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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1789 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

conservative governments. This free school bus scheme offers nothing to families who send their kids to neighbourhood schools.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hird): Order! I would like to give guidance to the speaker in respect of standing order 59, anticipating discussion. I would ask the member to be aware of that standing order.

MS TUCKER: This free school bus scheme offers nothing to families who send their kids to neighbourhood schools. It offers nothing to families whose kids move on to their nearby high schools. It makes it easy, on the other hand, for kids to travel further to government and non-government schools across town. It supports a continuing and destructive competition between government schools. It provides an encouragement to families to send their children to private schools.

This free school bus scheme builds on this government's policy of creating a two-tiered education system. Middle-class aspiring high achievers are encouraged to shop around for the best their money or our money can buy, increasingly in the independent school system but also in those better resourced and better located government schools, while kids from families without a history of educational achievement and kids from families that are socially isolated, economically disadvantaged or dysfunctional are simply left behind. Children who have a disability are also not going to be faring so well.

Compared to $27 million to facilitate this shopping around, we look at an almost equal amount on initiatives in education. I see and acknowledge that the government has put some money into education in this budget, with the reduction in class sizes and the adolescents program, which from memory was $900,000-odd, and the $800,000 for students at risk. But the point is that this amount could have been doubled if this free school bus scheme had not been initiated.

The only argument put by government in the Estimates Committee was that it supports the notion of freedom of choice, but freedom of choice, as I have already said today, is a spurious argument when it fails to take into account the real complexities of people's lives, and in particular the relationship this notion of freedom of choice has with growing inequity in our society. For some people even getting to school is a real achievement. For some people the disadvantages of their living situation, their health, the relationships they have grown up with or are trapped in, and their own experiences of life militate against the free choice of the more affluent or fortunate.

The question in essence is who gets to choose and how real are their choices. Equality of opportunity, fair and equitable outcomes in education, as in health and all other basic social services, do not come from everyone simply having freedom of choice. They come from the universal provision of accessible and high-quality community and government services that are well resourced and responsive to need. Unless the basic issues of access and equity are addressed across society, freedom of choice is simply code for the rights of the privileged to look out for themselves.

It is also worth considering how key stakeholder groups would spend this $27 million, given the freedom of choice to do that. The AEU has pointed out that $27 million would lower class sizes from kindergarten to year 3 to 21, the years most critical in terms of giving kids at risk the best chance of success, and the rest of primary and high schools

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