Page 1858 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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Members interjecting—
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members! I have asked you to come to order three or four times. We have had interjections from both sides of the chamber. Mr Pratt has the floor.
MR PRATT: Thank you, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. Labor promised that they would not close schools. They said, “Vote for us. Vote Labor. You can trust us.” This is a government which, when it is convenient, will mislead the public about how it is going to govern. It harboured those votes to win that election. And then it stabbed that community in the back.
That is what you have done. You went to the 2004 election promising that you would not close schools and made a song and dance about the opposition’s announced policy on closures. You politicised the event. You seized what you thought was the political high ground. You had a crack at the opposition. You then made false promises to the community that you would not change schools. A mere 18 months later we have gone from zero closures to 39. That is measured government. And I speak sarcastically!
You people are pathetic in the way that you govern and how you deliver essential services to our community. You have shown that in your whole approach. If you were measured in the way that you manage this territory’s assets and its essential services, then you would have thought these things through, you would have perhaps taken the hard decisions earlier, and you would have let our community down with a softer landing.
My constituents in Brindabella are wondering what the hell is going on with a significant number of schools. Like Kambah and Tharwa, they are schools of good quality. This is a sad day. I support Mrs Dunne’s legislation. I hope that brings some commonsense to you in the way you govern.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Minister for Health, Minister for Disability and Community Services, Minister for Women and Acting Minister for Housing): (4.10): I rise to support Mr Barr’s legislation and not to support the legislation being put forward by Vicki Dunne. It was interesting to sit here and listen to members talk about the issue of school closures and the proposal that has been put forward by the government to the community for discussion. How convenient it is to completely drop out any mention of the $110 million investment being proposed in public education, to completely ignore the building of new schools in areas of growth and need in Canberra and to completely ignore half of what has been put on the table.
I take members back to the original discussion on the Education Act. At that time I was minister in charge of some of that. The rewrite of the Education Act started under Mr Stefaniak, it continued under Mr Corbell, and it lasted two years or so into my term as the education minister. It could have been in the first year.
That work was done, as I said, probably over five years. The discussion on that part of the legislation on school closures, I would have said, took almost a year to come to agreement on with stakeholder groups and the education community. That was the clause
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