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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (18 April) . . Page.. 1069 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The reality is that these things are happening, and we know that they are. We have real concerns about equity, and you have not addressed it at all in your response. You have a policy of school-based management which is, basically: Let the schools manage. They can even invest the money, if they want to. I wonder how many schools in Kambah and in the rest of the Tuggeranong area are going to have money to invest. Are we going to have in-service training for principals in the management of investment strategies and all that sort of thing? It is all a very interesting ideology.

Mr Stefaniak: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Relevance. Ms Tucker has been talking for the last two minutes on school-based management.

MR SPEAKER: Order! I do remind you of relevance, Ms Tucker. We are discussing the voluntary parent contribution scheme.

MS TUCKER: Thank you.

Ms Follett: Mr Speaker, on that point of order: The Minister's response, which he apparently has not read, at practically every page mentions school-based management. It is perfectly legitimate for Ms Tucker to address that issue in this debate.

MR SPEAKER: I do not uphold the point of order, but I do remind you of relevance, Ms Tucker.

MS TUCKER: Thank you. I would thank Ms Follett for making that point. It was something that I would have said. It is quite clear throughout the whole document that the whole principle of school-based management is part of their philosophy, and they are not ashamed of that; they are proud of it. We need to understand how you do assure the community that we are not going to get a situation like that in the UK and in New Zealand. Your response to this report - you have responded to it in the way that you have - has not given the community any such reassurance. For that reason, I hope that you will look at it again and see whether you can satisfy members of this place that you are genuinely committed to social justice and equity of access to public education.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (12.27): Mr Speaker, I want to make a brief contribution to the debate. I must say that, looking at the debates we have had in this place about education, you would not realise that this Government, on my calculations, has delivered the largest increase in education funding of any government since the first self-government budget was brought down. There is debate about whether this was an increase in real terms or whether it maintained the budget in real terms. I accept that there is debate about that, but the fact is that we have increased it by that amount.

Putting that to one side, I want to raise a philosophical question about this motion. Clearly, the Assembly is more than entitled to reject the Government's response to this report; it is perfectly entitled to do that. The Assembly can reject reports of committees if it wants to. The Assembly can reject government responses to reports. It is entirely open to the Assembly to do that. It can also take stronger action against a government which brings down a report or a response or does certain things that the Assembly does not like.

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