Page 3946 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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But what are we going to do? We are going to shut Kambah high school at the end of this year. We are going to knock it down. It will not be a high school, it will be a—
Mrs Dunne: It will be a superschool.
MR SMYTH: It will be a superschool, as Mrs Dunne says. You can have a superschool within two kilometres of a high school but you cannot have a high school within two kilometres of a high school. When is a high school not a high school? That becomes the question. It begs the question: when can you have a superschool within two kilometres when you cannot have a high school? This is the idiotic answer that people have been given right from the start. The community was lied to in the lead-up to the 2004 election; they were lied to. There would be no closures.
“We categorically”—and I looked up “categorically” so that I knew I was right. It said, “Not involving a condition or a qualification.” Categorically, there are no qualifications on closures. There are no conditions on closures because there will be no closures. “Categorically,” the minister said. The community was lied to, because they have now shut schools across the depth and breadth of the ACT. At the same time the minister is saying, “I am here to improve the quality of education. I am the guardian of public education.” He never talks about the non-government sector. He disdains the non-government sector. We see the continual shift.
What is the outcome of their reforms? Almost another percentage point of our students have shifted across from the government to the non-government sector. In the high school sector, which has suffered most badly under this government, 52 per cent of our students are no longer in the government sector. That is the result of the reforms.
Mr Barr: No, 52 per cent are in the government sector, Brendan.
MR SMYTH: Sorry, 52 per cent are in the government sector? So it is only just half? It is only half, and half gone. It is only half and half. Is that what you are saying? Mr Barr sits there gleefully lauding this as an achievement. Only 52 per cent of our students are in government high schools, and that is an achievement. That is an achievement you will carry with you for a long time, Mr Barr.
We see here absolutely no strategy. There is no strategy about the placement and location of schools to secure all schools’ long-term future. All you can read into this lack of strategy from the government is that, if more schools have to go in the future, more schools will. We know we cannot trust them because they lied to the community at the last election when they said categorically no schools would close and, as Mr Seselja pointed out, no schools would close in the political lifetime of Ms Gallagher, who is now the Deputy Chief Minister, potentially the Chief Minister—a member of cabinet, who votes on these issues. We know how she voted on these issues.
But there is no strategy. We have got the Chief Minister recently talking about, “We need to get the population of the ACT up to about half a million.” I assume some
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