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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Tuesday, 30 March 2004) . . Page.. 1319 ..

(4) Further, the chief executive must establish a comprehensive annual performance assessment and feedback system for principals and teachers of government schools.

As I said earlier today in my main speech on this debate, we believe that great value can be added to this bill by including a section or a series of statements relative to the points I have covered now. The responsibilities of principals and teachers, the responsibilities of the chief executive to those principals and teachers and the creation of conditions where teachers can undertake personal development will embrace further skills to reach out beyond simply curriculum teaching and empower principals to recruit their own teachers and dismiss as required. We believe that the Education Bill needs to embrace not only those statements but also the statements that have been made here today.

MS GALLAGHER (Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.24): The government will be opposing all of these amendments. There is a part of me that wishes the opposition spokesperson on education could occupy the position of minister for a day and have the AEU unleash themselves on him in respect of these amendments.

Mr Pratt: I don’t have to be a minister for that to happen, I can assure you.

MS GALLAGHER: I tell you what, if these amendments were enshrined in law, I would imagine that we would have every teacher on strike tomorrow or the next day, which would have enormous implications on our high quality education system here. In relation to your amendment No 4, the requirement for government schools to create safe teaching conditions is implicit in the ACT government schools plan and covered by existing OH&S legislation. The requirement is more appropriately placed in these guidelines. As the amendment relates to staffing of schools, it will impinge on enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations and impact on the resourcing capacity of the department, which changes over time. Of course, governments of the day may wish to make changes to staffing requirements. It is a largely operational issue and the government already has measures in place to address it. In relation to Liberal amendment No 5, I am not sure how you are going to measure that. Character development is not measurable and is a personal issue for parents.

As to your amendment No 6—resources being paid out of public money appropriated by the Assembly—all employees in government schools are public servants. I am not sure why you mean to have that in the legislation. Obligations of principals and teachers and delegation of staff recruitment are major issues that we talk over at length with the AEU. They do change over time, depending on the enterprise bargaining agreements in place, and really have no place in legislation—not in legislation that you want to see last longer than an EBA anyway.

Interestingly, in your speech in the in-principle stage you said that you would like to see what is in the government system replicated in the non-government system so as to be fair. None of your proposed amendments is in the non-government sector. So I am interested in your argument and how you explained that in the in-principle stage. In relation to amendment No 6, the Public Sector Management Act covers off a lot of what you are concerned about, things such as the ACT public sector code of ethics and, as I

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