Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1786 ..

Mr Smyth: It's interesting that you see Canberra Girls Grammar as a good school. Can't you nominate a government school that you think is better?

MR BERRY: and gives us great cause to be concerned about your understanding of the issue.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I ask the house to come to order, and I compliment Mr Berry for using standing order 42.

MR BERRY: Thanks for the compliment, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. It was said earlier in the day that we have got the safeguards. Mr Stefaniak pointed out, "No trouble. We've got the safeguards. This information won't get out." I do not know about that. I went out to Revolve, at the tip, and brought boxes of it back to the Assembly and shredded it. Guess what I found in it? Mr Corbell's records. And you reckon you have got the security to prevent this sort of information getting out. I found it at the tip. I paid five bucks for it. I picked up private information there on hundreds of kids, and you reckon you have got the system to control all of this. You have to be kidding.

A lot of weight was put on the survey that was conducted by the department. Picture yourself as a parent, just after dinner; you might have had a beer. Somebody rings up asking you a range of questions. They do not tell you anything about league tables, of course, the hazards that are created by them, what happens to schools and the problems they have had in England, the US and all those places as a result of them.

They do not tell you about the P&C Association or any of that stuff. But they ask you this question: how important is it that you receive information showing the percentage of students from each ACT school who achieved higher than the national benchmark in literacy and numeracy-is it very important, important or neither important nor unimportant? I reckon most parents would say, "I think that's pretty important." Of course, they would say they think it is important. They do not know what it is in the context of. This was a questionnaire that was going to give you the result you wanted. It could not help but give you the result you wanted.

Mr Stefaniak: You don't like the result, Wayne. That's all. I am sure you would be saying exactly the opposite if-

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The Minister for Education will come to order.

MR BERRY: One of the graphs in there shows that 93 per cent of people do not want this information to get into the media. So they put in place a system where even somebody who is only mildly astute, only mildly switched onto these issues-perhaps somebody like Mr Smyth-could make 50 phone calls and find out from a range of parents in various schools what their school's standing is. And all of a sudden, we have got a newspaper story: this school is better than that school and better than that school, and so on.

That is when the rot sets in and, once it starts, you cannot stop it. That is why we need to be overprotective about this issue right from the word go. It is the infatuation the government has with the open market and competition among institutions-schools, it

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .