Page 3945 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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MR SPEAKER: Come back to the subject matter of the motion.
MR SMYTH: It is interesting that there was a function the other night called the Kambah cluster arts extravaganza. It was a kind of farewell to a couple of schools in the cluster that are closing. They got young performers together to say goodbye. It was their big end-of-year concert for Kambah. It is interesting that Mr Pratt and I were the only Assembly members who attended. Mr Gentleman, the advocate of public education in Brindabella, was not there. Ms MacDonald was not there. Mr Hargreaves was not there. The minister was not there to say goodbye, to tie the ribbon on the final insult to education in Brindabella.
As Mrs Dunne started and as Mr Seselja quite skilfully exposed, this is not about savings. This is actually about a lack of vision, a lack of strategy for public education in the ACT into the next decade and the decades thereafter. Mr Seselja asked the question: what happened between May 2005 and the budget in 2006? We changed ministers. That is all. They had a minister who was given a job. He was sold a pup by the Chief Minister, who did not have the courage to do it himself. Mr Barr was lumped with closing schools, cutting sport and rec and cutting tourism. Why? Because Ms Gallagher would not do it. It is as simple as that. Ms Gallagher had the same numbers as Mr Barr had. Ms Gallagher refused to act.
There is no urgency in this, as has been made out by Mr Barr in his cover story and in the flim-flam that we hear about this, because the data that this government has had for six years was ignored for five years. That is what he is saying. Mr Stanhope as Chief Minister, Mr Quinlan as Treasurer, Mr Stanhope as Treasurer, Mr Corbell as education minister, Ms Gallagher as education minister ignored this data. They were irresponsible. They failed in their duty as ministers. That is what he is saying. That is Mr Barr’s spin on this: “Here is the indictment of all those that have come before me.” They have not done their job, if we believe Mr Barr.
But the reality is: we had a government that panicked. They panicked because Mr Quinlan left and suddenly all the numbers that he had been warning them about arrived at one point. All the ducks lined up. All the planets were in alignment. And instead of having a reasonable approach to putting the budget back into the black after their spending, they panicked and punished the government education sector in the ACT. That is what this is about. It is about mismanagement.
What happened between May 2005 and June 2006, Mr Seselja? We got a new minister who looked at the numbers and we got a government that panicked. And the effect of this is seen in the answers that have occurred since the sham consultation occurred and, indeed, over the last year since the school closures have started.
It is really quite interesting—and there is a perfect example of this—that Mr Barr was actually asked by a Kambah high school student why he would not want to keep both Wanniassa and Kambah high schools open; why would he not keep two high schools in northern Tuggeranong open, two government high schools in the northern half of Tuggeranong. The answer given by Mr Barr was that two 7-10 high schools within 2 kilometres of each other were unviable. There is the new standard. You cannot have a government high school within two kilometres of another government high school.
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