Page 3782 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 22 November 2006
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opportunity to talk about preschools here today. I begin by saying that some of what Mr Seselja said is just incorrect. If you look at any of the statements that I gave in the lead-up to the last election around school closures—
Mrs Dunne: Here we go: “I didn’t say it; it was my offsider who said it.”
MS GALLAGHER: Well, just listen for a second; I have listened about a hundred times when you have raised it in this place. Any time that I was asked about the future of the ACT schooling system I said, “At some point in the future we will need to have a discussion around schools and some schools will need to close.” I know you ignore that, but I have said it; it was in the paper probably a couple of days after the statement from the spokesperson from my office. At the time when we made those statements, there were no plans to close any schools. There were no plans. As much as you do not want to believe that and it suits your arguments to stand up and say that we went to the last election lying, we did not.
I have said this a number of times. In fact, we have gone through it at length over the Ginninderra District high school. We know in this game that you pull out snippets of information that suit your argument. But the fact is that the statements I gave as the minister responsible for education at the time about the future of the ACT schooling system were clear: that at some time in the future we would need to have a discussion with the community about the future of schools in the ACT—
Mr Seselja: And 18 months later you close 40.
MS GALLAGHER: and that inevitably that would mean some schools would need to close, Mr Seselja.
Mr Seselja: I do not think Mr Speaker believes; he was looking incredulous.
MS GALLAGHER: Well, you go back and have a look at what I said. All right? There is no way that we went to the last election lying about our future plans for schools. Mr Seselja has a fantastic ability: coming in here, going on a rant and then not listening to anything else that is said. That is the way he operates and that is fine.
Mr Seselja: I am listening and I am responding.
MS GALLAGHER: I am responding to allegations that you have raised—that we went to the last election lying about what we were going to do. And we did not. Whatever slant you want to put on that, whatever selective pieces of information you want to use, whatever imagination you want to use about what you think was in the mind of the ACT government at the time, feel free to use that. But time will show that there were absolutely no plans, at the time that we went to the election, to close schools—no firm plan other than the statements that I had made, and that have been reported in the paper, saying that at some point there would need to be a discussion around the future of education. And that is exactly what we are having now; we are having that discussion.
Under the old regime, which I inherited from Bill Stefaniak as education minister, preschools were closed without any consultation. They were just closed; there was not any discussion. If your enrolments fell below a certain number, that was it.
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