Page 3935 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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parts of Canberra because the current plethora of small schools challenges the future equitable provision of the best resources for our children.
I congratulate the Government for finding the money to support the community and for taking this difficult but courageous road. … The Budget is limited and the needs are great. We need to think about the whole system and all its students …
I could not agree more. Rosemary Richards made a significant contribution to the ACT education system over 30 years and her untimely passing last year was a great loss to our education system.
In responding to these trends, the government has sought to reinvest in public education—$350 million, as I refer to in my amendment to this motion. It is the single largest investment in public education in the history of self-government in the ACT and through the second appropriation that the Assembly passed yesterday a further $23 million in additional education funding has been provided.
This is an important investment, reinvesting in the quality of our system. What we need to be concerned about is quality and we need to ensure that every student in the ACT, no matter where they attend school, has access to the same high-quality teaching and learning environments. That was not possible under the previous arrangements that were in place across the territory. We simply had too many schools—too many schools with too few students to deliver quality curriculum and quality teaching and learning. In the small schools, particularly the extremely small schools, the pressure on the very limited number of staff in those schools was extreme. That is why there is very strong support from teachers in those very small schools for something to be done. Everyone in this place knows something had to be done to address these issues. The question is: in making these changes has the government backed it up with investment in improving the quality of education? The answer to that is clearly yes, through the 2006-07 budget, the 2007-08 budget and through the second appropriation that we passed yesterday.
For Mrs Dunne to say that the financial situation has changed and therefore we should reverse all of the decisions that led to the improvement in the financial situation is a farcical argument—and the shadow Treasurer—
Mrs Dunne: No, that is a farcical argument.
MR BARR: Well, how do you think—
Mrs Dunne: You haven’t made the savings.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!
MR BARR: Mrs Dunne, the government achieved—
Opposition members interjecting—
MR BARR: Why is it that this situation turned around? More than two-thirds of the changes in the government’s financial position have occurred as a result of the
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