Page 2026 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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Mr Jensen: Whose fault is that?
MR WOOD: Well, it is the fault of Canberra, is it not? It is something that has grown up with Canberra, and it has developed largely since the Government went out of the business of employing substantial numbers of young people.
This system that I have described, albeit briefly, developed out of pressure in the community. Following the Government's actions to downgrade the quality of our education system, to diminish our society, that Government is now feeling that same pressure.
The Minister for Education did not come into this chamber at the outset of this Government about six months ago with debates, with objectives, concerning education. I would think this is always the first step - to establish your objectives, debate them in the parliament, and set the framework for where you want to go. Mr Humphries' rhetoric says that he aims for a quality system, but even the rhetoric is poor, no more than a few lines. We have not had a debate initiated by Mr Humphries in this chamber on educational philosophy, on the objectives of education, the things that really count in education. I hope when he speaks shortly, as he may do, he will not try to hold up the ministerial statement he made a month or so ago as being part of that.
Mr Humphries: Well, it was. What do you call it then if it was not that?
MR WOOD: No, that statement was a smokescreen, Mr Humphries. That is exactly what it was, as my colleague Mrs Grassby said at the time.
We say so often that we have an excellent system in the ACT, a model for the rest of Australia, as it has been. It worries me that we say it so often, because in many ways that commendation of the system obscures the debate that we should be having on some of the weaknesses in the system. Indeed, there are areas of relative lack of strength, if you like. It has been mentioned before, and it is well known, that high schools here are suffering the same pressures as high schools across Australia.
We ought to be examining them in some greater detail. We ought to be assessing what more can be done to improve the quality of education there. We ought to be looking at the documents that the then School's Authority published as it examined the problems of high schools. This is just one area of some weakness in our system that we are not attending to in sufficient detail in this chamber because we are having to focus on the campaign simply to save our schools. I wish that we could direct our attention to these other areas.
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