Page 3652 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 8 December 1992
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The Australian Teachers Union and the Council of P and C Associations endorse this recommendation. Greater accountability measures for the expenditure of public funds are crucial in these times of economic restraint. Non-government schools should not be considered to be an exception. I seek a very short extension of time.
MADAM SPEAKER: You need to suspend standing orders to do that, Ms Szuty. Under standing orders two extensions of time are not allowed. I would recommend that you table the rest.
MS SZUTY: I seek leave to table the rest of my speech, Madam Speaker.
Leave granted.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (9.58): Madam Speaker, Mr Cornwell began by suggesting that I was not keen to debate this issue.
Mr Cornwell: No, I said that the Government was not.
MR WOOD: Well, the Government or me. That is not the case. I have had a long interest in the funding of non-government schools - the funding of all schools in fact. I find it a fascinating topic; one of interest and one of very great differences. I am quite happy to talk about it. Mr Cornwell used as the basis of his argument, I think, the fact that it was he who asked me to bring this in so that we could have the debate. That is true, and it is probably sensible to have a debate. Actually, nothing I have heard thus far tonight confirms that we needed a debate at all. I do not see it here.
Mr Cornwell made some comments. They were, in a sense, comments that I have heard before. I do not think there was anything particularly new in it, although he did make some positive comments or negative comments about the recommendations. Ms Szuty took the opportunity only to give us an account of what we knew in the setting up of this, and then strangely, I thought, read into the debate the views of two organisations who widely circulated their submission. I found that a strange contribution to the debate. I do not think the debate has added anything on the question. I do not think we needed it. I do not think people have really taken the opportunity that Mr Cornwell seemed to think was necessary.
I can say, and this is, I suppose, something new in a sense, that two recommendations are being or have been acted upon. While, in the future, the Government will come back with a detailed response to the recommendations, the Chief Minister has written to Minister Beazley about recommendation 1, the Canberra Grammar School matter, and I understand that the matter was referred to the routine review committee and was rejected. On all the criteria, Canberra Grammar School apparently fits into category 1. I note the various remarks that have been made about it, but there is no way out of that problem. The statistics, the data and all the compilations say that that is where it belongs. I would have been quite happy for Canberra Grammar to be boosted to level 2 by some review, but it was not to be. I can only assess that it has been fairly done.
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