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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 727 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

education system. The fact of the matter is that, if anybody has a view which is different from this Government's, it is an ideology. If it is this Government's view it is a positive view, not an ideology. Curious, curious, curious!

This debate is, in many ways, a philosophical one about whether the victims of society should be punished for their position in society. That is where this all came from. It has its origins in the philosophy of the Federal Liberals and the Liberal Party generally that people who are on the dole are in some way bludging and need to be punished for it, that we need to force them to make a contribution to society because society has let them down. That argument has no meaning to it. It is stupid for a political party to form the view that the people who have not done well in society ought to be punished as a result thereof. That has flowed into this work for the dole program.

I admit that some of the efforts of the Government have been watered down, but at first it was clearly a philosophical position which drove this matter. All of the evidence that I saw come before our committee indicated that. This matter was never well thought out. A government that said it had a strong commitment to consultation did not have one. Of course the AEU would have a position on this matter. They have as their membership over 90 per cent of the teachers in government schools. Why would they not have a position on this matter? Their members, who have a commitment to quality public education, are the ones who are going to be sidetracked by this philosophical position of the Liberals opposite. Why should they not have a position? Why should they not raise questions about the effectiveness of this proposal?

Let us get to the people who would be participants in this scheme. Nobody objects to people who are in unfortunate circumstances because society cannot provide them with a job finding a better way forward. But it has to be real. It cannot be phoney and it cannot be something that is put in place just to look as though the Government is making these people who do not have jobs make a contribution to society because they receive unemployment benefit. The philosophical divide is wide, but the practical divide is wide as well. The youngsters who were to go through the system under the proposal put to the committee on which I serve were not going to come out of the system any better equipped, other than by being able to say that they had some work experience at a school. What about the workers at the school that are going to have to supervise these people?

Mr Humphries: They do not mind.

MR BERRY: The problem is, Mr Humphries, that nobody asked them. But when they did find out, it was demonstrated that they did mind. For example, janitors are not trained to supervise people who are in work for the dole programs. The people who were punished by Mr Stefaniak and had their pay cut because they took minor industrial action - lowly paid female bursars in the schools; we all remember what Bill the bursar basher did - were not asked whether they minded supervising work for the dole participants. At first, the people who could not find a job were going to help out with literacy and numeracy programs in schools. That was the first plan. That went by the wayside after a while. The Government soon worked out how ridiculous that was.

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