Page 3231 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 September 1993
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MR CORNWELL (4.48): Madam Speaker, not surprisingly, in my comments on the Appropriation Bill I would like to concentrate on the matter of education. What better place to begin than the budget media release of the Minister for Education on Tuesday, which says:
Most of the reduction will be achieved through economies in operating costs which will not affect the level of service to schools ...
That raises a rather interesting point. I quoted that yesterday in asking Mr Wood why, therefore, the Government were cutting 80 teaching positions if they did not wish to affect the level of service to schools. Mr Wood gave me something of a non-answer. But it raised another question: If indeed these 80 teachers can be cut in the 1993-94 budget, why were they not cut in previous budgets? Surely, if they are surplus to requirements now, they were surplus to requirements in earlier years. The fact is that they are not surplus to requirements at all; they are simply expendable. They are expendable to a desperate Government that is floundering around trying to make cuts in the budget.
Mr De Domenico: And taking the easiest way out.
MR CORNWELL: And taking the easiest way out. But I ask you: Are these but the beginning of teacher cuts? There is a small problem that I have not been able to resolve. Next year Conder Primary School opens. Are we going to recruit more teachers to open that primary school or are the existing primary schools in this Territory - stop going white, Ms Ellis - going to suffer further reductions in teachers in order to staff Conder Primary School? I do not know the answer to that. Mr Wood might like to make a comment. If you are taking from other primary schools it will certainly impact even further upon that sector of education, which is already affected by the cutting of 80 staff positions, despite the Chief Minister's claim that most of the teachers will be lost from the colleges.
That statement alone brings forth two responses: Firstly, Madam Speaker, it is alleged that the colleges are overstaffed in the non-core subject choices - which, I might add, include sporting activities. We have had quite a debate recently about the need for sport in schools, and the Government has supported the concept of developing school sport. We now find that this is one of the non-core subjects in respect of which we can afford to dispense with teachers.
Mr De Domenico: In fact, Mrs Kelly said that too, did she not?
MR CORNWELL: Indeed she did. Apart from appearing to go back upon its word in relation to the sporting question, the Government's suggestion about teacher reductions being at college level and being confined to non-core subjects is both misleading and insulting. It is misleading because it suggests that the ACT government college system has staff involved solely in teaching such non-core subjects. This is an irresponsible claim and fails to recognise that no college has the luxury of such unlimited resources. Mr Connolly can stop waving the Auditor-General's report at me.
It also insults the professionalism of our teachers to suggest that such liberal use of resources would be tolerated by other staff. Even if these staff cuts were confined to college level, I am afraid that the concept has failed to address the much higher percentage of students staying through to Year 12. I quote from the P and C Feedback of September 1993:
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