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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1933 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Teachers could easily gain 25 per cent or more by a productivity trade-off, but only by damaging their students. They know the damage that increased class sizes cause. Mr Speaker, I have taught classes of 45 and more. The last time was with Year 11 students when I was teaching in Canada. I can tell you that you can get a class like that through, but you cannot look after the bottom end of that class in a fair and ethical way. You simply cannot give those students the attention that they deserve and meet their needs. That is more true the younger those students are.

Mr Speaker, the disappointing thing about Mr Stefaniak's speech was that it reflected again and again the fact that he just does not understand the issues that are driving the teachers to keep these bans in place. Until he makes a real attempt to understand exactly what the issues are and to understand teachers' concerns, he does not have Buckley's chance of resolving this issue. But the ultimatum is out there. I hope, Mr Stefaniak, that you will get a message from it. I hope that you get this other message: When you lose your amendment - that this Assembly expresses its concern at the impact on the school community in the ACT of the bans on certain activities put in place by the Australian Education Union and calls on the Australian Education Union to lift the bans immediately - it should send a message to you that we are not pointing the finger at the AEU; we are pointing the finger at you - the Government - to resolve this issue. This Assembly believes that the problem is not the AEU; it is you. It is you who do not understand the damage that you are doing to children. Get off your butts and do something about it.

MS McRAE (4.31): The point of this motion, and why it was put under Mr Berry's name, is that it refers to the management of this issue as an industrial relations issue. There are several points I want to make around that. To begin with, the reason why there is so much disquiet is that false promises were made. The impression was given from the very beginning that this Government was going to maintain education funding in real terms. Then we found out in the budget last year that promises by this Government do not mean very much. Ever since then, a deal of bad blood has been established between the education fraternity and the current Government.

What is of major concern at the moment, though, is Mr Stefaniak's intervention, which is setting different sectors of the community against the teachers. I realise that this is very tempting. I realise that this is a very nasty dispute that is taking a long time to resolve. But the inclusion of other groups in it is what makes this now a very bad move by the Minister in terms of industrial relations management. To ask other groups to come and assist in areas that teachers have clearly demarcated as their own areas of responsibility is to divide the community. The consequences of this are far more serious than what will be the inevitable outcome. As Mr Stefaniak rightly said, some sort of solution will be brokered in this. But the question of major concern at the moment is: At what cost? For the Minister to choose to be concerned about the sporting community, interstate matches and particular areas for which the teachers did or did not take responsibility marks a gross level of insensitivity to the consequences of his approach for the longer-term good of the community, where some community sporting groups are going to line up with the children and some of them are not. They are being drawn into a dispute which is not of their making and not of their concern. The Minister would have been well advised to stay far away from that.

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