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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (14 November) . . Page.. 3643 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

socioeconomic circumstances of the communities they serve, and that money is for use at the schools' discretion to provide support in whatever area they see is needed.

Of course, the government does not require parents, for example, to pay a parent contribution, although I know that many parents do. But we have made it very clear, since coming to office, that we do not expect schools to require parents to pay that or to put undue pressure on parents to pay such contributions, but merely to advise them that contributions are welcomed if parents wish to do so.

Most extra-curricular activities at government schools are relatively low cost, but there are some that do have some costs and, where students are unable to participate because of their family's financial circumstances, I know schools make considerable efforts to involve those children in the activities anyway. That may mean subsidising the costs themselves, as a school, and it may involve the use of the school equity fund, which I referred to earlier.

MS DUNDAS: I ask a supplementary question, Minister. Could you please make available the average cost per student of extra-curricular activities offered in public schools in the ACT.

MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, if there is such an analysis, I am happy to provide it. But I will need to see if such analysis exists. So I will take the question on notice and get back to Ms Dundas.

Third party insurance

MR CORNWELL: My question is for the Minister for Urban Services, Mr Wood. I refer to an article in the Capital Times column in the Canberra Times about compulsory third party insurance. The article claimed that Labor MLA John Hargreaves pledged a law change back in August 2000. "I guarantee the price would go down,"Mr Hargreaves said at the time. In his speech on the urban services section of the 2000-01 budget-that is, the then government's budget-Mr Hargreaves said:

If we are supposed to be aligning ourselves with New South Wales, why does New South Wales have cheaper vehicle registration and compulsory third party? The government isn't rushing to bring us into alignment in this area because it knows it'd lose revenue over it.

Minister, do you intend living up to Mr Hargreaves' guarantee-publicly announced, as Mr Quinlan said in relation to another question a little earlier on-or is this another Labor broken promise?

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Cornwell, I touched upon this issue earlier when a question was asked about one of Mr Hargreaves' comments and I thought at the time that it was possibly out of order. I will just quote to you from page 526 of House of Representatives Practice. It says:

The underlying principle is that Ministers are required to answer questions only on matters for which they are responsible to the House. Consequently Speakers have ruled out of order questions or parts of questions to Ministers which concern, for example-

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