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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1228 ..

Ms Gallagher: $19 million more than you were going to spend.

Mr Pratt: It should have been $27 million.

MR SPEAKER: Order, members! Mr Stefaniak has the floor.

MR STEFANIAK: You have had 18 months and you have not worked out how to spend that yet. So what arrant nonsense.

Mr Corbell admits that this report is more than just about finances. He also states it is about ideology. I think he is quite right-there are certainly some worrying ideological aspects in the report. I will come to those aspects shortly, especially in relation to the interest subsidy scheme which I saw operate over a number of years as minister, and I think operate quite well. But more of that later.

What has disappointed me as a former education minister has been the lack of any real new initiatives in education by this government over the last 18 months. In an 18-month period you would have thought you would have started to have some real positive initiatives, big initiatives, that would assist in the education of our children and in maybe identifying where things could genuinely be done better. There are always things that we can do better in crucial areas such as education and health. Quite clearly, there are things that can be improved upon. Yet what have we seen?

I am reminded of what happened in the first 18 months of the previous government back in 1995/96. By that stage we had introduced some significant improvements in physical education in schools, and Mr Pratt raised a point about growing obesity problems and health problems. I note the ALP was very reluctant about that one at the time and was somewhat obstructive. They showed considerable reluctance to support that very important initiative, an initiative that now needs building on further by the current government. I note in relation to that that some proposed fitness test assessments which would have built on that excellent initiative were scrubbed. Something happened with that tender; it just did not proceed. I am not quite sure what the circumstances were, but clearly we have seen no further action there.

In the first 18 months of the previous government, literacy and numeracy assessments were certainly well on the way to being bedded in, and the first ones occurred in 1997 for years 3 and 5. Again, this is an initiative which I note the current government is quite properly continuing. There might have been some argy-bargy about how best to report, and perhaps the reporting conditions that they are undertaking are not quite as good as we would like to see. Nevertheless, that initiative, which relates to years 3, 5, 7 and 9, is continuing. Of course, the IT assessments are continuing.

But what happened in the first 18 months of the previous government? We had immense opposition from the then Labor opposition in relation to this most sensible of initiatives, which parents in the government schools sector were very keen to see-an initiative which they have commented on very favourably, and indeed continue to do so.

So it does disappoint me, Mr Speaker, to see so few real initiatives under the present government. There has probably been a bit of window dressing, the odd initiative here and there and maybe the odd program which might have some effect.

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