Page 2806 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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debate, I will just point that out again. You do not know why there is a drift. You really have not set out to find out why that has occurred. In estimates you could not answer Mrs Dunne, me and Mr Smyth about what you might have known, what you did not know or what you intended to do to find out why the drift.
I think it was Mrs Dunne who said that the test for the success of T2020 must be to reverse that drift. I think you have got Buckley’s, because if you know nothing now about why the drift, I do not see how you are going to solve it. I do not think it is in your heart to really find out, which is peculiar. I do not quite know why that is your attitude.
I refer to the last comment made by Mr Stanhope where he called Mr Smyth a grub because he stressed the issue that in the estimates, he and I tried to ask some pretty searching questions about. It is a very serious issue involving a school where a principal has not written to the families of that school to indicate that something very serious has gone down in that school over a very long period of time. I think Mr Stanhope’s comment is absolutely disgraceful. It is bad enough that that school has got a problem. God knows whether anything has been done to exercise the safety standards that must be exercised in that school now to find out what the depth of that problem is and whether it has been nipped in the bud. But it may be systemic and that is why those questions needed to be asked in estimates.
It is a great shame that the estimates committee did not get the chance to properly ask those questions. Minister, I hope you get in there and find out what is going on. I have asked you a number of times for a brief and you have not given it to me. You have not given to Mr Smyth either.
Mr Stanhope: We have given it to your shadow spokesperson.
MR PRATT: No, as members of the estimates committee we are entirely within our rights, and it was our duty to ask the minister, having provided the information in the first place. We have this ducks and drakes, “Well, we have told your shadow; so your shadow can tell you.” That is rubbish. The estimates committee is about scrutinising performance and performance involves safety as well as budgetary matters. That is why the questions were asked. You have a problem at that particular school and I just hope you get it sorted out. I do not need to say anything more about it than that.
Mr Stanhope: You have said too much already.
MR PRATT: So have you, Mr Stanhope. To reflect on this issue and to call Mr Smyth a grub because he has raised it, I think reflects your embarrassment and your vulnerability that your government has swept something beneath the carpet. It will be on your head if it has been swept beneath the carpet and nothing is sorted out.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Industrial Relations) (3.29 am): It is with a degree of sadness for me that both Mr Smyth and Mr Pratt have felt the need yet again to play politics in such a crass way with what is such a sensitive and difficult issue. I would like to take this opportunity to put on the public record my appreciation of the behaviour of Mrs Dunne in relation to this issue. She has been professional. She has approached it in the proper manner.
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