Page 3951 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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budget there was a strategy of a 2 per cent annual recurrent efficiency saving over each of the forward years in all other program areas. It was put in for all other program areas. By contrast, the published forward estimates for government schooling did not incorporate those savings beyond 1992-93. But clearly, in the circumstances in which we found ourselves, it was simply not possible to continue that no savings option. It would not have been reasonable to do so. I think it is entirely reasonable to expect education, like health, like policing, like ACTION buses, like every area, to accept some proportion of that very large reduction in funding from the Commonwealth.
It is not just a matter of looking at savings as a matter of equity between ACT Government programs. We do have a responsibility also to have some regard to areas of our budget which we know are funded generously by national standards, and education is one such area. Madam Speaker, the Grants Commission, as members know, has highlighted the substantial difference that exists between the Territory's education costs and those of the States. I believe that for that money we get a better education system, but I also believe that we cannot ignore the fact, as I have said before, that that $25m transitional funding will be phased out over the next four years. Not only have we as a Government been forced to take hard decisions by the circumstances that have been pressed upon us, but also we have sought to do this in the least harmful way for our community, and we have worked very hard in education, as in other areas, to reduce the costs of overheads and of administration.
This year's budget for education shows that less than half of the savings required could be said to be schools based. In fact some 35 per cent of the savings are schools based, although on the spending side 93 per cent of costs are schools based. So the actual impact of the reductions in schools is well less than half. You also have to bear in mind, even looking at that 35 per cent, that a good proportion of that - about half - is accounted for by the increase in teachers' salaries. As for all other programs, those increases are counted in that way. In many ways I think the schools area has got off relatively lightly in a very difficult situation.
We have also been very, very careful to differentiate between different school sectors. One of the greatest weaknesses in Mr Moore's comments was his total failure, his complete lack of an attempt, to specify where it is that the damage is being done. I would have expected him to have chapter and verse of the impact, as he sees it, of the Government's actions, but we heard none of that. I have said that we will be very careful to differentiate between the different school sectors and I believe that quality in the classroom will not suffer because of these savings. The colleges will act judiciously to reduce, as Mr Wood said, their number of small and highly specialised course offerings, especially where there are fewer than six students in a class. What is unreasonable about that? I think it is entirely reasonable. They will also ensure, Madam Speaker, that class numbers are closer to sizes acceptable to the Australian Education Union, especially before opening new classes of the same type. What is unacceptable about that? It is entirely reasonable. Colleges will remove some of the registered units, generally recreational; especially those which are replicated and are easily available in the community. You have to bear in mind that in this community a large number of particularly recreational courses are available elsewhere than at your school.
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