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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1747 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the middle budget of a three-year term is the opportunity for any government to flex some muscle and stretch its wings of vision. Despite all the advantages of increased and windfall revenue, it is clear that this Labor government has failed. It has too eagerly accepted the limitations of the status quo and rejected innovation and planning.

Of course, it is not true to say that the government has always been entirely free of aspirations. Before the last election they did promise to inject into education $67.5 million over the four years to 2005, including the $27 million from the free school bus scheme-a great idea that the opposition would warmly welcome. Sadly, however, these funds have not materialised. Even the $27 million has not been fully allocated, unless, of course, you count the additional $30-odd million that has gone into the department's administration and enterprise bargaining negotiations. Surely, Mr Speaker, not even this government would perpetrate such a sham, such a con, as that upon the ACT public.

The funding of bureaucracy is hardly "committing to education programs", as Labor promised to do at the last election. The funding of bureaucracy, Mr Speaker, is not the way to address the decade-long cumulative exodus of nearly 10 per cent of student numbers leaving the public school system for the non-government school sector. The funding of bureaucracy does little towards addressing IT infrastructure in school classrooms, supporting disability services in non-government schools or providing role model teachers to boys who are slipping through the curriculum cracks.

I do not want to sound too critical of the minister's achievements in this, her first budget. No opposition should oppose for opposition's sake. However, the government has achieved something in this budget. This government has admirably achieved the full maintenance of the previous Liberal government's projects and budgetary allocations. In fact, they have done almost as well as we could have done in administering the initiatives we started and they railed against when in opposition-lower class size programs, early intervention, support for students at risk, the non-government schools interest subsidy scheme, a centre for IT excellent, IT school grants, school-based management. Mr Speaker, the list goes on and on. These are all very good, very worthy programs, but all borrowed from the Liberals, all initiated by the Liberal government and all set out in the Liberal's 2001-02 budget.

Where is Labor's vision? It could be said to be in the very few "new"initiatives contained in the budget, but I and my colleagues on this side of the chamber are shocked at the tiny ineffectual amounts that have been allocated. For example, there has been an allocation of a mere $900,000 over four years to assist pre-schools in respect of insurance, cleaning and consumables. For the school excellence initiative, to assist in the evaluation of school performance and achievement, just $464,000 thinly spread over four years has been allocated to cover all government schools in the ACT.

The amount of just $1.5 million, again spread over four years, for reduction in class sizes for kindergarten to Year 3 in non-government schools, is appallingly little. Assistance to children at risk-a very worthy initiative-has attracted a paltry $225,000 in the first year. That would cover only six or seven counsellors.

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