Page 3858 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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It seems to me that that is the advice, that is the consultation bit, to which the Government listened. It comes back to the little exchange earlier in the debate about whether this is a philosophical question or a question of socialist ideology. Mr Connolly, in his emotional and heated outburst, gave the game away. He is not only against private schools; he is against the church as well, and he made that quite clear. Rather than address the question of the funding of private schools, Mr Connolly spent four minutes of his time attacking the Anglican bishop.
Mr Connolly: Because of what he said - calling the ordinary people the hoi polloi.
MR KAINE: Lots of people say things in times of emotion and times of stress. I suppose that you will back off next week because you were highly emotional and you did not really mean to attack the bishop. You were quite deliberate about that. That, in my view, was a quite despicable and disgusting spectacle, coming from a Minister.
Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, this decision is wrong because it is discriminatory. It is wrong because it is arbitrary. It is wrong because it is lacking in social justice. As to discrimination, it singles out these three schools in their category, as compared with all other schools across Australia - disregarding, for the moment, the Territory itself. It puts these three schools on a lower funding basis than any other school in their category across Australia, and this Government talks about social justice.
It is discriminatory because it places these three schools in a worse situation than any other private school in the ACT, and they cannot deny that. It is discriminatory because it places these three schools in a worse position than any public school in the ACT, in terms of funding. So, on any criterion, these three schools are being discriminated against. This is the action of a government that talks about community consultation and social justice.
I said that this decision is wrong because it is arbitrary. These three schools had no prior warning that the Government was thinking along these lines. There was no consultation whatsoever with them on the issue. Once the decision hit the streets and the schools realised their situation and began to protest, the Government told us that there will be no review. This is open government, consultative government, a socially just government, we are told. There is no question that the decision is inequitable and fails the Government's own test of being socially just. There is no doubt whatsoever - Mr Connolly, if anybody, demonstrated it - that it is based solely on socialist ideology; take from the wealthy schools and bring us all down to the lowest common denominator. That seems to be the only basis and the only thrust of this.
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