Page 4092 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 13 December 2006
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The terrifying thing is that these are the same kids. What we do and how we treat them is what makes the difference. We can never guarantee successful outcomes, but we can give them the best chance. For those of us whose minds run on economic lines, it would, in theory, be possible to convert the differences in outcomes to costs to the community in dollar terms, and the differences would obviously dwarf any possible savings, but this would be to miss the point.
On behalf of the community who have chosen us, we exercise a sacred trust. That is nowhere clearer than when we make decisions about our children and our constituents’ children’s futures. The extent to which we value our education is a measure of our society and our civilisation. When we invest money in the future in terms of education, what do we really think that we as a society are doing when the cost is entered on the red side instead of the black?
To view the world in purely fiscal terms does not give an accurate picture at all—or, rather, it is accurate, but only in a very narrow sense. By all means, let us be responsible. At the same time, let us not forget what the purpose of public expenditure is. Surely it is a benefit and not simply a cost. Surely the ultimate return, however intangible, repays the dollar investment many times over. If, in a time of high prosperity and full employment, a community which places a great premium on education still cannot manage to fund a decent education system that covers the needs and the aspirations of the people in our community, then we are clearly looking at a failure of financial management.
As I go through the community, as I have done in the past six months and as my colleagues have done, the simple, most obvious and most often repeated questions from puzzled parents across the community are “Why?” and “What are they trying to achieve?” Of course, parents asked this question because they needed to know what the government was trying to achieve and why they were doing it—so that they could negotiate an outcome for their schools.
We all know that this is not about educational benefits. There is no educational theory in this minister’s proposal—just a few platitudes in a document and yet another one here. At least this time he does actually take off the buzz words—the decoration—like “choice” and “diversity”. What we are doing is limiting choice and cutting away diversity. The minister says that this is about arresting the decline. It is not about that: no attempt has been made to find out the reasons why one per cent of children are leaving the ACT government system every year. There has been no attempt to address the reasons—the curriculum issues, the overworked and underpaid teachers and the lack of discipline or the different approaches to discipline, whether it is a matter of uniforms, values or structure.
Everyone seems to assume that this is about economic rationalism. Mr Barr likes to make large of the fact that he is an eco rat who is making hard choices in difficult times, but this is not the case. As announced in the follow-up to the budget, the minister said that he expected to make savings of $34 million in the four years of this budget. The proposals that the minister has now put forward for fewer closures and more expenditure mean that those minuscule two per cent savings over the life of the budget will be even less. And at the time of the budget, the minister was proposing to
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