Page 4195 - Week 13 - Thursday, 14 December 2006
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MR STANHOPE: Your interjections are and your points of order are. In 1990 Mr Stefaniak said:
… the neighbourhood system has changed a fair bit in recent times in that, on the figures we have, it seems that in some cases up to about 30 per cent of enrolments at certain schools are from out of area. That tends to put another slant on the argument often used by the Opposition of the distances that some kids are going to have to travel to go to school.
Our system is very good. Mr Humphries realises that; the government realises that, and Mr Humphries has continually stated that this excellent system will be maintained. I think we have always had a good system here. It might have been better in the past than it is now, because I note that about a third of our kids are in private schools—
33 per cent of our kids were in private schools—
and a lot of those schools have waiting lists. That has been the case for many years, but I do not think that we really have to delve into that part of the debate today.
I am probably the only member of the Assembly who went through the ACT state school system from kindergarten right through to year 12 at Narrabundah High School. I can recall quite clearly in my years in high school that many students were bussed in from Curtin, Lyons, Chifley and Hughes before those schools went up in the Woden valley. It is interesting to note that those same kids that started off in year 7 or 8 at Narrabundah, when Woden Valley High and Deakin High came on stream, remained at Narrabundah and made that quite considerable journey, often in buses, often by riding their pushbikes there. I can also recall walking, as a five-year-old, to kindergarten at Griffith. I can recall many students I went through infants and primary school with walking considerable distances to get to school.
I think it was in those years that we got on to a neighbourhood school system, and in each of the suburbs that blossomed in Canberra—in the expansion in the late 1960s and 1970s—a primary school was provided. But the Federal Labor Government in 1988 realised that that really was something that could not continue. And this government—
that is, the Liberal government of Mr Stefaniak and Mr Humphries—
regrettably—because it would be desirable if we did have the money to do that—realises that that, unfortunately, is a luxury we simply cannot afford.
This is what Mr Stefaniak said of Mr Humphries as he sought to close seven schools in 1990:
I think Mr Humphries should be commended for the very hard, agonising and difficult decisions he has had to take—and, indeed, that this Government has had to take.
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