Page 2586 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
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Mrs Burke: No, it is too smart.
MR STEFANIAK: Maybe crafted is too kind, Mrs Dunne. Cobbled together, shall we say, at some stage after 13 April when the functional review came down. We have what we used to call in the military situating the appreciation. You have made your decision, you know what you want to do, and you try to make it look as if there is some justification and scientific basis for this. So you come up with about nine convoluted ideas that a lot of school communities are somewhat bemused by. It is painfully obvious to everyone that the 2020 document is not a very well thought through document, and the basis the government gives why these 39 schools should close, in many instances, is very flawed indeed. The data does not add up, and people are not buying it.
I was talking to Clive Haggar not all that long ago. Clive and I have had the odd disagreement in the past, and the odd agreement. When we introduced a minimum class sizes policy for kindergarten to year 2, Clive indicated that was the best thing that happened since self-government. By the same token, of course, he had beaten me around the head over industrial action in the past. Clive said the AEU and teachers were not even consulted on the 2020 document. Just like the Labor backbench, it was news to them when it was dropped on 6 June.
If the government wanted a review of the education system, and wanted to do anything significant that was going to affect it—and I would suggest that closing 39 schools is very significant—the least it would do is consult with teachers and with the Australian Education Union, especially if it was a Labor government. One would also expect it would consult with the P&C at the very least. Mr Barr says it is a consultation period in accordance with the act, but it is a consultation period after the event. The government has come down with the 2020 document, this mantra from heaven, which has been dumped on the table—there it is, and here are the 39 schools; let us now talk about it.
Mr Barr: It is a proposal.
MR STEFANIAK: It is a proposal. It may not be a fait accompli. We will see what happens. The minister might pull back in some areas. We will see. It might have been an amazing gambit and the minister might have other things he wants to do, and this might be some ambit claim. It may not be an ambit claim, though, to listen to the Chief Minister. This might be exactly what is going to happen. But the community sees through it as sham consultation. You probably cannot have a total win-win situation. There are always some people who will never agree with it. If the government wants to consult and try to take the community with it, the vast majority will probably appreciate that some schools may have to close. The question is which schools, and how best you go through that process of making further improvements to our education system in the ACT.
Because it is such an important area, the government has to do that in a thorough way, not do it by dropping a cobbled together document on the table and saying that 39 schools are closing in six months; let us talk about it now. The start line should be talking to people, having—as we are suggesting in this instance—an independent inquiry under the Inquiries Act, where people have a chance to make their submissions, where school communities can be consulted, where people outside of the school community
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