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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4130 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

Really and truly! What a contempt! What an absolute nonsense! We are hearing daily from different people within the Stirling and Phillip communities of the complete lack of consultation and the major levels of concern with the management of that process. They did not have a principal for a year, yet it is said that the consultative processes include principals and school boards. How on earth can it take place? The Estimates Committee was specifically asking for something to be developed, not some twaddle about what is purportedly done already. The response goes on:

In relation to significant policy or staffing changes the Department also consults with the relevant staff associations.

That was not the information gleaned from the Education Union, and that was the level of concern that was raised with various Estimates Committee members. People were not comfortable with the consultation that has been going on. We are not confident at all that there is any process of thorough consultation going on that is consistent and yields the sort of information communities are comfortable with. This recommendation called for some further development and some new work to be done if the sorts of concerns we heard about during the Estimates Committee hearings were to be allayed. We find out that the Government is developing a community liaison manual to ensure a consistent approach across the ACT Public Service. We are hoping this manual is not based on what happens in schools, because what we saw during the Estimates Committee process certainly did not make us feel very comfortable.

The other major point I am very concerned about in this budget is that the Minister could give no reassuring answer to the question of whether it is the case that, every time you have a new policy initiative or some major problem you want to address, you are going to sell something. We were told in this budget that up to $1m was going to be spent on solving literacy problems. It did not quite turn out that $1m was going to be spent in this financial year. The interest from this $1m was going to be drawn on as a continuous fund to work with literacy, which would yield about $30,000 or so. That would perhaps give a part-time teacher - not quite the earth-shattering solution to literacy that might have been thought about.

That was not so much the problem as this notion that, if there is a new policy initiative, something has to be sold to make it happen. What is going to finance this literacy fund is the $1m that is taken from the closure of Charnwood High School. This is all perfectly agreeable, it seems, to some people; but if you start to think about the implications of that - and the Minister certainly could not follow this when we tried it on him - does this happen every time an expensive new machine is needed in a hospital? Say we needed some more intensive care equipment or some fancy new machine. I do not know the details, but I am well aware that a lot of very expensive machinery is needed in hospitals and needed quite frequently. If we follow this model, does it mean that every time we want to buy a major new piece of equipment we are going to sell a piece of land that the Health Department owns, or sell a school? What ridiculous nonsense it is to link the disposal of property to a new and ongoing policy initiative that is going to be

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