Page 3117 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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It is at this point that I must respond to Mr Doszpot’s gross misrepresentation of my comments in the estimates committee. Yes, the government established a non-government schools equity fund, deliberately targeted to provide the bulk of the support to Catholic and low-fee, independent schools. And it was in that context that I made my statements around not directing that equity funding to schools that could be described as blazer schools, those high-fee independent schools. In fact, the term “blazer schools”, I will confess, was given to me by the Principal of Emmaus Christian School, who described his own school as not being a blazer school, being a low-fee, independent school.
In seeking to characterise the difference between the non-government and independent schools, and to give a very clear example of where we are targeting this additional funding, I make no apologies at all for wanting to target this additional funding to low-fee, independent schools and to the Catholic school system. It is an equity fund and, with the greatest of respect to some of the other high-fee independent schools in the territory, my view and the Labor Party view is that at this point in time they were not a funding priority for additional resources. We should be putting our additional resources into low-fee and Catholic systemic schools, particularly in relation to improving student equity outcomes.
It was a deliberate policy decision, one that we were up-front with before the election, and an entirely consistent application of that policy. Mr Doszpot can make all the accusations he wants. All I need to do is go to the comments of Mr Irvine, the Executive Director of the Independent Schools Association, about the budget: “The ACT government are delivering on their non-government education election commitments which the Association welcomes—particularly the continued investment in students with a disability. It is pleasing to see the government allocating $1.6 million over four years for students with a disability in non-government schools. We also welcome the increased funding of 0.7 per cent each year to non-government schools over the next four years.”
The sector have spoken. I repeat for Mr Doszpot’s benefit: I will talk to them and take advice from them on policy in relation to non-government schools, not from him. He does not speak for them, and they have made it very clear to me that he does not speak for them and that I should never take what he says on their behalf as to be their position; I should always talk to them. And I give them that commitment—that I will always do that. I will never take Mr Doszpot’s word as standing for what they represent to government. I will never do that.
In relation to Mr Coe’s point and the recommendation in the estimates committee that more detail be published on non-government school funding, I draw members’ attention to page 363 of budget paper 4 that outlines the ACT government’s contribution and that of the commonwealth government. Then there was the little scare campaign that Mr Doszpot was running, around changes to territorial payments that occur every year. I understand he is a new member and that he may not have encountered this before, but the territory simply acts as a post-box in terms of passing on commonwealth government funding to non-government schools. The ACT government are not responsible for the amount of money the commonwealth
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