Page 1858 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 August 2007
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having a strong, healthy public education system. You cannot do that in a system that is running at over 30 per cent below its capacity. You simply cannot achieve the outcomes you need for those children that depend on public education as the great equaliser in life. This government will never betray that principle in the way that you have, and in the way that you will if you ever get back into government.
MR SPEAKER: Is there a supplementary question?
MRS DUNNE: Chief Minister, why won’t you do anything substantive to address the drift to non-government schools? Is this another example of your incompetence in government? You got the figures wrong and you cannot address why people are moving from government to non-government schools when they are paying for the privilege of doing so.
Mrs Burke: Hear, hear! Unplanned cuts as well.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mrs Burke! I have called you to order several times. What do I have to do?
Mrs Burke interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: I warn you, Mrs Burke.
MR STANHOPE: It is probably fair to say, although it sounds a bit trite, that I can think of 320 million expressions of our determination to support public education and to ensure that it remains the system of first choice for Canberrans. It is at the heart of everything that we have done over the last year and a half in public education. It is why we are prepared to stand up and take the hard decisions. Do you think that a government does these things for fun?
Inherent in this line of questioning, this nonsense, is the suggestion that my colleagues and I—and most notably the minister for education—have enjoyed the last 1½ years in relation to education reform in the territory. It has not been much fun. It is the hardest thing to do in government. We all know the emotional attachment which communities have to their schools. Do you think we did this without knowing what the response would be? Do you think we did not know the level of disquiet, angst and anger that this particular decision would generate? Of course we knew, but we did it anyway.
We did not have to do it. We could have fluffed it; we could have left it for another day and another government. We could have not sought the efficiencies. We could have continued to pretend that we could balance our budgets under the Australian accounting standards. We could have continued to sell land and invest it recurrently. We could have turned a blind eye to 31 per cent spare capacity within the public education system. We could have left until another day the drift from the public to the private sector. We could have been content that it was all about choice. We could have found a thousand reasons and explanations.
We could have fluffed it and fudged it in the way that you are fluffing it and fudging it. Of course, it is easy, it is populist and it avoids the need to take the hard decisions.
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