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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 936 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Mr Humphries said that we were offered support by government on this issue. That is correct and we considered it seriously. We sought advice from the Clerk on whether it was appropriate to second an officer to work for the committee. The view of the majority of the committee - it may have been unanimous, but I do not think it was - was that it was getting to be worrying because it would be blurring the line between the government of the day and the committees of the Assembly. In what position would we be putting a public servant who was seconded to work for a committee? Would they be taking off their Public Service hat and not working to the Minister, which we understand to be the requirement under legislation, or would they be working as independent persons, as members of the Secretariat do for the committee system in this place? After considering the matter, the committee did not take up that offer for those reasons.

I was interested in the comments that Mr Humphries made on the GST. I was not familiar with the savings. It will be great if there will be savings. I know that the community is very concerned about cash flow issues with regard to the GST obligations on them. I will look in more detail at the information that Mr Humphries brought up today.

I need to respond to a couple of the issues that Mr Hird raised as well. On the matter of teacher shortage in the education system, he said:

The majority of the Committee makes a recommendation based on the concept of teacher shortages. There has been no basis provided for this assessment, apart from a throwaway line provided by the Australian Education Union.

It worries me that Mr Hird has said that because I understand that there has been a full analysis of the teacher shortage situation across Australia. Mr Hird went on to say:

Conveniently ignored is evidence given by the Minister that a recent advertisement for teachers in the ACT drew 1000 applications for 240 positions. This statement would satisfy most people that the teacher numbers position in the ACT at least, was not a problem.

It does not satisfy me at all; in fact, I think that it is insulting. If the Government had cared to look at the work that has been done on this issue it would know that a detailed analysis has shown that in some areas there will be a teacher shortage. It is convenient for the Government to pull out broad figures like that and say that there is no problem. The Government has not done the work, but I believe that Barbara Preston has done a full analysis of this issue and come up with real concerns about shortages of teachers, particularly in the areas of mathematics, science, industrial art and information technology, areas which this Government claims that it wants to pursue and for which it wants to have high standards in the ACT.

Mr Stefaniak, they are the areas in which shortages are projected after a full analysis. It is an analysis which your Government not only has not done but also discounts in this insulting way by just using broad figures. We need to have a full analysis done of this issue and I hope that the Government will reconsider the statement made today by

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