Page 4379 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 13 October 2009

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MR HARGREAVES: and I would ask you, for the first time in your life, to do something different and be courteous.

MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Hargreaves, can we get back to the subject.

MR HARGREAVES: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. You might like to ask Mr Seselja to try something new: courtesy. That might be nice.

The point, of course, is that the consultation process with the principals and the Catholic Education Office is around the safety of kids in that school environment, but it is also about saving the recalcitrant kids themselves. That is what it is all about. This is not a process of punishment. This is actually a tool that principals can use, in a suite of tools that they have about their person, to save some kid, to give some kid another shot, to give them another chance.

The other thing that these people across the way have not actually addressed—or that I have heard, anyway, and I have been listening upstairs as well as down here—is that they have not said what assistance they might give the families of these young kids. If you take these kids out of the school grounds for 20 days, are the Liberal opposition proposing that Education pay childcare costs? Are they suggesting that we can reimburse the parents for the leave that they have to take to cover this particular period? I did not hear any of that. It is all about parental responsibility and it is all about somebody else’s problem.

If we could only have somebody approach this thing with the kids’ interest at heart, instead of being over the top about punishment, it would be a refreshing change in this place.

Question put:

That Mr Doszpot’s amendments Nos 2 and 4 be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Amendments negatived.

MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella), (4.38), by leave: I move amendments Nos 3 and 5 circulated in my name together [see schedule 1 at page 4394].

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