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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1311 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This is a damning report on how this matter has been handled, and the Minister deserves at least a censure on the matter. If it was earlier in the term of office of this Government, I believe that a want of confidence motion would be more appropriate. I can assure the Minister that this will be an election issue, that it is not acceptable to come into government claiming to be open and consultative and then to continue to be secretive, deceptive and manipulative of community input. The Ombudsman stated that, in her opinion, this lack of transparency constituted defective administration.

The Ombudsman also concluded:

... the department's record keeping practices are inadequate to ensure proper recording of decision-making processes and communication with stakeholders.

Mr Speaker, there is a particular irony in this as a major complaint against the department, because it was a major complaint of the department against the School Without Walls. I do not know how many times I heard this Minister say, "That school does not keep good records". Are we going to close the Department of Education? It apparently does not keep good records either.

It is also interesting to look at the Government's response to the Social Policy Committee's report on the School Without Walls. One has to wonder how accurate their calculations are or whether, indeed, there is again an attempt to misrepresent the facts. In their response to our report they claim that, at the beginning of the 1997 school year, there were 34 students enrolled and that, of those students, 22 enrolled at Dickson. This does not concur with the computer readout dated 7 February, which shows 50 students enrolled, 25 of whom were new students, many of whom had previously enrolled in the Dickson program. It was these students who moved to Dickson when the facility opened on 17 February; that is, on census day, 19 February, SWOW's enrolment stood at 34.

The department was correct in saying that the enrolment on census day was 34 but was quite incorrect, it would seem, in its claim that, of those 34 students, 22 subsequently moved to Dickson. The students interested in enrolling at Dickson had already left. The majority of them could not even be seen as SWOW students, as they were actually enrolled in the proposed new program at Dickson, not at Braddon SWOW, and were there only because the department decided not to open Dickson, due to the court injunction keeping SWOW at Braddon until a court hearing could investigate the validity of the proposed changes to SWOW.

I notice that Mr Moore made statements to the media on 14 February, expressing his concern that these students were unwittingly caught in the dispute over the relocation of SWOW. He said that a number of children below school leaving age had enrolled recently at SWOW, expecting a sensible alternative education program outlined at a meeting at Dickson last year. Mr Moore was referring to students who were already committed to the Dickson program but who were sent to SWOW at the behest of the department. When the department decided to open Dickson on 17 February, it was the department that instructed those students to then move to Dickson. What a farce it has been, Mr Speaker!

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