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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 403 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

For Mr Hargreaves' benefit, I in fact wrote to him twice. I wrote to him on 28 December, advising of the monitoring and some other issues. He wrote back to me on 30 January by email and I again wrote to him on 1 February. So, in fact, I have written to him twice, so he might just like to check that.

I note Mr Osborne is not moving that amazing amendment, which I think is out of order, but I would have absolutely no problem with that, Mr Speaker, and in fact I would invite Mr Osborne, Mr Berry and Ms Tucker to come down too.

To take up a couple of Mr Wood's points, I would not actually intend to impose my perhaps old-fashioned sorts of ideas and experiences on anyone here. People have said during this debate, "You work in an airconditioned office." Well, I think most of us have worked in some very difficult, trying situations in our time: Mr Wood as a teacher, and I certainly can recall some very interesting and unpleasant sorts of circumstances in a number of roles, ranging from the army to even doing a bit of part-time teaching myself-

Mr Quinlan: Luxury!

MR STEFANIAK: So I am not going to go down saying it is sheer bloody luxury, as Ted Quinlan's interjecting, because we are talking about the here and now, and we are talking about this particular issue.

I am not going to go over the points I have indicated in terms of where to from here. People already know that I will be speaking with people from the school tomorrow. I answered questions yesterday on it. But I do want to say about school-based management that it is something-despite what some of those members opposite have said, including, I think, Mr Hargreaves-that has worked very well.

When we introduced our enhanced school-based management in relation to our 1995 election promise, there were some concerns on the part of some schools, naturally enough. We set up help desks. I think the number of schools that actually needed help coming to grips with it was surprisingly few, considering the types of concerns people opposite raised. More money has gone into schools. We have put more money in. Schools have got more money through the sheer flexibility they have had in terms of running their own affairs-doing things that they would not be able to do otherwise.

I am aware of one school-North Ainslie actually; I don't think they will mind me naming them-that has actually provided classes of 25 for their early age groups already, because they have used the extra resources they have from school-based management to provide extra teaching staff. I am aware of a number of schools that use the money they get through the flexibility of school-based management to provide extra teaching staff.

Now, on Mr Wood's scenario, and Mr Berry's and perhaps Mr Osborne's, that is quite clearly something that those opposite would expect the department to do, something the schools should never have to do. But it is a question of choice for the schools. They have chosen to go down that path because of the benefits they have received from school-based management. I just reiterate that there have been several schools-and they have been mentioned in this debate-that have gone down that path in terms of airconditioning parts of their schools.

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