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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (25 May) . . Page.. 1824 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

In the ACT for the last three years there has been tension in the education system caused by the approach that this government has taken. There were cuts at first from central office in the education department. Of course, this impacted on teachers. Teachers were forced to provide the resources within schools which had been withdrawn from them. As well as this, they have had to cope with the school-based management system and the difficulties that that has caused in the education system.

Nothing has damaged progress in the education system more than the government's failed wages policy. I must say that I am pleased that they have accepted, in the end, that it was a failure and provided supplementation for teachers' wages. But it should not have stopped there. Let us not forget Bill the Bursar Basher's efforts, when bursars were stood down as a result of a claim for a pay increase. Other workers who took similar action were not so treated. These workers were treated in this way because they were considered to be industrially weak. They were usually female, mostly part time, and usually in single positions around various schools-easy targets for this heavy-handed minister in this crazy industrial relations system which has been spawned by Peter Reith and John Howard.

It is no secret that there is one Reith-trained minister-Mr Smyth-in the Carnell cabinet. So we have this unfortunate industrial circumstance which has been pulsing like a festering boil in the education system over the period of this government's term of office. One thing that all of that has prevented is progress in our education system. What has happened in education in the ACT in the last five years of the Carnell government? Not much I would suggest. Education has mostly been marking time while the government gets on with its economic rationalist approach to dealing with its public servants.

I am pleased that the teachers have achieved their pay rise. I am happy to have campaigned with them to ensure that they got a decent pay rise, and that it was adequately supplemented in this year's budget. I do not think it was because of any love for teachers that this occurred. It was merely because the campaign was getting too much for the government-a government that went back on its promise to maintain teachers' funding in real terms throughout this term of office. I mentioned the central office cuts and the impact that had on teachers. I did not mention the cuts to the college system which, of course, was a breach of the Carnell government's commitment to the electorate before the last election.

I want to deal also with the CIT. Budget Paper No 2, The 2000-2001 Budget at a Glance, asks the question, "Where does your money go?" If you have a look at last year and this year in relation to CIT you will see that there is about an $8.8 million difference. You will also see that there was some supplementation because CIT could not maintain the standards set by the government last year, and five odd million was injected into the CIT. This year around a couple of million dollars is going to be taken out of the CIT. There is a threat in the budget paper that there will be no more supplementation for the CIT-not like last year; that is over, forget it. It says clearly that there will be no more supplementation, that there will be no more capital injections.

There is an implied threat there that the CIT will be worse off than the claimed couple of million dollars. The CIT has had to deal with the ideological obsession with privatisation by this government and the federal government. My young constituents have had their

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