Page 2517 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
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representatives should be focused on. That is what they should be thinking about. That is why the government opposes the motion today.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The minister’s time has expired.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (11.21): Those opposite say that the government backbenchers have been silenced. I am sure that you all understand that I have not been silent or been silenced. Certainly, I have not been silent. I have not been silent on this issue or any other issue. You well know, I am sure, that I have attended all the public meetings that have been held in my electorate and also one that was not held in my electorate. I have attended all separate school meetings that I have been able to attend, or sent staff on my behalf when I have been otherwise engaged in appointments on Assembly business. I have had several meetings with parents and interested individuals in my office, at my frequent mobile office days and in their own homes. Like all of us, I have answered numerous emails from parents and other interested individuals and representatives of various schools and I will be attending another meeting next week. I attended last night’s meeting with the joint P&Cs, one unfortunately not attended by all schools that are mentioned in the 2020 proposal.
I will continue to make myself available to all people in my electorate and also people outside of my electorate who want to meet with me, who want to speak with me on the weekends at my frequent mobile office days, who want to come to my office or who want me to come to their home or want to speak to me on the phone or via email because I see that my role is to work with the government and to represent the various views of parents and representatives to the government, to the minister. I have been doing that on frequent occasions, both personally in meetings in his office or by email or letter and by accompanying him to various meetings that he goes to. Not only that, but also by interpreting in the best way I can to people I work with what the government policy is about and why it is necessary to do what is being done, which was put very well by Minister Corbell just now.
I am not unsympathetic to Mrs Burke’s angst over children with disabilities. I had a child with a disability in the ACT public system for many years. I know what it feels like to have a child with a disability in the education system. I have been visiting parents with children with disabilities during this period. I spent an hour and a half the other day in the home of a mother and her two children. So I am not unsympathetic to the angst that you feel when some form of change is taking place and you have a child with a disability. I have been through many changes in my life. My child with a disability went to school for some of that period in the Northern Territory under quite extreme conditions; so I am not unsympathetic to that.
But I do represent those views and those matters to the minister. I also know that he is not unsympathetic or not empathic to that. I know that the minister and the department are working hard to work individually with those parents and those families to achieve the best outcome that he can, that the department can and that the parents can. I know that the parent I was with the other day is not getting very angry. She is obviously concerned, but she is working through these things and she is trying to find the best outcome for herself and for her child. She is working with the matters that are before her. If we work with people, which has always been the way that I try to work, I think we can achieve the best outcome for all our children in the public education system in the ACT,
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