Page 1684 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
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MR CORNWELL (4.03): Madam Speaker, this matter of public importance has arisen from concerns of the Australian Education Union, the Canberra Pre-School Society and the ACT Council of Parents and Citizens Associations. Whilst I share their concerns, I also share one matter raised by Mr Wood, the Minister, and that is that the solution is not to spend more money. That is too simplistic a solution and, frankly, it is not realistic in today's financial climate. However, the concern of these three organisations is hardly surprising because the Government has consistently failed to address the fundamental problems of the ACT government education system. All they have done, I would suggest, is attempt to avoid the issue, even if in doing so they have demonstrated great ingenuity.
Probably the best example of this very creative approach, Madam Speaker, lies in the area of surplus spaces in schools. In 1992, when I first took an interest in this matter, the figures were a simple three-column comparison. By 1993, just one year later, this had been improved upon, if those are the right words, to six columns of creative accounting, whereby original built capacity of a school was reduced to site capacity, and then further reduced to operating capacity. By so doing, surplus student spaces were arithmetically reduced from about 10,800 to 7,850. This year, 1994, notional surplus space was reduced to just 2,752 surplus spaces by the introduction of a new factor, and this new factor was known as the buffer. I would suggest to you that the buffer is hardly a buffer in itself; it is more like a no-man's-land. The buffer itself accounts for some 5,670 spaces spread across all levels of school - college, high school and primary.
I thought buffers existed on railway lines. I thought we might have had duffers in schools occasionally. Perhaps we might have had duffers in the approach of the Labor Party to education; but I did think that buffers were on railways. But no, this is what these buffers are. I quote from the summary I received:
NOTE 2 - Spaces needed to serve as a buffer to the timetabling and programming needs of primary, high school and colleges ...
NOTE 3 - Open plan restrictions on adjoining use ... (Buffer of 2 vacant classroom spaces).
NOTE 4 - Internal access to massed designed buildings -
whatever that means -
(Buffer of 2 vacant classroom spaces).
What I am saying, Madam Speaker, is that we are becoming more and more creative in our increasingly desperate attempts to cover the increasingly urgent problem of surplus spaces in our schools. I must admit that I wait with some interest to see what they are going to come up with next year when, no doubt, the number of schools excess to capacity will be over and above the 17 that the current figures on surplus spaces would indicate. (Quorum formed) The absence of Ms Szuty and Mr Moore does indicate their great concern for this matter, I am sure, Madam Speaker!
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