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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1308 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

So, we are not alone. The Assembly may wish to consider whether the Bill should require the Chief Minister to inform the Assembly about requested amendments, endorsement of regulations or the decision to give notice fixing a day to effect the expiry of the Act; that is, the Assembly may wish to consider whether it wants to have a role in any changes to this Bill.

MS TUCKER (4.15): Mr Speaker, I seek leave to move a motion of censure of the Minister for Education and Training.

Leave granted.

MS TUCKER: I move:

That this Assembly censures the Minister for Education and Training:

(1) in relation to his handling of the consultation and review process about the future of the School Without Walls; and

(2) for misleading the community and the Assembly on this matter.

Mr Speaker, I am moving this censure motion today for several reasons. Firstly, the Ombudsman has clearly identified that the Minister has misled the Assembly in his claims that the review process of SWOW was open-ended, with a number of outcomes being possible. Secondly, the Ombudsman also identified that the department has misled the SWOW community, and the Minister must therefore accept responsibility for this. I am also moving this censure motion because of the mishandling of this whole process by the Minister. It reads like a comedy of errors.

The Ombudsman stated quite clearly that she had found that the ACT Department of Education and Training had misled the School Without Walls community. The Minister must be held responsible for this misleading. The department had made a commitment to SWOW to consult if there were any changes to occur to SWOW in relation to numbers of students or change of focus. She then found that a consultation process was carried out, which was deceptive because her investigations showed that the decision to relocate SWOW to Dickson College was made before the review of SWOW in June 1996. She also said that this evidence was not congruent with a public statement made by the Minister in the Assembly on 25 June, when he said that the decision would be based on the findings of the review.

Mr Speaker, it is obviously a serious matter to mislead the Assembly and the community in this way. It is interesting to note that the option to relocate SWOW to Dickson had been under consideration internally since at least mid-1995, with detailed policy development on how the option might be implemented. It is also interesting to note that,

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