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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1257 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

that he cannot see the point we are making-that a report which seeks to make recommendations on funding priorities and methods and systems of funding should not also involve comments on program priorities and program expenditures. Perhaps Mr Corbell could lighten up and get a little more broadly reflective on these issues.

Going to Mr Corbell's attack, as he called it, on elite schools, his attack is fundamentally flawed, Mr Speaker. This emotional assertion made by him in attacking the so-called elite schools sidesteps the screaming reality that some of these schools have worked very hard for decades-in some cases, they are based on institutions going back a century or more-to fund and develop their schools.

If they have done that, should they be penalised? Should governments penalise these types of schools? Should the families who choose to send their children there be penalised because those schools have simply worked very damn hard, using their own initiatives, to fund their systems? The fact that some schools have raised and banked funding, and then used volunteer community school support labour to save on costs-putting the money aside instead-is to be lauded, but Mr Corbell is simply not equipped to understand that point. He reverts instead to the politics of envy.

I would like to point out where we think the government could have allocated that $7.4 million in the financial year 2001-02. There was sufficient funding in that bag of gold. It is fine that the $19.6 million was spent. However, we would say that the remainder of that $27 million could have been spent, and that there were areas which could have been easily identified in early 2002 which were screaming out for attention.

We believe the $7.4 million would make a very strong start on addressing the following types of areas-firstly, funding for a teacher performance-based pay system. In fact, you could almost introduce about 200 teachers to the system over two years. Secondly, funding could be introduced to trial a disruptive children-at-risk program, incorporating two district support units, to lighten the burden on schools with major problems. There could be separation of students and special classes with specialist teachers, incorporating Dairy Flat if necessary.

Thirdly, we believe there is enough funding there to go a bit further for the Catholic systemic school system to continue on with its ITC program. Fourthly, we believe funding would be available to start doing something about support for children with disabilities in non-government schools, to try to spread that burden-to spread that load to allow non-government schools to pick up their responsibility to take care of children with disabilities.

Fifthly, we believe funding ought to be applied, and that there would be enough in this bag of gold of $7.4 million, in concert with the stuff I have just spent, for a boys' education trial. How about selecting a cross-section of schools to conduct core subject segregated classes?

The next point is bushfire education. We have talked about that before, in this place. Beyond that, how about funding for obesity and fitness, trialing activities-a Robert de Castella type of fitness assessment program, and funding for about five new full-time PE

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