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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2234 ..

MR STEFANIAK: Did you really, Jon. I am very glad to hear that. I certainly hope that it is progressing along nicely now and we will see something soon, Jon. Hopefully, you and I will go for a swim in it at some stage.

I turn, firstly, to some of the comments made by Mr Berry. Mr Berry keeps harping about there being cuts in education, as does Ms Tucker. I think that, quite obviously, he is patently wrong. He might not be able to understand what a CPI increase is, but, to put it in incredibly simple lay terms, basic numeracy, this year the education budget for government schools rose by $6.5m. That is not a cut.

Mr Berry: What about last year, and did you replace the money?

MR STEFANIAK: Last year it rose by $5.2m, Mr Berry, for government schools. You can say what you like about the central office, Mr Berry: Our commitment was to maintain funding for government schools. Let us go back five years. As I recall, in the first budget there was about $203m or $204m for government schools. There is now about $265m for government schools. You do not have to be a mathematics genius to realise that that is a very substantial increase.

We had OFM do figures and they showed, disregarding this budget, that in real terms, over and above the CPI increase, over four years the education budget rose by some $26m. Just putting it really simply, during the second Carnell Government, last year, there was an extra $5.2m spent on government schooling. This year, there is to be another $6.5m. That is significant. That is not a cut. That enables us to do things such as provide new computer systems and fund very sensible and important initiatives, such as affirming the high school years. It is one of the few areas of government where there have been real increases each year.

For someone like Mr Berry, it might have been simpler if we had said, "All right, it is all too hard. We will maintain spending. If we spend $265m this year, we will do exactly the same next year". But we are not going to do that, Mr Berry, because that would be breaching a promise. We have promised to maintain expenditure in real terms during the term of this Government, and that is exactly what we have done. We spend more on education per head of population than every State in Australia. The Northern Territory spends a little bit more because of its geographic situation, the sparsity of its population and some of the problems unique to there; but, compared with every State in Australia, we spend more. For example, we spend much more than the State that completely surrounds us, New South Wales, and I have given figures in previous years in relation to that. That is why Mr Moore, who has a passionate interest in education as an ex-teacher, consistently supports this Government on that. He can see that we are indeed maintaining our promise, as can blind Freddy when it is put in terms of increased expenditure. The P&C organisations can see that, Mr Berry.

I would like a little bit of intellectual honesty in this debate, Mr Speaker, because, after five years, I am getting sick and tired of hearing a few members opposite saying that we are decreasing education spending. That is absolute garbage. I can recall a very honest interview on the ABC recently with Grant Battersby, the P&C president, who was wanting more spending. It was put to him that the Government would say that it had spent an extra $6.5m this year and he said, "Yes, they have. They have maintained CPI".

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