Page 4187 - Week 13 - Thursday, 14 December 2006
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educational need, but because there is a socioeconomic need to devote more resources to a particular school or a particular region.
This reform process will enable the strengthening of education programs in areas where there are high levels of socioeconomic need and where we do need to invest additional education resources. It is the very strong view of educators that we needed to take this step. In fact, it is the very strong view of the vast majority of the Canberra community that this move is long overdue. I have said on a number of occasions that the reason the change has to be so large now is because nothing was done about it for 17 years, and both sides of politics are complicit in that. The politics of education over 17 years have perhaps not been the greatest moment in self-governance for this territory.
Mr Stefaniak has been in my shoes. He knows exactly the issues that we are confronting. Mr Stefaniak had to close some schools. The contrast is that when Mr Stefaniak was minister, his approach was to close Charnwood high with a month’s notice halfway through a school year. The fact that my mother was a teacher at the school at the time I will not hold personally against Mr Stefaniak. I think the process was pretty rotten.
Mr Stanhope: A month!
MR BARR: There was a month’s notice halfway through the school year. That contrasts with the approach of this government. We have gone out and consulted extensively. For those opposite to come up with this sort of rubbish at the end of what has been the most extensive consultation process on what is an incredibly difficult issue is absolute hypocrisy. We all acknowledge that it has been very, very hard. Of course it is. If it was easy to make this sort of structural change to improve our public education system, then I am sure countless people before this government and before me as minister would have undertaken such reforms. But it is not easy; it is difficult.
Yes, there is always the case for an opportunistic opposition to seek to take advantage of the process. That is what we have come to expect from this lot. They oppose pretty much everything. They have nothing else to say, no positive vision, nothing at all. Their solution is to sit on their hands for six more years, as if that is going to solve the problem. That is the Liberal Party’s alternative, Mr Speaker, to sit on their hands for six more years.
If we do nothing now, what sort of structural change is going to be required at that point? It will have to be a significant change. That is the whole point. The reason we have to make the change now and the reason the change has had to be so large is because no-one has done anything about it for 17 years, and that is a shame.
I think the important thing is that if we are going to make this change, we need to back it with record levels of investment. It means taking a stance that favours quality over quantity in our education system. Quality is what we are seeking to provide in our education system. Clearly, there is a spectrum. At one end is complete locality, the Mr Pratt model, which would be a school at the end of every driveway, similar to his police model. At the other end is the extreme approach, which presumably would
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