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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 458 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

In our Estimates Committee, which Mr Kaine drew attention to, are we managing to get a reasonable balance between how our money is spent in the series of departments? There are certain things that we expect, and departments expect, that simply do not happen.

Mr Kaine talked about photocopiers. We could talk about pencils, paper, pads - equipment that we, as members, have provided for us, but which is not provided in the area of education. We could go and look at the quality of chairs upon which our kids sit, and upon which the teachers sit for many hours each day, and compare those to the very seats that we are sitting on in this Assembly. Mr Speaker, a whole series of considerations come into this. What we do know is that parents, recognising these inadequacies within the schools, have worked very hard to try to deal with them, and that brings up the issue of inequity, which the committee has dealt with very effectively.

Mr Speaker, as part of my consideration of this Public Accounts Committee report, I have had long discussions with the P and C Council, who, by and large, are very enthused by the report. I think they believe that it could have gone further in terms of the subject levies, an issue that the committee has wrestled with and tried to deal with. If that were considered as a first step, I think that would be entirely appropriate. To again use the Air Force analogy, if somebody in the Air Force, or in almost any area of ACT government, is learning the skills associated with using a lathe, for example, are they forced to buy the metal and other equipment which they are going to use because they are going to make something that they are going to be able to take home? We have to look very carefully at this. Consider somebody who is in the Air Force who is part of the Catering Corps. Are they going to have to pay for the food that they are learning to cook? Of course they are not. We have an entirely different set of values.

Mr Kaine talked about how we take education through the 1990s and into the 2000s, and what we should be looking at. Certainly, those first steps have been taken. We have gone beyond a curriculum that is based on the three Rs to one that we have now very carefully set out and agreed upon with eight key learning areas. If we genuinely believe that we should compel our students and our schools to deal with the eight key learning areas, we should also fund those eight key learning areas. Granted, it is a question of priorities. We have a single bucket of money and we then have two choices. Either we find ways to raise more money or we shift our money around. I think the first step is to ensure that there are not areas within the ACT administration that are missing out in this area.

I would like to draw attention to one other example of where we do things very differently for our public servants in the education system than we do in other areas. When a public servant, say at class 6, is asked to go somewhere as part of their job they have certain entitlements. Those entitlements include overnight stay expenses and an allowance. What happens when teachers are away on an excursion with their students? I can tell you that in the vast majority of cases they contribute to the excursion out of their pockets in the first place - there are no expenses for them - and they wind up on duty 24 hours a day for the two, three, four or five days they are away as part of their work.

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