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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2993 ..

One must question why the Department of Education, Youth and Family Services did not receive more resources when the Community Advocate informed Minister Corbell in late 2002 of the department’s non-compliance with their statutory obligations. What are the reasons why this non-compliance was not looked at in any way? Why were these issues not looked at when the Community Advocate first brought the issue of non-compliance to the director’s attention in February 2001? Surely there were loud enough alarm bells to at least signify that the department was underresourced.

There is no point in rehashing the whole child protection issue tonight but I am a little disappointed that it took the discovery of such a large and systemic failing within the department to get the government to more adequately resource child protection services in the ACT. I hope resources devoted to child protection services are now adequate and that those in charge of protecting children in the ACT can fulfil their most important duty—protecting children in the ACT.

MS GALLAGHER (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Children, Youth and Family Support, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations) (12.22): I will quickly go through some of the issues that have been raised in the debate tonight. We went through many of them in estimates, so I am going over some of the information I have already given. The opposition keeps raising the fact that there are increases in costs and fewer education places. As explained in estimates, that is largely to do with the costs of teachers’ salaries and pay increases.

In relation to the preschool issue that Mr Pratt raised, the places are there: it is about how many enrolments we have in that system. Where there has been an increase in relation to the enrolments in preschools—but not necessarily the capacity for places—the increases in costs, as I explained in estimates, are largely around the increases in salaries, which take the majority of the education budget.

Mr Pratt talked quite extensively about initiatives to retain good teachers, new teacher support, professional development, leadership in schools and mentoring of teachers. All those issues are employment related. They are less specific initiatives to be funded through a budget and more to be funded through the certified agreement—which, of course, is funded through the budget, but not as education initiatives. They are employment related initiatives. All of those issues, Mr Pratt, are contained in the new certified agreement which we hope will be endorsed by AEU members on, I think, 22 July when they return to work.

Around health and fitness, I take the point raised in estimates and again in speeches here today that there could be better coordination between the agencies looking at this. The point was made in estimates that sport is doing something, health is doing something and education is doing something through their various agencies. The health minister and I had arranged a meeting around better coordination of health and fitness to discuss that, but that will be delayed somewhat by the minister’s absence from work. In relation to some of the physical exercise comments, I think the ACT is very well placed. It is well placed because of, I believe, Mr Stefaniak’s initiative when he brought in mandated times for PE.

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