Page 2933 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 August 2008
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What we have to have is a system that looks after the students of the ACT. When we held a forum recently at the Calwell Club we heard from the head of the principals association that five per cent of students in the ACT—a growing number, now five per cent—have difficulties. And the policies of this government have done nothing to address those difficulties.
They have picked up on some of the policies that Mr Pratt took to the last election which talked about more pastoral care. They have gratefully accepted the chaplains funded by the federal government, the former Howard government. Mr Pratt understood what was required. Four years ago he was talking about this and the then government laughed at him. We are grateful that the government has at least taken on what the Howard government offered. But they have abandoned the field and they have abandoned the students of the ACT because they simply cannot say, “Yes, you are right, this is a good initiative.”
Their feeble attempts to discredit the figures are just ridiculous. And the minister can have time to speak again; he can come down here and read his press release; he can put his costings on the table. But I bet he will not because he knows he is wrong.
We took some of Labor’s own budget numbers. It is interesting that Labor said the capital cost per year to reduce a year 3 class size was a million dollars and that the cost per year, once fully implemented, was $3.6 million. We took high figures; we scaled that up because we knew that the costs had grown.
Indeed, when you get to the treasury costings that the Chief Minister released, he says the initial costs of 150 primary school teachers is estimated at around $13 million per annum. We agree. That is what we estimate it at. Spot on. The cost of 35 high school teachers is estimated at around $10 million over four years and $3 million per annum when fully implemented. We agree. They are in our numbers. We agree.
What they did get wrong was the cost of HECS because they used the wrong assumption. We can only assume that the treasury people were working on the detail that was delivered by the Chief Minister.
We said that demountables will cost about $240,000 a year. That is what this says. These are the treasury costings: $2.9 million will only provide around 12 demountables. We agree. The numbers agree.
Then we have got this spurious assertion that an additional 150 teachers will require an additional 150 classrooms. The whole point of the supposed reforms was that there were so many classrooms. Bulldoze whole schools. Make the promise, “We will not close schools,” then close schools. “We will not sell land,” then sell land.
But there is capacity in the system. And this can easily be achieved—
Mr Barr: That’s not what you were saying in 2006. So you’ve backflipped on that one, have you?
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