Page 3404 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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Gallagher allowed it to go on the record, “We will not close schools.” Then there was Ginninderra district high and then there was Towards 2020. We now have the princely number of 23 schools closed in the ACT when a government lied to the people.
I would just like to draw a contrast: you and I, Mr Speaker, probably drive up and down the bit of Gungahlin Drive that is now operational from time to time and we see the artwork—$750,000-odd worth of artworks. I am not opposed to artworks; I am not a philistine, but I know that my electors in Cook, who could keep their school open next year for the princely sum of $150,000, object to the fact that there is a bogong moth, an indescribable steel structure and a couple of pear-shaped rocks on sticks that cost $750,000. They are not opposed to art, but, first and foremost, they would like to see their kids producing art in their classrooms that they love and that they built up.
Remember, Mr Speaker, that Cook primary school was described by the Minister for Education as a fantastic school, but he is still going to close it. My constituents are asking me why, when yesterday Jon Stanhope came in here and announced over $100,000 million of expenditure in capital and recurrent terms over the next four years, they could not somewhere find the $800,000 of savings that they would make by closing Cook primary school and keep Cook primary school open. I know Mr Pratt has had the same experience with people from Village Creek and Kambah high. They know that they have been jibbed by the Stanhope government, and it was rubbed in their faces yesterday. They were lied to, and that lie was underlined in big black texta yesterday when Mr Stanhope came in here and put the lie to everything that was said last year.
Last year he said we are in tough times; we cannot afford to do this; we have to make all these decisions. What has happened? Within less than a year after the final announcements are made to close these schools he has come in here and committed $100 million in expenditure. All they want is $800,000 at Cook to keep the school open.
Government members come in here and say, “We can’t afford a tax cut.” The minister says we cannot have a tax cut because we have to have quality education; we have to have an education system that people in Canberra will be proud to come to. They measure that by how much money they spend. The measurement that the people of Canberra put on it is about the quality of education that they get out of the system. The measure that I put on it is how many people are abandoning the government school system. I do not want to see people abandon the government school system, but they are lining up in droves to leave.
More people would leave if there were more spaces in non-government schools, and all this government can do is say, “We will spend more money.” They will say, “We have spent $300 million, and that’s fantastic,” but it does not address the fact that people are prepared to forgo a free service and pay for an expensive service. They want quality out of the ACT government education system, and they are not getting it. They are going elsewhere, and this minister and this government is presiding over a rapid and disastrous decline in the education of ACT children.
What we are seeing here today is a government with the wrong priorities. We will not play Mr Stanhope’s game and say which of his initiatives we would pass up and
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