Page 2982 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 August 2008
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MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Mr Barr, I think comment about where people’s hands are is probably a little unparliamentary. You might want to think about withdrawing that.
Mr Barr: Mr Deputy Speaker, I withdraw.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Barr. Well done.
MR SESELJA: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Not only has he shown such a lack of ability to explain his position in relation to costings, but we see him today not only not backing our policy of reduced class sizes but also leaving open the possibility of larger classes under the Labor Party.
If they are re-elected, we can only imagine what they would do to schools. Remember last time they made a promise about schools. They made a promise. I think it went something like: “We will not close any schools in the next term of government.” If the Labor Party were to be re-elected, we may well see more school closures. Certainly any promises that they make about not closing schools need to be seen in the context of the election promise in 2004 to the same effect.
We have seen the possibility left open now under Andrew Barr of larger class sizes. He said this morning that there is no agreement in the research that there is an optimal class size for students in any year, let alone in years 4 and above. There is no agreement, he says. He said that we should not support the Liberal Party’s policy to reduce class sizes for better outcomes in years 4, 5 and 6.
Given that there is no agreement, given that this is the new position of the education minister, what can we expect? What is the magic number according to Mr Barr? Is it 25, is it 30, is it 35, is it 40? He has left open that possibility now. We have already seen Minister Barr push class sizes up. We know that that has been part of the whole idea behind the class sizes and the school closures, but we hear this from the minister today, for the first time.
It is quite extraordinary that we have had bipartisan consensus for sometime in this place that moving to reduce class sizes in our primary schools is a good thing. “Smaller class sizes” was his position until today. Yesterday it was: “Smaller class sizes in K to 3 are fine. Anything after that, it is not worth it. The magic figure is: you stop it in year 3. After that, it does not matter. Smaller class sizes do not make a difference. We should not bother. We need to focus on other things.”
But today we have, from the minister, the very clear implication that he believes that, at any year level, there is no optimal class size. Presumably, we can take it from that that he believes that, if class sizes were bigger—if the class sizes maybe in K, 1 and 2 grew to 23, 24, 26, 28—that would not matter because there is no optimal class size, even at those early years. Certainly, under this minister, there is no optimal class size in years 4, 5 and 6. That is why he is happy to keep the class sizes high. That is why he will not back our policy. We know he will not back our policy because he is embarrassed. He is embarrassed because his focus has been on school closures. But we do see a new element in the debate now.
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