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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 733 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

There may be appropriate places to put young unemployed people where training could possibly not be provided, although I would argue because I have an ideal which says that if you want to help young people who are presently unemployed to become employed you actually train them. You don't just make them pick up litter, or pull out weeds, or walk around with poison on their back and call it landcare work. I would say that if you are genuinely committed to helping young unemployed get employed you provide training, but there are some particular work for the dole programs which would not have such a critical imperative for training to be provided. This is not the case in a school environment where you are dealing with children, so there was a necessity to see training. That was basically acknowledged and the training was going to be done, as I said, by the people already working in the school, and they were not happy about that.

What was absolutely clear through this committee was that this scheme was poorly thought out. The overwhelming evidence that came from people across the board, not just the Australian Education Union, was that this was not in the interest of the young people who are unemployed and it was not in the interests of the professionals working in the school situation. The Government had not consulted properly on this and it was therefore not to be supported. That is why the recommendations are as they are in this report. They are supported by evidence from a broad range of stakeholders. This is not about ideology being under some kind of attack. Ideology is fine. Ideology is what we work with and come from when we work in this place. Mr Osborne comes in here with a set of values and principles that he works from. What is wrong with that? You do not say, "It is just ideology". He has a right to have those views, as we all do, whether we are representing parties or individuals.

Mr Osborne: What are you getting stuck into me for?

MS TUCKER: I am not. I am saying you have the right. I am not getting stuck into you, Mr Osborne. I am saying that you have the right to do that and there is nothing wrong with that. That is how we work in this place. So it is really quite concerning to me that Mr Stefaniak, instead of responding in detail to this report, is just throwing meaningless phrases about as if that, somehow, is going to convince people that his case is right. It does not. To me, it just makes his case look even worse.

I noted an article in the Canberra Times quite recently. I will go back to the issue of the place of committees and what we do with the committee reports. That article said this:

Basically what happened in the Federal Parliament was that there was a decision taken because a staff member had inappropriately put a draft report into the Minister's office.

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