Page 3549 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
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(8) notes that without change and significant investment, the government school system faces the real danger of becoming the residual education option for ACT children and parents.
Mr Speaker, before I speak to the amendment, I would like to say that Mrs Dunne has, perhaps for the first time, formally acknowledged that there is more to the Towards 2020 proposals than simply the closure of some schools in the territory. It is pleasing to see an acknowledgment from the opposition about the demographic change that is occurring in our city and the need for the government to undertake some structural change to our education system.
I note that Mrs Dunne did talk at some length about market forces and about the quality of the public education product. I would say in response to that that the government’s investment is not seeking to take the product off the shelf, but it is seeking to improve the quality of the product and we do need to make investments, and significant investments, at this time to improve the quality. As Mrs Dunne has identified, there are a number of school buildings within our education system that need significant investment and that investment has not been forthcoming from both sides of politics going back to when the ACT was granted self-government.
I think it is a fair point to make to say that we did inherit from the commonwealth an asset base that the ratepayers of the ACT had no capacity to maintain. That was clearly the case. The commonwealth gave us self-government in the first place because they were no longer prepared to foot the bill for the mass of infrastructure that was provided. It is worth noting, of course, that a lot of that infrastructure that was delivered in a hurry in the 1960s and 1970s was not of a particularly good quality. You need only to look at the condition of some of our schools that were built during that period to see where corners were cut.
Even with the deeper pockets of the commonwealth, the facilities that were provided at that time were not crash-hot and 30 or 40 years later, let me tell you, they have not stood the test of time and they require significant investment. That is why the government has, as part of the Towards 2020 proposal, sought to invest record amounts in our schools, to ensure that our facilities are up to date and up to scratch. We need that investment; there is no doubting that. I have gone round the education system over the six months or so I have been minister, visiting 90-odd schools in that period, and there is no doubt that there is a crying need for investment in school infrastructure.
Mrs Dunne says that she is not sure whether the money is being well spent. I would highlight Curtin primary, where rain comes in through the roof and where there is a huge puddle in the middle of the canteen area. I think it is pretty clear that we need to spend some money there. There are countless other examples of that sort of investment in school infrastructure being needed. The government, through this first round of investment which is looking at, I think, 223 projects over 72 different schools, is seeking to invest to correct some of those issues.
I am afraid that it has got to the stage in some schools that some of the issues that we are having to address now are what would be perhaps considered routine maintenance.
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