Page 1941 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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With this government, if you have a boil, you cut off the whole leg, and that is also why I think the government proposes to close almost a quarter of our schools and preschools: Hackett, Reid, the Causeway, Chifley, Curtin south, Rivett, Weston, Flynn, Giralang, McKellar, Cook, Melba, Higgins, Holt, Page, MacArthur, Mt Neighbour, Village Creek, Gilmore, Isabella Plains and our two villages Hall and Tharwa. The government has slated 15 schools to close—Melrose, Rivett, Weston Creek, Flynn, Giralang, Mt Rogers, Cook, Higgins, Holt, Mt Neighbour, Village Creek, Gilmore, Isabella Plains, Hall and Tharwa—and it plans to close two secondary schools, one being Dickson College and the other Kambah high.
So the government plan to close no fewer than 39 schools and preschools. Yet this is a government that, whenever previous governments attempted to do this, were outraged and always stood in the way of any school amalgamations. Now they are going to close 39 schools and preschools. Consultation after the event—the closures have been announced—in a very detailed way as to what is going to close by the end of this year, next year and 2008. This wholesale destruction is what the government calls renewing our schools. But perhaps this just applies to the nine schools that will also amalgamate.
MR PRATT: It is a bit like Stalin’s scorched earth policy.
MR STEFANIAK: It is a little like that, Mr Pratt. Narrabundah primary and Red Hill—my old school, actually—are going to amalgamate. Yarralumla primary will amalgamate with Forrest primary, Lyons primary will amalgamate with Curtin, and Woden high will amalgamate with Alfred Deakin high. Chisholm preschool will amalgamate with Chisholm primary, and Caroline Chisholm high is to form a preschool-to-year-10 school. Wanniassa preschool to year 10 is to be consolidated onto one site. Charnwood primary, Melba high and Copeland College are to merge—or possibly Melba high is going to close, and Copeland College will expand its year range from 7 to 12. Now for the rest there is no sign of any phoenix rising from the ashes. But we are entitled to ask, in Stanhope double speak: does amalgamate mean close? As to how schools will be chosen for closures-sorry, I mean renewal-it seems that school communities will be presented with a fait accompli rather than any proper consultation before a decision of closure.
In education 393 jobs are to go, half of them in school positions. There is no additional money for training in this budget, and not a single release mentioning it, yet we are told there is a skills crisis. This did not stop the Stanhope government taking $2 million out of the training budget last year, either. You might expect, from everything the Chief Minister suggested about our living beyond our means, that our health system would be second to none. In fact our major public hospital, Canberra Hospital, is so overstretched it had to turn away patients from its emergency department on no fewer than 17 occasions last month. It would appear that overall spending on the Health portfolio is estimated to increase by $61 million from $690 million to $751 million, almost nine per cent. But this too is more doublespeak because it will not lead to a substantial increase or, in some instances, any increase in the delivery of services. The problem is that much of this increase is simply going on transferred overheads, as outlined on page 12 of budget paper 2. It says that the budget allocates to health provisions previously accounted for at a whole of government level. That includes revised superannuation contributions of $16.268 million, higher health insurance premiums of $5.801 million, loss of revenue of $10.865 million and additional wages of $2.650 million.
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