Page 8 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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Education Budget Cuts
MS SZUTY: Madam Speaker, my question without notice is to the Chief Minister, Ms Follett, in her capacity as Treasurer. On 8 December 1993 my colleague Mr Moore asked the Minister for Education and Training, Mr Wood, what specific areas would be reduced as a result of budget cuts in education, and would he inform the Assembly of the specific areas he is targeting. During his answer Mr Wood replied:
I am not in a position to advise the Assembly of what details may yet emerge.
My question to the Chief Minister is: Now that almost three months have passed since the Assembly voted to retain the 80 teaching positions targeted for Government cutbacks in the budget, what expenditure reductions in education and other areas of the budget have been made to make up the estimated $1.5m shortfall?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, may I correct the member right from the start and say that it is not a $1.5m budget shortfall; it is actually $3m in a full year. It is $1.5m in the current year. I would say at the outset that the Government will, of course, fully observe the Appropriation Act, as amended by this Assembly with the support of Ms Szuty amongst others, and that will be an extremely difficult task. I said during the debate on that matter that the Government had considered all possible measures to rein in the education budget, and so we had. In considering all possible measures, we had arrived at a conclusion with regard to teaching numbers which, in my view, was a reasonable conclusion and the best way of reducing the education budget. All other proposals, all other suggestions of ways to reign in the education budget, were inferior in my view, and in the view of the Minister and the Government as a whole.
Once the Assembly took that position, Madam Speaker, we, as a government, were forced to review again what other possible measures might be taken within education. I have to say that, given the very high priority that this Government affords to education, that is not an easy task. The measures that we had proposed were arrived at after very careful consideration, and they were arrived at also in the face of projections, which we were aware of, indicating that enrolments will be stable or will actually decline in coming years. The Education Department has made major savings in past years. They have made them in the central office area and in other areas of the education budget; but it is a fact that, in education, the overwhelming majority of the budget is in salaries, and the overwhelming majority of that salaries budget is in schools based salaries. So there is no easy way to reduce their budget.
Madam Speaker, I believe that it becomes increasingly difficult to artificially quarantine that school based expenditure from any requirement to achieve a more efficient use of resources and, in fact, I have put that argument previously. It is a fact that they represent some 85 per cent of education expenditure. We are still considering a full range of alternatives. As I have said, I consider them all to be inferior to the ones that were proposed in last year's budget; but they do include other avenues for achieving efficiencies within the education budget. The scope for doing this, without taking measures which may have
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