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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 456 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

The second part of the equation, however, is these things called subject levies. The school institutes a program and if you want to undertake a particular course there is a cost associated with it. That is not borne from public funds and if students wish to engage in it there is a payment that has to be made.

But in all of that there is this need to ensure equity, and it is not only as between schools. Ms Horodny made the point that some schools have a student population that is relatively disadvantaged compared to the populations of other schools. It has to do with the socioeconomic situation from which they come. Within any given school, there will always be some students whose parents cannot satisfy the requirement for additional contributions. Parents work on the assumption, which ought to be a reasonable one, that their child's education will be provided at public expense. That is supposed to be the basis on which public education is provided in Australia. Because they cannot subscribe, there has been some evidence that those disadvantaged children have been discriminated against. I would put the argument quite strongly that the Government has a responsibility to ensure that that discrimination and that inequity that flow from disadvantage are provided for.

One of the things that I found disturbing during the course of this study was that it is pretty obvious that the essential things that students need to pursue the basic curriculum in schools are not being provided fully from public funding. I find it incomprehensible that we have a public education system - our children must compulsorily go to those schools unless their parents are able to make other arrangements for them and there is a basic curriculum that the students must pursue - and that the amount of money being provided by government is inadequate to provide the basic essentials that the children need to pursue those courses of study. It comes down even to things like pencils and paper in some cases. The amount of money that some of our schools are receiving, for whatever reason, is not sufficient to provide students with the essential pencils and paper and things that they need to pursue the normal course of studies.

I find that difficult to understand. It would indicate, perhaps, that our priorities in terms of expenditure of public moneys in the education system are not right. It is being spent on things that are perhaps to do with the gloss and the glitter of education rather than the substance of it. I submit that the Minister might have a look at that, because we inherit budgets. We are told that there is so little of our budget that is discretionary, and it goes on from year to year. It is developed by the bureaucrats and it comes before the Cabinet and this Assembly and we debate it. Perhaps we know very little about the underlying assumptions that have been made in putting that budget together.

I think it goes further than just the pens and pencils and paper. I think that we need to look at education in the 1990s, and when we are about to move into the 2000s, and redefine what it is that is essential for an educational institution to perform. I find it quite odd that, for example, photocopiers are not provided to every school. Considering the way the education system works today, with much of the material being reproduced and distributed to children, how on earth can a school operate if it does not have an efficient photocopying machine? Yet we heard evidence that P and C committees are raising money to buy photocopying machines to put in the schools that their children attend.

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