Page 1909 - Week 07 - Thursday, 31 May 1990
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The then Schools Authority reviewed the high schools in 1989, identifying a number of problems, including student alienation, teacher stress and curriculum deficiencies. I expect that the Education Department is attending to these problems and that they are well known. They should also be the focus of wider debate in the community and this Assembly. This is where we should be concentrating our energies - building the strength to maintain this as the best education system in Australia, not destroying it.
We ought to be concentrating on producing a higher quality of school graduates who have been able to reach their potential in those abilities which will ensure that the ACT has a vital human resource to sustain its strong economic community. We depend on our school graduates for the future and they depend on us. We must not let them down. We must realise that we have more people staying at school in the ACT than in any other State in Australia. We must not destroy our education; we must put more money into it. We must not close down schools.
People come to this city because of our education system. When I was still Minister for Housing and Urban Services I attended a Christmas party with the Chief Minister. He defended education; he said that more money should be put into education, not taken away from it. He also said that, if other parts of our community had to suffer in order to keep our education system, then they would have to suffer. Mr Kaine, where are your words now? It worries me that it is easy to say this in opposition, but you have to carry it out when you get into government. The people will say, "By their deeds we shall know them". At the next election I think the people will tell them.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (11.12): I thought for a moment that, if Mrs Grassby did not have time to finish her speech, I might borrow it from her and use it as sort of a joke session because just with a few different prefixes I could say things like: "What did the Follett Government do for education when it had seven months?".
Mr Wood: We did not close any schools, did we?
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, I could supply Mr Wood with plenty of feedback that came in, month after month, tearing holes in the Follett Government's lack of commitment to education. What did successive Labor Governments do to education? We know that. These are not rhetorical questions. We have seen the lack of application, the inability to take a holistic, global view of education. All that Mrs Grassby could do in today's debate was run off her cheap shots at the Residents Rally, but the Labor Party - and I trust that when people read Hansard they will dwell on this - goes from day to day, from one short-term electoral view to another. It is building itself up for its destruction in 1992 and we all know that. All the newspapers across this country realise the Hawke Government is doomed in 1992. Doomed with it are the outdated ideas
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