Page 3262 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 October 2006
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that is what this minister has promised, that is what he has undertaken to do, and if he does not deliver on it, and he will not be able to deliver on it in the time available, it will be because they did not take the time we have offered to them. Dr Foskey has offered them the time and the ALP conference offered them the time, but they will not take the time to ensure that the people of Canberra are best served by this policy.
We have here a minister who says that the members of the Liberal opposition are not interested in investing in public education. That is an outrageous accusation which goes to the heart of the differences between us. This minister wants to throw money at a problem but he has not quite worked out what is the problem. They confuse two things. Yes, there are fewer children in the government system than there used to be. There are two factors addressing that. One of them is the undoubted demographic shift, so that the age cohort of five to 19 is relatively smaller than it used to be five, 10 and 20 years ago. That is an undoubted fact. No-one denies that. But the other factor that contributes to there being fewer children in the government education system is the undoubted drift to the non-government system. Why are children leaving the government system to go to the non-government system? This minister does not know. He has no idea, because he has never asked. His predecessors have never asked.
Mr Barr: There is more than one reason.
MRS DUNNE: Of course there is more than one reason. There is no simple answer to any of these things. Occam’s razor is very much overrated, but this minister and his predecessors do not know. His predecessors did not even care. In praise of this minister, at least he is vaguely interested in finding out why, but at the moment he is saying, “Perhaps if we pretty up our schools, people will stay.” That may be part of the answer, but there may be a multitude of reasons that people move. We cannot suddenly produce a whole lot of freshly born five, 12 or 18-year-olds to go into our schools and reinforce the population, but we can do something to address the proportion of children who leave the government system and go to the non-government system.
This minister and his predecessors do not know why they leave. We can all speculate about that. We can all have our private prejudices about why we think they leave. He does not know, but he is prepared to spend $90 million to stop that flow. He does not know why he is spending $90 million. That is why I am saying that this minister is putting good money after bad. He does not know why he is spending the money. We had the Minister for Planning and the previous minister for education standing up today and extolling the virtues of the government school system. They are legion and they are not doubted by anyone in this place. But this minister did not contribute to the understanding of why there has been a drift from the government to the non-government system.
It was interesting to have Mr Corbell saying here today that we cannot possibly have a moratorium. That was a fair change of tune from that of 29 July, when he went to his state conference and put up his hand, along with everybody from the left. On 29 July, five members of the Labor caucus in this place voted for a moratorium. I am still wondering about that, because it has been reported to me that the wittiest line from the conference was that the people who voted in favour of a moratorium were the axis of weasels, the unhinged, the unloved and the unknown. I am not sure which was Mr Corbell, but he was also unscrupulous because he said one thing at this conference and then came in here and said, “I did not mean it; I only said what my faction wanted.”
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