Page 3161 - Week 10 - Thursday, 18 October 2007
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If we are talking about collaboration, let us look at the discussions that the community is having about what to do with the excess school sites. Dr Foskey yesterday raised the issue of the not even very smart sleight of hand about the decision to demolish Mt Neighbour primary school. When you actually look at the reports, there is no basis for that decision and there has been no collaboration, no discussion, nothing with the people in the community, and they are feeling wounded by it. They have been bullied by this government.
What sort of collaboration have we had with the teachers union over a year of unprecedented industrial disputes? The minister here yesterday said quite erroneously, quite falsely, that he cut staff in the college system because of the results of the private arbitration. Let us put it on the record once and for all: the private arbitration set the number of hours that teachers had face-to-face teaching. It did not set the staffing levels. The staffing levels were a budget decision which was foreshadowed in the 2006-07 budget, long before the arbitrator came on board. Those 21 places were doomed to go when Andrew Barr became the minister for education.
That is the sort of collaboration or the lack of collaboration that I am concerned about. There is no collaboration between this minister, this government, and its teachers in the fundamental process of providing good learning and teaching environments. Mr Corbell wants to talk about it until the cows come home, but he wants to talk about it in terms of bricks and mortar.
Mr Barr: She just called me Mr Corbell.
MRS DUNNE: I am sorry; I did. Mr Barr wants to talk about it. I do apologise. At least he is listening. What we have actually seen here over and over again is that every time the commonwealth does something to attempt to make the education system better, this mob complain about it. They complained about investing in our schools. They thought it was outrageous that the commonwealth should invest money straight into the schools. Do you know what they are doing, Mr Speaker?
Mr Seselja: It is outrageous that they have to.
MRS DUNNE: It is outrageous they have to but they are always fixing toilets. Mr Barr said in this place in an interjection yesterday that perhaps I thought it was best putting good money after bad, that his capital injection was fixing toilets at schools. It is an absolute disgrace that you have to have extraordinary capital expenditure to fix toilets in schools, when the schools education budget has tens of millions of dollars of maintenance money in it every year. We should not get to the stage where we pat ourselves on the back because we fix the toilets in schools. That is everyday, ordinary maintenance that we should not have to do. And it is an absolute disgrace that commonwealth money is going into government schools to fix toilets because these people cannot do the maintenance. This is what we are talking about.
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order! There is a bit of a competition going on for airspace here. Your colleagues need to be quiet, Mrs Dunne.
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