Page 1501 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 June 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
A number of secret hearings have already been held behind closed doors, though the committee chair was unable to say how many there would be in total or if any would be public, as had previously been indicated.
At the time the shadow education minister said:
It looks designed to protect the minister’s reputation rather than shine a light on the problem.
I think that is true. That again goes to our significant disappointment that the minister will not instigate a system-wide review into the education system, as Ms Lee has been calling for and as I have been calling for. Now we have it happening retrospectively, once a school has been shut down by WorkSafe; then we are told, “We’ll do a review.” It is short-sighted not to do a review of our system to prevent that sort of terrible stuff from playing out, as we have seen at Calwell. We want to shine a light on the problem. We want to understand, at its nub, how the government will dig itself out of this hole that it has created for itself.
The Labor Party promised 400 new teachers to address this shortage. This was in the lead-up to the last election. At the time Ms Berry said:
As Canberra continues to grow, a re-elected Labor government will make sure that our public education system grows with it. That’s why we’ll hire 400 new teachers and support staff for ACT public schools.
We are now halfway through the term, and I think we are a long way short of 400 new teachers having been hired, particularly in net terms. As teachers leave the system you do not need to just hire 400; you have to backfill the ones that have left before you even start to grow the system with new teachers.
We want to know how many teachers we have. What is the shortfall? The minister will continually say, “There’s only one vacancy.” That is her response when asked questions about it: “There’s only one vacancy.” When there is occupational violence, we are told, “These incidents are very rare.” That is clearly not the case.
I am calling for information that the government should have; if it has not, it needs to provide that information. I do not think it is difficult. I do not think it is controversial. I think it is necessary. We do not want to be in this place in several years time with the same problem. We want to make sure that there is a long-term plan, and, at its nub, that is what this motion is about. It is about making sure that there is a long-term plan to make sure that we do not have an ongoing problem.
We want to know how many teachers we actually need to meet current needs, and out to 2028. What are the projected future needs? The union want to know that as well. I am pretty sure they are disappointed by the fact that this government has not been able to provide that information about how many teachers we will need over the longer term.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video