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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1049 ..

Mr Berry: No, Mr Speaker; you misunderstood me. I said that Mrs Carnell had apparently admitted that she had misled the Assembly, but we have not heard an apology yet. It usually follows when people mislead the place that they apologise or they get turfed out.

MR SPEAKER: I said that it was an inference and should be ignored in the answer. Continue with the rest of this supplementary question, if possible, Mrs Carnell.

MRS CARNELL: I think it is probably true that the whole jolly question was an inference. The bottom line here is that we have an open tendering process. Some of the people who got the tenders were from out of town and some of them were from in town. The particular contractors we are talking about brought five people from Newcastle with them and employed five Canberrans here, and now, for whatever reason, are subject to a TWU picket line which seems to have nothing to do with anything except that they are CFMEU members.

MR MOORE: My question is to the Minister for Education, Mr Stefaniak. Minister, in response to the Federal Liberal Government's - the Federal Liberal Government that I believe your Chief Minister described on radio as bastards - continued shifting of resources from public to private schools, the New South Wales Government, in a budget brought down yesterday, has moved to commit funds for 270 additional public school teachers. Why has the ACT Government taken no action to support its public schools by compensating for the Federal funding shift to the private sector?

MR STEFANIAK: I thank the member for the question, Mr Speaker. As Mr Moore appreciates, and other players in the education game as well, this Government has done a very good job in terms of maintaining funding for education over a very difficult period for the Territory. I think that has been conceded by groups as diverse as the P and C Council and the AEU. Obviously, we would always like to spend more money, Mr Moore. This Government has not only maintained education funding this time around in real terms, that is, the 1.75 per cent CPI increase, but also announced a number of other major initiatives, such as the literacy and numeracy testing for high schools and numeracy testing for primary schools - an additional $400,000 there - and an additional $600,000-odd increase for the student record-keeping system. That is crucially important, because that produces all the Year 12 certificates for our students.

We have also provided extra money for new schools such as Nicholls. We have provided an extra $1.3m for the teaching profile. We concluded a very satisfactory to all parties enterprise bargaining agreement late last year with our teachers. I think it is generally acknowledged, Mr Moore, that this Government has done a lot in terms of increasing education funding, in very difficult times.

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