Page 4263 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2019
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(c) the Minister for Education and Early Childhood Development established the Education (Safe and Supportive Schools) Advisory Committee (the Advisory Committee) on 18 March 2019 for the purpose of providing advice and examining the influence of policies to reduce violence in ACT government schools;
(d) the Advisory Committee apparently presented its final report to the minister on 19 August 2019;
(2) further notes that:
(a) on 4 April 2019, the Assembly referred the issue of violence in ACT schools to the Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Youth Affairs for inquiry and report; and
(b) the Standing Committee tabled its report in the Assembly on 19 September 2019; and
(3) calls on the ACT Minister for Education and Early Childhood Development to table, by the end of this sitting period, the final report of the Advisory Committee.
Madam Speaker, they say that a day is a long time in politics, and this motion absolutely proves this. I brought on this motion for debate today because we, as elected representatives of whatever party we belong to, should not, must not and cannot ignore the anguish of the many parents who saw their children suffering at school and felt that their concerns were not being listened to.
The first part of my motion briefly outlined the various steps taken on this issue. It references the refusal of Labor and the Greens to support my motion, moved by my colleague Mr Wall in February, calling for the establishment of an independent inquiry; it references the minister establishing her own advisory body—the Safe and Supportive Schools Advisory Committee—which apparently presented its final report to the minister on 19 August. It also acknowledges that the matter was referred to the Assembly’s Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Youth Affairs in April for inquiry and that this committee tabled its report ahead of schedule in September.
What I did not expand on in my motion but had intended to today during the debate was the lack of communication and almost wilfully blind approach that was taken in the first place in dealing with this serious issue. The parents had approached the school; they had written to the directorate; they had contacted the minister’s office. When all that failed to elicit a response, they approached the Canberra Liberals and they went to the media. Frustrated, angry and bewildered by the refusal by Labor and the Greens to support the establishment of an independent inquiry, these parents were forced to get a petition going to provide a pathway for the Assembly committee to look into these issues. Whilst it was not the independent inquiry they wanted, at least the issue would be investigated closely by a committee that was independent of the minister, independent of the government, independent of the directorate and answerable to the Assembly as a whole.
Even then, this government took the extraordinary and unprecedented step of dictating to an Assembly committee the manner in which the inquiry was to be conducted. The
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