Page 3561 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 15 November 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
This debate is not about school closures, although Mr Barr and Ms Porter wanted to talk about school closures. This is not a debate about school closures; it is a debate about why children are leaving the government system or never even contemplating going there—and this minister has completely overlooked it. You could tell by the tenor of his speech. He was in here today, saying, “Here come the Liberals and they are going to talk about schools so they are going to bag the government system and they are going to praise the non-government system.” Nothing could be further from the case.
We had the outrageous statement by Ms Porter about my personal bias in favour of the government school system. I will put it on the record, Mr Speaker, that in the last 20 years of schooling in the Dunne household my children have attended the following schools: St Monica’s primary school, Merici College, Marist College, Miles Franklin primary school, Lyons primary school, Narrabundah College and Copland College. We can do numbers in the Liberal Party: four beats three every time. The Dunne household has made a significant contribution—
Mr Barr: Well, you would know that better than most, Mrs Dunne.
MRS DUNNE: I thought you would like that one. The Dunne household has made a significant contribution to and participated in government schooling, and no-one in this place can say that I have a bias against government schooling. I contribute to government schooling this day and every day by sending my children to government schools. If Ms Porter wants to make snide remarks, she had better get her facts straight. Most of what Mr Barr has said in here is reasonable. Some of it is a bit—
Mr Barr: Damned with faint praise again, Mrs Dunne.
MRS DUNNE: No, some of it is quite good. Mr Smyth made the point that you are investing $45 million in a replacement west Belconnen school. But, as people in Charnwood, Kippax, McKellar and places like that said to me when we were talking about these issues last year, $45 million would go a long way to addressing maintenance problems in schools in Belconnen. The people said they would like to see the money spent a different way. You could spend the money more effectively if you knew the reasons for doing it. The people of west Belconnen do not necessarily want you or require you to build a bright, shiny new school and knock down the one that was already there. They want you to do it when you are informed, when you know what they want and what they need.
I really loved it this week: suddenly the Labor Party has become so green. How many questions on notice did we have that mentioned the word “sustainability”? I think probably there would be six so far, and at least four of them were about global warming in some way. So what we actually have here today is a new reason—a new and previously unstated reason—why we need to spend $90 million to make our schools greener. That has never been stated before; this is a new reason.
Let us look at the end of the minister’s amendment. It did not look at the real issues that we have talked about in this debate. After the government’s self-congratulatory pat on the back, at the end of the amendment is the “John Howard made me do it”
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .