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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 2065 ..

MR STEFANIAK

(7.53): Mr Speaker, I rise, as much as anything, as an ex-minister for education who thought that this is a pretty good scheme that serves a very good purpose and has for many years. Maybe I am not surprised, anything is possible with this government, but I am disappointed that this Labor government is getting rid of a scheme that is so very similar to the sports loan subsidy scheme.

As I said in earlier debate, I am not sure which came first, this particular interest subsidy scheme or that one, which I think Mr Bob McMullan had a lot to do with starting, which certainly was going when we had our first Assembly and was a particularly good scheme so very similar to this. You, no doubt, would have noted that, Mr Speaker, being an ex-sports minister.

Just as, under the sports interest subsidy scheme, so many major sporting attractions in Canberra were built-and the hockey centre and the fields there are a particular case in point-I recall, certainly during my time as minister, a large number of very useful additions to schools and, indeed, even some new schools. This occurred not just at the three schools that Ms Gallagher refers to, but at a whole lot of other non-government schools: little primary schools, both systemic Catholic and otherwise, Catholic high schools and other high schools and, indeed, some of the bigger colleges such as Radford, Daramalan and Grammar, and even St Edmunds may have done something.

I always enjoyed looking through the list of the various schools that had actually been granted some money under this scheme, and they were very varied. I can recall a number of schools who would put in applications into the future. Some had been granted money in a particular year, others were in a queue. However, all of it served a very good purpose for a very small expenditure of money on behalf of the ACT government. It was excellent bang for your buck and I think it really helped our education system and the diversity of our education system.

I do not know what effect the false economy of getting rid of this scheme will have, but I suspect it will certainly have a very adverse effect on all of the non-government schools that wish to undertake building work. Basically, and especially with low interest rates, this scheme is an absolutely beauty, as is the SLIS scheme.

If you want a $300,000 loan for some new buildings around your school and you take a $300,000 loan out, you're paying interest on that. Up to 10 per cent of that interest is paid, I understand, by the scheme. Now, with interest rates as they are, that means that effectively your full interest is paid and that makes extra building work a very economic proposition for so many of our schools.

Not many of our non-government schools are super well-off and included in these schools which the Labor Party keeps trotting out as being well-off schools are Girls Grammar, Boys Grammar and I think you said Burgmann College. My understanding of Burgmann College is that it is meant to be a fairly low-fee Anglican school which has started up recently in Gungahlin. It certainly received money from the interest subsidy scheme. Actually, when I was a minister, I saw some allocation of funding there, some money from the Commonwealth.

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