Page 1860 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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education system for our children that is the best in the country and certainly the best in the world. This is what we would like to do. Now we would like to talk to the community about it. For those opposite to sit there and think that you could have done this, gone and had individual meetings with schools, saying, “We think this and we think that; we are not too sure,” and that would have been an adequate way of putting forward a progressive and genuine vision for education—to think that it could be managed in little spots across the community—is just ridiculous. In the education community, it cannot be handled like that.
You need to go forward with a proposal and a vision, put it on the table and then have the discussion. You cannot have a discussion about what you might put if you were thinking about it. A little chat with a few different people here and there simply would create uncertainty and unrest in those communities. What we have put forward is based on rigorous analysis of enrolments and on the state of buildings. To think that this is about poverty, as Dr Foskey has tried to argue in her speech, is simply ridiculous. To think that we sat down and went, “Where are all the poor suburbs? We are going to target those schools,” is simply outrageous and is not supported by the evidence or the proposals that have been put forward.
Evidence of the fact that the government are genuinely consulting is the range of options that are being put out. We want to hear. We have several ideas in relation to this. What do people think about these ideas? We have a whole process of consultation to go through. We have the biggest single investment in public education, historic investment in public education, second to none, since this system was established. Nobody is talking about that. Some $110 million is going in to upgrade buildings. That does not even go to the additional money to build new schools and new infrastructure. It is $110 million going into upgrading existing school infrastructure and making sure that our kids have access to the best IT. There is $1 million for transition assistance.
Mr Barr: Each year.
MS GALLAGHER: Yes, $1 million is being put aside to support any transition arrangements that are required. Programs can be moved from school to school. There are particular programs. Mr Pratt, you obviously have not read anything about this; you just had to stand up and have a bit of a spray. As you have not read any of the material, you think that we have not assessed areas around niche programs, as he calls them.
If you took the view that he has taken, there would be included a number of schools that are not included in the proposals for consolidation. And that is the case. He had shadow responsibility for that portfolio for a couple of years. The government never went to the election saying we would not close schools. Every single time I was asked, as the minister responsible, to rule out potential school closures, I said, “No responsible minister from either side of politics could stand here and say that there would be no school closures in the future.” No government member has ever said that. It was not in our election policy.
I know the Liberals love reading what a spokesperson for education minister Katy Gallagher said. The context in which that question was asked was: did the government have plans to close any schools? We did not. We had no plans to close schools. This work was not even started. We did not just think we could close schools.
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