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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (2 March) . . Page.. 509 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

in to do certain tasks for which they are paid. To suggest that they are incapable - that there is some problem in their being able to supervise keen, young unemployed people here in the ACT who want a go, who want to get some useful experience and who want to do something that will not only help their local community but also help them get a job when they leave the project - and to say that the people in the schools cannot properly supervise them, or that they need massive amounts of training to do so, is absolute nonsense. That does not occur when young - and not so young - people come into our schools to assist with projects. (Extension of time granted) In instances not dissimilar to this, we have not seen this occur with volunteers. We have a number of volunteers and they are very welcome.

The Government took on board the community concerns that the young people would be interacting with children and assisting with literacy and numeracy tasks We have a wonderful program at Charnwood Primary School, where young unemployed people aged about 16, 17, 18 or 19 are helping out the class teacher - it is an open plan set up - with literacy and numeracy for Year one kids. It is a very effective program. The teacher was very happy to have the assistance and it helped those young people, who were ex-students of the school. We are not even doing that in this program because of concerns raised by groups such as the P&C.

Another criticism levelled by the committee was there was not enough consultation. At the end of the day, we have seen, from the word go through to what we have finally come up with and proceeded with this year, that there has been a lot of consultation, including a lot of points bandied about by this committee. If nothing else, perhaps this series of committee hearings was a good thing. It enabled the scheme to be modified. Out of all the problems that might be associated with this report, some good has come about.

The Government was concerned about some of the information provided by the committee. The department was ignored and there was not proper balance in this report. For example, a great deal was made of the relevant information on insurance. The report completely excluded relevant information detailing the comprehensive and fully adequate insurance cover provided by the Commonwealth and ACT governments. That is absent from the report.

Also there was some information provided by the department on the development of a detailed selection process. I do not know that that was given due weight by the majority of members. The majority of members also made some unfounded criticisms of consultation, but apparently did not appreciate the need to develop the project in consultation with the schools, which is an essential part of how it will operate. The majority report also failed to acknowledge that the timing of the inquiry seriously inhibited the ability of the department to develop selection procedures.

There are a number of problems with this report. But, to summarise, the project will go ahead. A number of schools are keen to do it, despite a lot of the furphies put up and a lot of unreasonable, ideological objections made by a number of organisations with vested interests. I really cannot understand them because similar organisations did not have - - -

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