Page 4466 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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MR WOOD: I do not think that will be relevant, Mr Moore. I would think that betterment would apply only if there were commercial or office or residential development. If they go ahead and build a church facility, there would be no betterment. It is my wish that they build a church facility but not use those other means as part of their funding.
Teachers - Separation Packages
MR CORNWELL: My question is to Mr Wood in his capacity as Minister for Education. Mr Wood, I refer to the targeted separation packages the department is putting out, as outlined in the schools bulletin No. 560 of 25 November, which indicates that teachers who accept the package can return to permanent full-time work in the ACT Government Service two years after the date of separation and, in the interim, they may apply for registration for casual relief work. I ask: How does this help either the budget or a better balance between older and younger teachers, which you claimed you were setting out to achieve, in an answer to Mr Stevenson yesterday? Secondly, do you have a promotion policy for the future to prevent a similar imbalance of experienced and younger teachers to the one that currently exists?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, I do not think there is a problem of the nature suggested by Mr Cornwell. What he saw in the education bulletin was simply a spelling out of the conditions for the separation packages, and they are fairly standard. From time to time, for example, I am asked - I think Mr Cornwell might have done it once - about the policy for employing retired teachers, not necessarily those who have had a package. I can only point out that Mr Connolly, I think it was, this morning introduced the age discrimination Bill, which would make it illegal for me to discriminate on the grounds of age.
The facts are that the teachers who will be retiring have been, can I say, burnt out. They have put a great effort into teaching and they want to get away from it. It is the fact that teachers sometimes do retire and seek to go back onto the relief staff for a little extra income, perhaps because they still like teaching. My expectation is, on experience, that very few teachers who take a separation package will seek to come back.
Mr Cornwell: On a permanent basis, or on any basis?
MR WOOD: On any basis; and, if they seek to come back on a permanent basis, I think it would be most unlikely that they would want to go through that fairly long process of getting permanency. It is a pretty long and slow task these days, so I do not think there is a problem.
In respect of cost, there is no cost to this. When relief teachers are needed, the phone is picked up and they are sought. Whether they are retired teachers or fresh-faced young teachers from college, the cost is pretty much the same. There is a little variation relating to experience. So I do not think there is a problem there. I do not see any of these teachers coming back onto permanent staff. I agree, if it were suggested, that that is not really desirable, but I think the mechanisms and the teachers' own attitudes would see that that does not happen.
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