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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1857 ..

Proposed new clause agreed to.

Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Debate resumed from 18 February 1997, on motion by Mr Stefaniak:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

MS McRAE (4.48): The paper which I refer to and which is referred to here, although not dated, was circulated much earlier this year and was essentially a precursor of draft guidelines on the registration of new schools in the ACT. I rise to commend the Minister for paying attention this time, because there was a motion on the notice paper before this paper came out; there was considerable concern about the implications of the removal by Dr Kemp, when he came into government, of the small schools' protection that was in the Federal Government's domain. People were instantly rightly concerned that, as a result of the abolition of the new schools policy, we might be disadvantaged in the ACT and find that many schools could set up without the proper checks and balances that we have laboured so hard to put in place.

All I need to say about this paper is that I note that it did foreshadow the publishing of draft guidelines. We have all received those draft guidelines from the Minister now, and I look forward to seeing the public comment and the consultation process that is to happen with those. We can conclude the debate on the maintenance of quality and integrity in the education provision in the ACT when those comments have been gathered and a proper set of draft guidelines for a new schools policy is available for the ACT.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education and Training) (4.49), in reply: I thank Ms McRae for her comments. The draft guidelines are proceeding. They will go before the Ministerial Advisory Council on Non-Government School Education and then come back to the Government. I have just one point to make in relation to this that is worthy of note, and it is a bit of an update. As members may be aware, there was some publicity in the press in relation to it, but there was a meeting of State and Territory Education Ministers in Darwin on Thursday, 12 June. There was considerable discussion there on the Commonwealth's enrolment benchmarking adjustment, amongst other things. I think it is unfortunate that the Commonwealth has not seen fit to provide equal increases to the States and Territories for government schooling. Indeed, Education Ministers from every State and Territory coalition government came out very strongly in their commitment to public education. We were very critical of the Commonwealth's proposed enrolment benchmarking adjustment, and I am pleased that now the Commonwealth has agreed that this concept needs further clarification and discussion.

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