Page 3643 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 8 December 1992
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I understand that some $51,309 between February and June was the total expenditure. The annual report of the department, I notice, gives a $30,000 figure. Certainly, there was an expectation in the educational community that a debate would take place, and that I propose to do now.
I would like to go through the recommendations, Madam Speaker. Recommendations 1 and 2 really concern individual schools. The Liberal Party agrees with recommendation 1, which I remind members calls for a review of Canberra Grammar School's level of category 1.
Debate interrupted.
ADJOURNMENT
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! It being 9.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Berry: I require that the question be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
NON-GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS FUNDING - INQUIRY REPORT
Paper
Debate resumed.
MR CORNWELL: The Government's initiative in seeking redress has the Liberal Party's support, and we regret that the Keating Federal Labor Government has rejected these representations made in the interests of correcting a financial injustice which resulted in Canberra Grammar being the most underfunded school, in Commonwealth terms, in Australia.
While the Liberal Party supports the ACT Government's approach to Federal Labor on this matter, we are not blind to the underlying reason for the Follett Government doing so. It is very simply a cynical move which this Government knows will cost it nothing. It will cost it nothing to pass the blame for Canberra Grammar's financial injustices over to the Commonwealth. In so doing, the Follett Government attempts to minimise its own actions in the 1991-92 budget which stripped $350,000 from Canberra Grammar. Hardly the action, I put it to you, of a government really in sympathy with Canberra Grammar School's government funding problems. The removal of this cushioning is, I note, a decision that the Berkeley report, regrettably, has upheld at recommendation 3.
At recommendation 2, we would certainly not oppose the AME's incorporation into the government system, provided that the AME was agreeable and the issue of the school's education philosophy and ethos could be resolved to AME's satisfaction.
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