Page 2511 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
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There had already been consultations about the 2010 proposal when a letter was written in April in which the department was seeking to engage the community in educational debate on issues under the banner of education 2010. The questions and suggestions were about the role of emerging technologies and contemporary teaching and learning, and were looking for a strategic goal to shape and lead education and training. That discussion is exactly what we need. We do not need this one, where schools have been put under the hammer. They have already been told what is going to happen and now we have a so-called consultation.
What is next? The Government Schools Education Council is the government’s own body. If it does not consult and listen its own advisory body, what hope do school communities have? These experts, which I am sure the government had a lot to do with choosing, were so concerned about this budget that they wrote a letter to the minister in which they said:
Not only has the advice of Council seemingly been disregarded on almost all issues but some of the budget proposals will also clearly exacerbate inequity in the ACT, restrict access to higher performance, and affect the quality of educational provision.
Not only did the council experts express alarm at the extent and impact of the school closures proposed, but also at the extent of head office cuts and their effect at a time when schools will need so much more support, and the extent of the reductions proposed to the teaching force. They say explicitly that this will work negatively against the aims of the Canberra social plan. I already addressed that extensively yesterday. At the moment this beautiful thing, this social plan, which was more or less a compact between the community sector, communities and the government, looks hollow.
Given enrolment numbers is one of the key categories by which schools are being judged, whatever the rationale for making such a big, across-the-board change by announcing in June that schools might close at the end of the year, the whole notion of genuine consultation is becoming irrelevant. It is only consultation to the extent that it involves talking. Minister Barr’s answer to his first question in the Assembly is shown to be either disingenuous or deluded, because the decision to close those schools has already been made and put into effect.
The Chief Minister loves to name individuals and suggests that his actions are justified by statements they have made. In rewriting the history of consultation provisions of the Education Act, Mr Stanhope has misrepresented everyone involved. It is not a new approach, but it is unethical. A brief example came up again yesterday—the Chief Minister is nothing but predictable—when the Greens raised the issue of greenhouse targets in the Assembly in 2004. Mr Stanhope repeatedly named one of his officers, who had previously worked for Kerrie Tucker, and used back-of-the-envelope figures that person had arrived at that in discussion with his manager as supposed evidence they were on the wrong track. He has never apologised for that unfair and indefensible manipulation of a public servant in his own department. As I said, he mentioned it again yesterday.
In this case the Chief Minister has taken great pleasure in loudly proclaiming that the sham consultation being pursued with Canberra schools is what Mr Morgan, from the
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