Page 3233 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 September 1993
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What about the existing levels of services we are providing? They are not terribly good in some areas. Mr Moore asked earlier about class sizes. Mr Wood has kindly provided to me - and it is most timely, I might add - an answer to a question on notice. I think I should read the details into the Hansard. The fact of the matter is that, of the ACT government junior primary classes, 11.5 per cent had over 30 pupils in 1992. The national average is 9 per cent. Of the ACT government senior primary classes, 37 per cent had over 30 pupils. Do you know what the national average is, Mr Connolly? It is 11 per cent. We are only 27 per cent above the national average!
Mr De Domenico: On class sizes?
MR CORNWELL: On class sizes in senior primary classes. The answer concludes with this most remarkable statement:
The Department is focusing additional resources to meet identified needs in areas such as improving literacy and numeracy and for programs for students with gifts and talents.
I cannot see them achieving a great deal if you are going to chop 80 teachers out of the system. This is absurd.
Unfortunately, Madam Speaker, the Chief Minister's mania for protecting bricks and mortar at the expense of the essential and fundamental needs of education - namely, teachers - apart from being amply demonstrated in this budget, has blinded her to other ways of saving money. I will give the Government the opportunity to save some money in education. I asked another question that arose from a point raised by the ACT Council of Parents and Citizens Associations in respect of the education of the children of diplomats accredited to Australia. The council thought that there were some 350 of these children going to ACT government schools and that the ACT Government were paying for them. I have to advise the Assembly that that figure in fact is incorrect; that 407 of these children require some form of English as a second language - ESL - assistance. Using the 1992 average net cost per student, it has been estimated that the cost of that minimum number of students - that is, 407 - is $1.7m per annum. Very interestingly, this $1.7m - you have gone quiet all of a sudden, Mr Connolly - is half of the $3.48m that we have to save from the education budget. That is very convenient. It is half of the 2 per cent being sought but - - -
Mrs Carnell: Negotiate with the Feds.
MR CORNWELL: I think that you should negotiate with the Federal Government. Why should the ACT Government and its ratepayers be subsidising diplomats accredited here by the Government of Australia? I suggest that you do something about it. I will certainly be writing to you, Chief Minister.
I have every reason to write to her because in the budget speech, at page 3, she stated that your Government, Mr Connolly, will be seeking full reimbursement from the Commonwealth of revenue forgone from the issue of free motor vehicle registration and licences to diplomats and their staff in line with its policy of directing assistance to those most in need. Why do you not do something in education as well? Get $1.7m out of the Commonwealth and leave our 80 teachers alone. Why not? If we did obtain this $1.7m we could employ, at $38,000 each per annum, 45.9 reading recovery teachers. I introduce that as an indication of what could be done with that sort of money.
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