Page 2507 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
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It is important because the community is angry. Last week we tabled a petition from Gilmore primary school and the Clerk read it, but I do not think the statistics have been put on the record. It was suggested to Gilmore primary school that it needed to ask its community what the community wanted by door knocking every house in the suburb of Gilmore and in the priority enrolment area. It did. It door knocked 95 per cent of that area. To get a poll of what the public thinks about this, somebody should read the petition from Gilmore primary school. In that area are 1,439 houses. The number of households not at home or not door knocked was 288. In the priority enrolment area 1,151 households were asked. Out of the 1,151, 60 households, less than 5 per cent, did not sign or would not sign. The percentage of households supporting not to close the school was 94.79 per cent and the percentage of total petitioners in the priority area that were asked were 94.3 per cent. So the public does not want their schools to close. They want more time to arrange their affairs should the government go ahead with this folly. That comes down to the vote on this issue sometime today. I urge all members who voted for these words at the ALP conference to vote for them again today.
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (10.40): Today I speak out on behalf of some 1,327 students with a disability attending mainstream schools in the ACT. While that may not be a big number, as I think I said in this place yesterday, it has a very significant impact on far more people in our community than children who are not affected with a disability attending mainstream schools. As we know, and have heard many times, 39 schools have been placed on a hit list to close. Many people will know too that 10 of those schools have particularly special relevance. Why? Because 10 of those schools house special needs units for children with a disability. Much has been written—and I have pages and pages of data—and lobby groups have come forward to speak. I refer, first of all, to an article by Elizabeth Bellamy in the Canberra Times. She says:
Schools closed as part of the ACT Government’s rationalisation plan may remain open for up to a term to accommodate students with disabilities, the ACT Department of Education said yesterday.
It is quite clear, as I said in this same article, that the government had not thought through the plan from go to whoa. There is no logical start or finish. Were students with a disability and their families and carers consulted well before these announcements? Let us not kid ourselves. This did not pop up overnight in this term of this government. The decision to close 39 schools would have been thought about, I would suggest, years ago—maybe in the first term of the Stanhope government. Mr Barr is shaking his head.
Mr Barr: I think it goes back to about 1990.
MRS BURKE: Back to 1990? Well, not to this grand scale, Mr Barr, with you the minister in charge. My colleague Mr Smyth said quite eloquently how members stand up at these public meetings saying it is a bad thing. How hypocritical! They run with the hares and hunt with the hounds so that you can look good at meetings. When it comes to the crunch, will they stand up for children with a disability in this city? Are they going to assist, and not just after the event, which is what happened here? At the meetings I was at the parents with students with a disability were aghast. Nobody had told them what was happening prior to many of them reading it in the Canberra Times.
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