Page 3840 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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MR STEVENSON: You are making claims. I think we should understand that 82 per cent of current Canberra Grammar School children have both parents working. Where is the elitism of that? Where are the wealthy families there, Mr Berry? Let us hear the interjection now. You cannot handle the problem. The suggestion is that the non-government schools have supposedly huge resources. Some of them are well resourced, but I think we should understand equally that the schools are supported greatly in many cases by parents who put in much time and who also support the school in other ways to allow their children and others to have an alternative to the government schooling system.
A very important point that we should make is that non-government schools allow freedom of choice. Any attack on the funding of non-government schools is an attack on the freedom of choice of all parents in Canberra to send their children to other schools. I am sure that when members of the Labor Party speak on this matter they will say that the parents of most children cannot afford to send their children to non-government schools. So, what do they do in answer to this? They lower the funding, causing the fees for non-government schools to be increased, thereby putting those schools out of the reach of even more parents. Where is the justice in that?
The three schools, as were other non-government schools, were guaranteed certain things by the Commonwealth Government. Certain of those guarantees were taken over, if you like, when we formed self-government in Canberra. Let us have a look at what Mr Bill Wood said in discussing obligations that had previously been met by the Commonwealth Government. This particular debate was on 17 October last year, recorded at page 3718 of Hansard - - -
Mr Berry: Was he Education Minister then?
MR STEVENSON: Was he Education Minister then? No, he was not. But does it make a difference when he makes a particular statement prior to having the power to do something about it? Do the standards that he raised at that time go out the window because he was not the Education Minister? Let us look at what he said. He referred to the Federal Government's promise not to close Weetangera Primary School in the next five years. He referred to Mr Kaine talking about that matter and said:
... the parents at Weetangera have the same right that Mr Kaine has conceded to parents at St Peter's school, that right being that this Government should fulfil the pre-self-government commitment by the Commonwealth.
Where is that fulfilment of the Commonwealth commitment now? Certainly, the funding in real terms has been decreasing, it being in fixed-term amounts. But one of the things that the three non-government schools that are currently under attack were able to do at least, though
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