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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Tuesday, 30 March 2004) . . Page.. 1269 ..

and accountabilities. We really need to ramp those up wherever we can. We need to get to the very heart of those issues.

As I said, there will be many amendments brought forward and we will debate those individually. I think that we need to enshrine principles of diversity and choice in both sectors. This is not about focusing on one or the other. It is about schooling for all. The ACT Liberal opposition is standing here today talking about the whole, not just part. We need to have a bill that better reflects that.

We need to be pursuing excellence. As I said, diversity and choice are crucial in, for example, boys’ education, elite performance classes, and timeout classes with difficult and at risk students. We have heard some mention today about the Adolescent Day Unit and the vital role that it plays. Schooling is taking on a very different shape to what it was when I was at school and when perhaps others in this place were at school. So we need to better reflect that. Vocational education training curriculum, pre-vocational subjects and flexible and creative curricula are huge areas that we need to further develop and keep working on. This is a good step forward.

I am certainly hoping that some of the Liberal opposition’s amendments, put forward through Mr Pratt, will be considered and not rejected out of hand or pushed to one side. I urge members to look very carefully at some of the things that are perhaps reflected in amendments by other members too.

Some of the points that are important to the Liberal opposition are to build in principles which will demand greater transparency and accountability for schools. We do live in an age where people’s expectations have been raised. We have very much raised the bar. People believe—quite rightly so—that they are entitled to be able to see what is actually happening with their students. People want to be able to see where their tax dollars are being used and the effectiveness of that.

I did talk about pursuing excellence. We need to be continually raising standards by giving principals and head teachers the right to recruit their teachers and to let them go. Schools are very much run now like businesses. Each of them has that capacity be a self-contained unit whilst spinning out into the community. But I think that head teachers and principals really need better control over what they have at the moment. They know the needs within their school. They know the demands placed upon them better than anyone else. If they are not in the position to be able to make those decisions it becomes very hard to operate like a business. It is like employing somebody for a business, for example, at arm’s length.

When we talk about rights, we should remember the rights of the community are far more important. When we talk about teachers or principals not having the right to recruit and let go of teachers as they need to, we need to be very sure about our reasons, about why we are doing that—that we are not just politically motivated.

I will conclude at that point, Mr Speaker. I am looking forward to the debate on this bill, and again reiterate that we all need to be mature in this place. Just because something wasn’t “our” idea, we should be open to the suggestions and ideas of other members in this place.

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