Page 4011 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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and members of this house do not know, to what extent the non-government schools are aware of this provision proposed today and how comfortable they are with it.
The minister says that that was always the intention because the Connors report said that we should not have a proliferation of non-government schools. This is where ideology parts company from practicality. This government and successive Labor governments have a strong record of getting in the way of the establishment of non-government schools. This is not the ethos of the Liberal Party. I believe all schools should be registered. I believe there should be a rigorous process by which schools are registered and that this rigour should be maintained. The minister is quite right that the provisions essentially mirror those provisions for extending the levels of schooling or creating a new school.
The point is that at this moment I cannot obtain information from the Catholic Education Office or from the Independent Schools Association that they know that this minister is proposing these amendments or that this minister is proposing to change the legislation. They might have an understanding that the legislation already does what the minister says, and that is what they understand it to be. I do not know, and they at this stage do not know, that today the minister is moving six or seven pages of amendments that relate to their sector.
The minister did not have the courtesy to tell them, in the same way that he did not have the courtesy to tell me or Dr Foskey, even though these amendments were at least sufficiently drafted on Friday before lunch to be printed off as finals. It is not reasonable that we should go through this process today. I was assured by members of Mr Barr’s staff that this is all just routine. I am not convinced.
We will therefore be opposing these amendments. If the minister wanted to bring them he could have waited, as I asked him to, and brought them back on Thursday, and we may have supported them. We are not supporting them now because there is no guarantee that the people affected by this even know of the existence of these amendments. The people who could answer those questions are not available today to do so. They were not available to receive the call from the minister who, as a courtesy, should have told them, “I am going to make some amendments that affect your school sector.”
If the minister does not have the capacity to show courtesy to the members of this house and to his constituency, he does not deserve the support of this house. We will not be supporting the amendments he proposes to bring forward today. If he wants to adjourn this and bring them back on Thursday, we will probably support them then, but today they do not get our support.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (4.58): I will address these amendments together, although I should point out that they do not just do the one thing. My concern, however, as I said this morning, is primarily with the process. I do not feel qualified to speak to the amendments. I would rather not take up too much time making the same point over again.
These amendments include changes to procedures regarding transferring and enrolling students. One amendment deletes the provision for the minister to issue disallowable
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