Page 1962 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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This is just rubbing salt into the wounds already opened by this vandalistic minister. He may be an economic vandal; he is also an environmental vandal.
But, really, the main issue for the day are those areas that fall under the responsibility of the new minister for education. What a start it has been for new minister for education! The head of the education union has described the education budget as the worst education budget in the history of self-government. Their own have turned on them badly.
There is a similar response from employers in this town. We in this town, as with many other places, are experiencing a significant skills shortage. What does this budget do to address this problem? Quite simply, it does nothing—not a sausage! I will quantify that a bit. In fact, it does less than nothing. It cuts funding to training. It continues the trend from last year, which cut $2.1 million from the VET budget, by cutting a further $3 million every year from the CIT budget. CIT, interestingly enough, was an institution whose virtues were being extolled only a few weeks ago by the minister. He has now gutted it to the tune of $12 million over the term of the budget.
I turn to the Stanhope government’s vision for our schools. We have listened to the rhetoric. There has been a huge amount of rhetoric over the last few days about building schools for 2020 with 2020 vision. I actually said to one of my staff that I am getting to that age where I should not really want the years to pass quickly, but I cannot wait until we get to 2020 so that people can stop talking about 2020 visions. I am sick of the cliché. If no-one ever uses it again in this context, it will be a very good thing.
It is a new found vision, a new found concern about the fact that ACT government schools are not competing well in the marketplace and that there has been a continual and steady exodus out of ACT government schools. It is a new found vision because, on 1 June 2004, members of the opposition asked successive ministers if they were concerned about this. In the estimates committee on 1 June 2004, my colleague Mr Pratt talked about people going out of the government sector into the non-government sector. Mr Pratt said that the figure was getting close to 40 per cent—it is now way beyond that—and asked, “Is this a concern for the government?” Ms Gallagher, “It is not a major concern.”
Over and over again successive ministers for education have said it is not a concern. Suddenly, and quite rightly, but very belatedly, this minister says it is a concern. This minister has been saying—
Mr Barr: I have been here eight weeks.
MRS DUNNE: You have only been here for weeks. It has been going on for years. It may surprise Labor, but I do not want to respond to the government’s proposal to close schools with mere knee-jerk opposition, even though that is exactly what the ALP did when a Liberal education minister closed about a tenth the number of schools that this government is proposing to close.
While we are revisiting ancient history, Mr Deputy Speaker—and it is a shame that Mr Speaker is not here—I want to compare those two situations. The Follett government, having taken on the admittedly poor economic position the commonwealth left them in
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