Page 3497 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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Teacher Numbers
MR MOORE: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Education. In your Government's preferred vision for the year 2020, "Choosing Our Future", you state that the role of education as a key component of Canberra's economic base is reinforced. How do you expect to get to this preferred future, Minister, by cutting 200 teachers over the next couple of years?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, if nothing else, the budget has encouraged Mr Moore to ask questions - questions that were lacking all year. We have a vision for education. We are set on clear paths to refine that vision. Some time earlier this year the Ministerial Advisory Council on Education put out an issues paper for discussion. Obviously the Auditor-General's report is going to focus some further discussion, and there is a major discussion paper coming out very soon, the discussion paper on the high school development program. In the last year or so we have been engaged in a process of looking very closely at our system. The other day I came into this Assembly with a statement on environmental matters in the context of the 2020 vision. Before the year is out I will come into the Assembly with a further expansive statement about education in the context of that, which will be something that we will carry on with. We are focused ahead, Mr Moore. We are not letting events simply determine what we do; we are going to shape our future. We will very consciously shape that future.
You went on to comment about 200 teachers. That is a figure out of your head; it is not a figure based from anywhere else. It is the case, as I said at the Estimates Committee, that the budget papers indicated further savings in the next two financial years. There is no justification for automatically extrapolating that to mean that those money savings become teaching positions. We are determined to take control of the way we go and, as I have said in conversations with Mr Moore, there are alternatives that we will be pursuing.
MR MOORE: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Minister, you mentioned your Ministerial Advisory Council on Education and their role. How many teacher positions have they suggested you should cut?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, that is a fair question.
Mr Kaine: Would you like to answer it?
MR WOOD: I am about to, Mr Kaine. I went to the Ministerial Advisory Council some time ago, when they were first established, and said, "Will you give me advice on the directions that we should be taking in view of the severe economic constraints that we face? In short, how do we maintain a quality education system in the face of diminishing resources?". I asked them to give me advice on that and they are going through that process. They declined, very sensibly, to do so immediately because they said that they needed to get a grasp of the issues and to survey all the papers that had been produced. They put out a paper and they are in the process of all that consideration. They will be providing me with advice.
Ms Follett: I ask that further questions be placed on the notice paper.
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