Page 3863 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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I want there to be no doubt that any Anglican family from All Saints, Ainslie, has the right to send a son to the Canberra Grammar School or a daughter to the Girls Grammar School. Those schools must take any Anglican child; it does not matter what the family income is. They are in the business of supporting a certain value system, and that value system, for them, is an Anglican system. If they did not support it, then I think, Mr Wood, you would be right to attack them.
I want there to be no doubt that any Anglican family from any Anglican parish has educational freedom of choice. I want to ask Mr Wood whether he feels comfortable about discriminating against Anglican families, ordinary people, in Canberra.
MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time is up, Dr Kinloch.
MS MAHER (4.45): Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I believe that the non-government schools provide a very valuable service to the community. If they were not available and the Government had to take over the running of those schools, I feel that the standard of schooling across the ACT would be depleted and the access to that schooling just would not be as it is now.
What has happened to the Labor Party commitment to maintain the funding to these schools and what has happened also to the community consultation? It was very convenient for the Labor Party to give education a very high priority when they regained government by reopening Cook and Lyons schools. I have no problem with giving education a very high priority, not only for its educational benefits but also for the benefits to the child. As Mr Wood would know, many of the situations that were brought to light in our inquiry into behavioural disturbance among young people involved children with learning difficulties and a low education standard. Education is a very high priority in this community.
One of the reasons that many families come to the ACT is the choice of schools and our education system. This has been restated by the Labor Party on many occasions. Cutting the funding to non-government schools will take this choice away from many families and put an extra financial burden onto other families which, in many cases, are working on a very skimpy budget already so that they can send their children to the schools of their choice.
Not only do these families skimp and save on their own personal budgets to send their children to non-government schools but they also put a tremendous amount of time and effort into fundraising for the general running and upkeep of the schools. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, why should these children who attend non-government schools be disadvantaged and discriminated against? They are entitled to the same standard of education and assistance as any other child in the ACT.
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