Page 3963 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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received a copy of them at 10.20—a copy of these amendments that were printed on Friday at 11 o’clock. This bill was introduced in May. The government knew on Friday—at the very least, and presumably before that—that it had eight pages of amendments. I received them at a quarter past 10 this morning. Dr Foskey’s office received them after I asked her whether she had seen these amendments in the chamber. At about a quarter to 11, Dr Foskey’s office did not know about these things.
These were amendments that the government knew about at least on Friday. You can tell that from when they were printed. Yet the government comes in here today and wants to debate these things. There are substantial issues here which officers in the minister’s office told me were routine. I do not consider that introducing the concept of registering separate campuses of non-government schools and having a separate registration process for separate campuses of non-government schools is routine. I do not know—the minister may be able to answer this—whether there has been any consultation with the non-government sector about this; whether the Catholic Education Office or the Association of Independent Schools has been consulted about this.
My office is in the process of trying to get the views of the Catholic Education Office and the Association of Independent Schools about this. If I find out that the first the Catholic Education Office heard about this was when my office contacted them today at half past 11, I will not be debating these amendments today. I have already got in-principle agreement from the minister that the amendments will be debated at a later hour today, but if I find out that the Catholic Education Office and the independent schools have not been consulted, I will not be debating these today.
It is a disgrace that a bill that has been sitting on the notice paper since May this year has suddenly become so important that amendments are dropped on us as we stand to make our statements or with the very small amount of notice that I got just before the bells started to ring at about 20 past 10 this morning. This is unsatisfactory. I worry about what the minister is going to do in relation to school closures if he cannot get his act together about amendments for a piece of legislation that has been sitting on the table since May this year.
To reiterate, the opposition will consider the amendments to the Education Amendment Bill and consider debating them at a later hour this day, but it may be that we will adjourn consideration until Thursday. I am concerned about the need for all of these fix-up amendments to the Education Act. I am concerned that, after the amount of work that went into the drafting of the Education Act, this is so necessary. The opposition supports the substantive item in the Education Amendment Bill—that is, the creation of a set of guidelines which will be a disallowable instrument and which will cover issues about what fees can and cannot be charged in a system which, on the surface, provides free education. In principle the substantive issue is strongly supported by the opposition. I am concerned about the need for all of the other amendments that have been circulated today and previously.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (11.31): My speech was written before the amendments were distributed and has been hastily edited to deal not so much with the amendments themselves, because obviously I have not had time to take them in, but the process by which they were cast upon us today. I ask members to bear that in mind.
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