Page 2918 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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as … those Labor States … recognise the same problem … rationalisation has to take place,” Mr Stefaniak concedes.
“Mr Humphries”—the Liberal minister for education—is doing that and “doing all he can to ensure that that is as painless as possible and that the excellence of the education system remains.” Those are Bill Stefaniak’s honest thoughts in relation to school closures. That is what Mr Stefaniak is on the record as saying about school closures.
Then we heard today from the shadow minister for education, a one-time staffer of the then minister for education, Mr Humphries, whom she now of course disowns in relation to Mr Humphries’s principle position in relation to this particular issue. But we now have on the record the honest views and opinions of Mr Stefaniak, the leader of the Liberal Party in the ACT—the Leader of the Opposition—on school closures.
That is the honest, real position of the Liberal Party—not the confected nonsense, the confected outrage and interest that we see presented by the shadow minister for education today in relation to this particular proposal. We have there, from the mouth of the Leader of the Opposition, the basis and the rationale for their approach in government. Of course, it is eerily similar, is it not, to the essential position being put by the government today. The difference is, of course, that the then minister for education lost the support of his cabinet and wobbled. He fell over. The job was too hard. He could not do it. The policy fell by the wayside.
Mr Humphries is now on the record as urging those who came after him not to fall in the way that he did. Post the decision by his cabinet and his ministerial colleagues to no longer support him in his efforts in relation to a renewal of education within the territory, he urged all those who came after him—any subsequent minister for education—not to allow the fate that befell him to befall them.
Those are the urgings of Mr Humphries in relation to this particular matter—that it is important that anybody that followed showed the steel, courage and integrity to do the right thing by the children of the ACT in relation to the development of a sustainable education system that optimises our capacity to ensure that every child in this territory has access to the highest possible quality education. That, of course, is what the government’s education policy—Towards 2020—seeks to ensure.
It is simply not sustainable and not possible for us to guarantee into the future the quality educational outcomes which we seek for our children in a system running at less than 30 per cent of capacity. The inefficiencies inherent in seeking to prop up a system at 30 per cent less than capacity seriously impacts on our obligation to ensure optimal educational outcomes for the children of the Australian Capital Territory. We cannot do it. As a small jurisdiction with a narrow revenue base, we simply cannot continue to provide government services less than optimally or efficiently.
Turning to spare capacity within our system, there are 18,000 spare places. This is the issue, to a lesser extent, which the Liberal Party sought to address in government, which Mr Stefaniak is on the record as stoutly defending. Mr Humphries’s attempts ultimately failed. Post the failure of his attempts to implement a similar policy, he urged all future governments and ministers for education not to wilt and not to allow the policy not to be
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