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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4132 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

are counted, we have taken into account some views of the committee there, and that is obvious from the Government response. From the word go, I said that, if anyone had a better idea of counting for preschools for the next year, to let us hear about it. We use the same system you used when you were in government. Quite clearly, as a result of the Estimates Committee process and as a result of certain problems we ourselves identified this year, what is being put in place, and it is in the Government response, will improve that system immensely.

Again, I think a potentially very good operation has been torpedoed by your narrow ideological stance, and that is the Ngunnawal preschool concept. It is a very sensible concept where there is joint use of a building, and some very sensible procedures were to be put in place which now will not occur. I will announce now that the preschool will go ahead there; it is a government preschool. Again, because of your blinkered attitude, something very sensible, innovative and worth trialling has been torpedoed by you. Overall, it is a very good budget for education, and I think the lack of things you could substantially criticise indicates that that is so.

MR MOORE (3.08 am): Not quite so, Mr Speaker. I hear Mr Stefaniak saying that it is a very good budget for education, and indeed it is important that the budget is maintained in real terms. But there is a problem facing us in these financial terms, Minister, and it is that we saw under this budget an increase of funding for the non-government school sector, for private schools, and we hear from the Federal Government the suggestion of going towards what could only be described as per capita funding. Under that sort of process, what we will see is a very rapid division between the private schools and the government schools. It is going to be a great challenge for you, Minister, to ensure, if you consider it part of your responsibility, that our government schools retain the same standards as the other schools, that they retain the same standards as the private schools, as they do at the moment.

I am very proud of the fact that my own children attend government schools. I am very comfortable with that; but, when it comes to the crunch, if the schools become marginalised, parents will make the decision as to what is going to be the best for their children. That has to be their priority. Under such circumstances, some children whose parents cannot afford that or whose parents have a different set of values will find that they become marginalised and disadvantaged. That is going to be the real challenge for you, as Minister for Education, in the next budget.

MS TUCKER (3.10 am): Mr Speaker, we have not had the furore over the education budget that we had last year, but there are some areas in education that are in real need of resources, particularly in relation to support and such things as alternative programs for primary students with behavioural problems and programs for people who are on suspension. The safe schools policy the Government has announced is all very nice rhetoric, but these things are not going to happen without resources, particularly with school-based management coming in. I am concerned about the response this Government has made to the Social Policy Committee's report and recommendations on prevention of violence in schools, and the safe schools policy has not done a lot to reassure me.

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