Page 1899 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005
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you like to call it—a government for whom gesture is more important than substance, for whom monuments, usually to their own self-importance, are more deserving of public money than businesses or other institutions, which are the real sources of wealth and progress in our community.
I will illustrate my point by references to the portfolios of education and training and the environment. The Stanhope government has proudly proclaimed as one of the budget highlights its commitment to strengthening Canberra’s economy and community by targeting vocational education and training and funding areas of skills shortage. To this end, it tells us that the government has allocated an extra $3 million over the next two years to meet the increasing levels of skill shortages. This, Minister Gallagher notes in a media release, is in addition to $3.1 million provided in the second appropriation and $2 million increase the previous budget.
Let us look at this in detail. What this means in real terms in this coming financial year is a new allocation of a mere $1.5 million. The rest is either recurrent funding or, to quote budget paper No 4, one-off funding which is recorded in the 2005-06 budget as an offset. That is all—$1.5 million. By comparison, to take a random example in the education portfolio, the government is planning to spend $1.4 million on interactive whiteboards in government schools. Does this mean that, for Ms Gallagher and Mr Quinlan and Mr Stanhope, vocational education and training is worth only half as much as a classroom gimmick?
But that is not all. According to the budget papers, in the past financial year overall spending on the VET sector has decreased by $2.1 million. In addition, training commencements are down by 800 and the number of hours available for competitive purchases in VET services has been reduced by 100,000. Clearly, the Stanhope administration is taking pot shots at vocational education and training.
What is the reason for this? On 7 April in this place, in her answer to a dorothy dixer, Ms Gallagher amply demonstrated that what is really at stake here is not the interests of existing or potential VET students, training providers, or the skills shortage in the ACT, but an ideological obsession with the national training agreement and Australian technical college initiatives, both of which she and her government are going out of their way to sabotage.
Doubtless she will claim that these would-be VET students and trainers who miss out on Stanhope funds can appeal to the commonwealth to help. This, after all, is what Ms Gallagher is reported to have said about students with disabilities in non-government schools who are not, despite what she said in question time today, covered by her much vaunted initiative for student-centred appraisal of needs processing.
Ms Gallagher: Yes, they are, Mrs Dunne.
MRS DUNNE: That is not what you told the CO on Tuesday. This government apparently can afford to spend $2.391 million on the provision of communication support for the Chief Minister’s Department, but it will provide not a single additional cent for students with disabilities who happen to be in non-government schools. Do we know what “provision of communication support” means? To quote the budget papers, it covers “information and protocol services for the Chief Minister” and “delivery of key
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