Page 2795 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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It is also worthy of note that the government has not taken the advice or worked with the ACT Government School Education Council, which was set up under the Education Act, in the development of its public education policy. As the council chair stated in a letter to the minister, the measures in this proposal will seriously undermine the effectiveness of the system and lead to further inequities in our societies. The council also asked the minister to outline the educational principles on which the proposed changes are based, because, in the eyes of the council as in the eyes of most people in the educational community, those principles appear to be missing.
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (2.47): Again, I note that I mindful of the time. However, we cannot reiterate enough that we obviously will be opposing this line in the budget. I have said consistently, particularly in relation to students with a disability—that is my particular angle in this debate—that the proposals are illogical and ill-thought through from start to finish.
For students with a disability it is not just the fact that they are leaving the safety and security of one particular school, the current school that they are at; it is not just the fact that some parents are now having to consider their options in relation to being employed or not. Some parents are seriously having to consider that travelling 40 minutes to and from a school of choice, because a child is happy and established there, may not be an option for much longer. It is not just about the re-adjusting and settling into a new school.
I know I am going to be repeating myself but it is worth repeating: I have heard from Ms Porter and the minister himself that they are looking after these parents. Ms Porter says these parents are now getting on with the job. As I have said before, they have little to no opportunity or little to no other choice but to do exactly that. What else are they supposed to do?
There are other sides of the equation to consider. How are the receiving schools going to be equipped? How are they going to be resourced to cope with the extra influx? What about the infrastructure of these schools? What about the facilities at the schools with special needs units that have been equipped and adapted? I am sure that the government already knows which will be going and which will not be going. What about the facilities there?
Which schools in our suburbs will sit—needing extra resources to be attached to them to stop them from being trashed? Or are we going to bulldoze them straight away like the Chief Minister said, because he did actually have the courage eventually to come out and say on ABC Radio words to that effect, “We will probably be selling off, and we will move on to the next question”. I did believe Mr Barr. I do not think it has come from his lips at all yet that we will be selling off schools. No, because he has let other people do that, or let other people in cabinet decide that they would do that—either the Chief Minister or the planning minister.
I come back to the schools that these young students are going to go to. It will be a whole new change. I have touched on students with autism, but of course there are more children with disabilities in our system other than those children with autism. That is just
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