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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1455 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The boarding house initiatives sound promising. This is a need that has been identified by the community. But I believe $2 million was allocated for a boarding house project in last year's budget too, so I would like to know whether that money has been spent. If not, why not, and why is the new boarding house initiative presented as new if we have not carried out last year's initiative. There are more questions for estimates, obviously.

Exit points from SAAPs have been identified. Support accommodation providers have been identified in the past as a need. However, while a boarding house for older women escaping domestic violence would assist them to move out of refuges, an urgent need as reported by the community sector is a refuge. These older women need specialised support-where to go, what to do next, how to begin to deal with the abuse, which the community report said may have been going on for a long time-or maybe a sudden change from someone they have looked after all their lives. A boarding house, as I understand the model, cannot provide that support. I look forward to finding out more about that through estimates.

Education is a particularly interesting area in this budget. We have had a major announcement about free school buses. There are really big questions about the amount of money being spent on that relative to the need within education. I understand that there will be some enthusiasm for this in the community because of the way it has been presented. People, of course, would like to save money any way they can. Having free buses will quite possibly be attractive to the community, but I think the community in Canberra is more sophisticated than that. The question that has to be asked is: did the government consult with the community about whether or not they would prefer to have free school buses or prefer to have that amount of money invested in our schools?

We clearly recognise that through the free school buses you are supporting a number of trends in education across Australia which not all people in the community are at all happy with. The notion of choice is that parents need to have the choice. As members in this place well know, the social consequences of making education fit the free market model are not desirable. There have been many discussions about that in this place which are obviously being ignored totally by the Liberals.

I take it as a responsibility to raise these broader questions. If you make all the schools compete with each other, you will have a couple of results. First of all, you already have a two-tired education system in some ways. You have the independent schools and the public schools. Clearly, the first thing that has to be noted is that the free school buses are going to be supporting the independent schools as much as the public schools. The government has not said that that is not the case. I am not saying that they are misleading. I am just pointing out that about 60 per cent-that is one figure I have been given-of the students who will benefit from the free school buses are children going to independent schools. That is fine. We understand that. That is the government's policy.

We then look at the other implications of the facilitation of competition between the public schools which obviously free school buses is going to assist quite significantly. It threatens the local neighbourhood school concept at all levels. I think we need to have a discussion about whether that is good or not. I have seen social analyses from other countries showing that the middle-class upwardly mobile families choose to move from school to school. There is obviously competition and advertising between schools trying to attract fee-paying students to their schools. You have this competition. You have

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