Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (18 April) . . Page.. 1051 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The issue here, Mr Speaker, is that this is really a contemptuous response to the Public Accounts Committee. A great deal of work was done by members of that committee to look at the issue of voluntary contributions, and rightly so. It was a significant election issue. We have a contemptuous response to the report. I believe that there is a question that members should consider very seriously. Are we going to accept a contemptuous response like this from this Minister, or from any Minister in fact, or how are we now going to resolve the issue of the Public Accounts Committee bringing down a report that has been endorsed by a majority of members of this Assembly and the Government giving a response that largely ignores the fundamental drive behind the report? Minister, I think you could have done one hell of a better job, even within some financial constraints. Instead, you have been totally dismissive. I think that that reflects an inadequacy as a Minister in this Assembly.

MS FOLLETT (11.25), in reply: There are two things wrong with the Government's response to the Public Accounts Committee's report on the voluntary parent contribution scheme. The first thing wrong with the Government's response is that it treats the report, and hence this Assembly, with the utmost contempt. The second thing wrong with it is that it treats the education system, which the report offered a real opportunity for improving, with contempt as well. On the first point, Mr Speaker, I agree with both Ms Tucker and Mr Moore that the Government has simply ignored, treated with disdain, the major recommendations of this report. This report, it has to be borne in mind, was drawn up by members of this Assembly representing all major groups in this Assembly. It was a unanimous report. It was a report that was informed by submissions from over 80 bodies in our community, among the largest number of submissions ever received by an inquiry.

It is a report that was informed by day after day of public hearings. It is a report that is thoughtful, careful, considered and unanimous in its recommendations. And what do we get from the Government? First of all, Mr Speaker, the new habit of the Government in responding to committee reports is to fling them on the table in the adjournment debate. That is what happened to this one. That is what happened to the Government's response to the Stein inquiry as well. It has to be said that that is a contempt of this Assembly. Any reasonable body of work to which the Government is responding deserves its own debate. In presenting the response in that way, the Government in fact curtailed the debate.

Mr Speaker, in responding - if you could call it that - the Government has, first of all, denied that there is a problem at all, saying, "What was the problem?". If you read this response, you would think that the voluntary parental contribution scheme was operating perfectly; that there are no problems at all; that all the schools have everything they want. That is a total denial of the way that this issue arose. It arose because of concerns expressed by the P and C associations and by the schools themselves. Those concerns were such that the debate on the voluntary parental contribution scheme formed a major part of the debate on election issues prior to the 1995 election. The concern was such that the current Minister for Education announced a policy that the voluntary scheme could become mandatory; that they could be compulsory fees. The concern was such that my own party announced that we would abolish the scheme.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .