Page 3547 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
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people of the ACT do not value this free product and are prepared, at considerable expense, to find a better product?
In market terms, if your product is not selling you can do a couple of things. You can find out why and then you can fix the product, or you can take it off the shelf. I think what Mr Barr and this government have decided to do is take the product off the shelf. They have not decided to find out why the product is selling. They are wringing their hands, saying, “We have 18,000 empty places and we do not know why, but we are going to invest $90 million, plus 20 for IT, plus 65 for write-off of capital.” Those are significant investments in a straitened budget, and this minister does not know why.
We have heard this over and over again. It is most enlightening. The exchanges between Mr Barr and me, and Dr Foskey, Mr Smyth and Ms MacDonald, to some extent, in the estimates committee hearings showed that this minister and his department do not know the answer. I am not being overly critically of this minister because he is new and he is relying on the advice of his department, but he and his department do not know the answer, and they have never bothered to systematically find out.
They told us that when people leave the school system, they are asked why they are leaving, but there were significant admissions that not everybody is asked the question. Sometimes it is done in the parent satisfaction survey. Sometimes it is done in a different survey. That information is often held in the school; sometimes it is held in the department. To this day, as far as I can tell, the request by Dr Foskey—it is a shame that she is ill and cannot be here today to speak—during the estimates process that information as to why people are leaving the government schooling system or leaving one school for another be collated has not been provided.
We have a situation where this minister and this government want to spend money. I have been critical of the spending of this money, and I stand by my criticism. They may be putting good money after bad because they do not know the reasons why people are leaving. Until we know the reasons why people are leaving, we do not know whether the $90 million plus 20 is actually going to be effectively spent.
I do not oppose spending money, but I think that it is incumbent upon all of us as policy makers and custodians of the money of the people of the ACT to ensure that it is wisely spent. I am not satisfied, and I do not think that there are many people in the community who are satisfied that this money is being wisely spent. The reason for that is that the minister and his department and this government do not know why people are leaving the government system. They do not know the reason for the drift, and that is why I have moved this motion today.
This is not a condemnatory motion. This is a motion that is, in fact, so logical, straightforward and integral to good policy making that this minister should embrace it. I cannot recall the number of times that the Chief Minister has stood here on various occasions and said that the government is not going to be rushed into doing particular things; it will make policy decisions in an evidence-based way.
Here is the challenge for the Stanhope government and for Minister Barr: find the evidence. Tell us. Find out why people do not send their children to government
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