Page 3551 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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Mr Acting Speaker, the situation is different from that of a new school seeking funding from this Government. These three existing schools have operated and budgeted on an expectation, as I have said, which, were they Canadian schools, they would be able to enforce under the more developed doctrines of legitimate expectation in administrative law. We cannot expect to see those reforms brought in here under the tag-along young Attorney we have in this Territory now.
An examination of the variation to the State recurrent grants shows that the ACT in this area will stand alone, shamefully alone, in its ideological stance on this issue. The comparable figures for schools in New South Wales are $243, Victoria $300, Queensland $600, or close thereto, Western Australia $500, Tasmania $582, and the Northern Territory $835. In the ACT, Mr Acting Speaker, it plummets to $189. That is all you get from the Left here, if you are in one of those schools. When you get to secondary level, the figure plummets even further.
Members of the house should be ashamed of the manner in which the Follett Government, for clear political gain, has raised a sectarian issue in our community. It may be good for votes on the Left, but it is not good for the community. It will be divisive. It may rekindle old debates. It is unfair and is wrongly presented.
The Rally has long supported the belief that parents have the right to choose the kind of education that they wish to give their children. This, of course, reflects the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When the funding cuts are so out of kilter with the rest of this nation you can only come to the conclusion that these schools have been singled out for an ideological reason rather than any common stand in the budget.
Let me give you an example as to why this is an inequitable cut. The Follett-Whalan Labor Government got us into a huge expenditure at the Bruce Stadium - $6.9m. In return, the New South Wales Rugby League was to contribute a million dollars. Mr Berry's latest statement is that alternative ways may be found to pay the debt. His Government has gone easy on a million dollar debt and at the same time has cut half that from the schools where our children - our future resource in society - are educated.
Mr Acting Speaker, let me identify my views. As a founding parent of the AME school but one whose children went ultimately through government schools here, I want to tell you how that school was started. We dismantled the old Reid Hostel building and I personally rode shotgun on a semitrailer out to Pialligo to help bolt that school together. The Labor Government is now unbolting that school and destroying it.
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