing; I have to acknowledge the rather late and limited effort or afterthought of the current education minister, who, clearly with one eye on the election, offers a temporary 18-month hire of one demountable classroom. If ever there was a case of too little too late, this is it—just like the efforts to show the parents at Telopea school that in the education minister they have a minister and a local member who cares. They know he does not. They know he did little of any real substance to protect their school from takeover. To this day, they do not believe him or the Chief Minister with any promise they make about the school, about MOCCA’s relocation to their oval, or indeed about any redevelopment of Manuka Oval that does not take the school’s oval for car parking or some other purpose.
As the second largest directorate in terms of spending, the Education portfolio has not been well treated in terms of ministerial stability, with three ministers since the last election. I have been asked many times since Mr Rattenbury’s appointment why the government chose to give its second-highest spending portfolio, and one of enormous importance to the future of Canberra, to a Greens minister instead of one from its own party. The alternatives suggested by those same people are that either Labor know that there have been so many mistakes in the education portfolio that they wanted the Greens to wear the blame and explain away the failings—like Manuka, like the boy in the cage, like MOCCA, like Garran, like the leaking roofs—or that they simply did not have anyone else capable of taking it on. Either way, education is the big loser.
At election time, Labor is always full of grand plans and great promises that go nowhere and rarely get to the pages of any budget. I have mentioned Belconnen High, which has had several appearances in successive budget papers, with little to show for it other than a shrinking amount of money.
Caroline Chisholm School’s $9 million centre of excellence was promised by Chief Minister Katy Gallagher in 2012 for delivery in 2014-15. When Minister Burch fronted up to the school to announce this grand project in June 2015, it had somehow lost a few million along the way and was a $6 million commitment to be ready by 2018. In this year’s budget, it is a mere one-line budget adjustment, with $180,000 now moved into the 2016-17 year. Strange, then, that Ms Burch had told the school only a year ago that work was to start this year. I look forward to seeing the 2012 election commitment recycled this year.
Hopefully, Mount Stromlo’s roof might have better luck.
Who can forget the $70 million in new moneys that were another 2012 election commitment intended for older school upgrades? It followed pressure from schools and from the Australian Education Union about smelly toilets, leaking roofs and freezing and/or boiling classrooms.
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