Page 3233 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 October 2006
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forums. I believe that they will want to see a full cost-benefit analysis of this major policy initiative before the schools in their electorates are closed and disrupted, before the lives of parents with complex childcare and preschool arrangements and children that are well settled in schools with disability and other units are thrown into chaos and before the principles of neighbourhood schools and services are finally and permanently abandoned.
At a public hearing of the budget estimates committee, the education minister advised us that there had been no analysis of the risk that these changes to government schools will encourage more students into non-government schools. We were advised that the government thought there was a risk in doing nothing and that the government was engaged in a consultation process.
The scoping study on a possible cost-benefit analysis of the Towards 2020 proposal commissioned by the P&C council and released yesterday has been much discussed already. The government, which says that it is open to hearing what the community says, has reacted to criticism by denigrating the authors of that study. In question time and through media releases it has been possible to amplify points within the study to demonstrate support for the government and the P&C in this matter. I do not believe the paper condemns the ACT government for the work it has done to date—not at all. This is the problem with this government. Any little criticism is taken as opposition. You claim that we want every school to stay open, whether it is viable or not. You put up a straw tiger, and then, of course, you knock it down because it does not really exist.
I think most of us are more intelligent than that. This paper makes the point in a thorough and considered way that, while the ACT education department has provided financial information on the impact of this proposal, a full-cost benefit analysis is necessary because it would look at other options as well, ranging from simply moving more slowly and collaboratively with this plan to offering and providing some specialisation across a range of schools; working with schools to investigate collocation of community and lifelong education facilities; providing a comparative analysis of the economic costs and benefits of these proposals and taking the do-nothing option.
Furthermore, such an analysis would be conducted from the perspective of the community as a whole. It would look at different groups in the community and how these changes affect those different groups. It would not just consider the interests of the service provider, that is, this government. That is the work that, in essence, any responsible government ought to do before embarking on a major policy initiative such as this one, and that is what this motion asks the government to do simply what it should have already done.
I should point out that ministers and senior public servants of this government have spoken strongly themselves of the need for thorough cost-benefit analyses. Back in 2002, in response to the Auditor-General’s report V8 car races in Canberra: costs and benefits, ACT Treasury commented:
… supports the approach to cost-benefit analysis taken by the audit … and agrees on the importance of rigorous and independent cost-benefit analysis as a tool in providing good advice to decision makers.
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