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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1224 ..

MR CORNWELL (continuing):

I do not have to look any further than the list of recommendations in the report. We have some 16 recommendations, and the majority of them relate to chapter 6, "Non-government schools", and this is not an even-handed approach. There are statements such as: "Quality control measures for the enrolment census for non-government schools that are consistent with those applying to government schools", "Strengthening registration and re-registration requirements to protect the safety and wellbeing of students and the quality of education provided", "Reporting to the ACT Government as a condition of school registration and re-registration"and "In the case of an application to establish a new school, evidence of demand and community support".

Is this in the spirit of what the government is trying to tell us is an even-handed approach of diversity and choice to education here in the ACT, Mr Speaker? I would suggest, sir, no. I repeat that the non-government sector has every reason to be very concerned, very worried, about what this government, along with its crossbench supporters, will do with this report.

Of course, we have to think very carefully about what the effect will be if the government follows through and achieves their equality approach. We would have a situation where the non-government sector would be virtually wiped out. In fact, I would go one step further and say that it will be wiped out. If some of these recommendations are imposed, the educational viability of non-government schools will be reduced to such an extent-because of the insufficient number of pupils whose parents can still afford to send them to the school as well as the school's inability to present the educational subject range-that they will be under threat of closure.

But let us consider what would happen if that occurred. Can you imagine the cost of fully funding education here in the ACT if an extra 38 per cent of pupils went back into the government sector? It would be a considerable cost. Yet this government is talking about providing to the government sector the best education that money can provide. I think with an extra 38 per cent of pupils coming in you may find that more difficult to achieve.

But I am more interested in the social costs that may occur. I would think there would be something like mayhem in some government schools. You would find that a great many parents would come into the government sector, and they, of course, would know about the virtues of the non-government sector-the virtues perhaps that sent them to the non-government sector in the first place. They, of course, would be requiring-indeed, perhaps demanding-that these virtues be adopted by the government school to which their children were forcibly moved. I do not know how well received that would be within the sector. That does not seem to me, Mr Speaker, to be a question of choice and diversity.

Many of the non-government sector schools are religious schools, be they Catholic or of other Christian or, indeed, non-Christian religions. How will this affect and how will this slot into the government school sector? Parents who have sent their children to a non-government school because they wanted their children to have the religious education that it provided, will quite properly require, indeed demand, that they have every entitlement to this sort of education. How will this fit in with the great ALP scheme of government schooling-exclusive government schooling, I would suggest to you, because that is the long-range plan?

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