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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 1 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 67 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

The Labor Party and the Labor government take the view that it is far better to be investing these funds inside the school gate, where they will actually make a substantive difference to the great majority of students. That is the course of action that I have embarked upon since Mr Stanhope's election as Chief Minister and the appointment of the ministry.

Mr Speaker, about three to four weeks ago I advised the Department of Urban Services and the department of education of the government's intention to wind up this scheme. The school student transport scheme will cease at the end of the 2001 school year. This is, of course, in line with our commitment.

The funding freed up by this decision will be spent entirely within the school gate. Importantly, it will be spent on a number of important initiatives. First of all, it will be spent on reducing class sizes in year 3. As you would be aware, Mr Speaker, this important commitment, which will ensure better educational outcomes for students in the early years of school, will result in an additional 55 teachers being employed for the commencement of the 2003 school year.

In addition, the government has made a commitment to spend $3 million as a one-off capital grant process for government and Catholic schools to deal with information technology support. This will help those schools address the immediate concerns they face with capital requirements for IT in their schools. I think this is a far better investment than spending money on a free school bus scheme for only about a third of the ACT school population.

MS MacDONALD: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Can the minister advise the Assembly of the initiatives the government will take to provide affordable public transport for low income families and all students?

MR CORBELL: Thank you, Ms MacDonald. Measures are in place for families on low incomes. Low income families-that is, those families who are in receipt of a pension or hold a health care card-will be able to access free school transport through the targeted student transport scheme. This scheme commences in term 1 of next year.

So for those families in genuine need there is the capacity for students to get to and from school free of charge. There are distance criteria in relation to this scheme. You need to live more than one kilometre away from a primary school or more than two kilometres from a high school, college or equivalent year 12 courses such as those offered by CIT. We have not adopted a blanket approach but have put in place this criteria to target the areas of need.

Those families who previously had access to the free school bus scheme, who are not eligible because the scheme is no longer in place, and who equally are not eligible for the concession arrangement, can access a single zone bus fare system for their children at a cost of $50 for a term ticket or $10 per week. If they buy the term ticket, the cost is about $1 a day. That is very good value for catching public transport. We think that is a good balance between addressing need and focusing the funds from the free school bus scheme into our education system.

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