Page 4383 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 13 October 2009
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MR BARR: The government will be voting for the bill. We will be voting in favour of change. Those opposite will be voting no. You will be voting no, and you will have to stand by that voting record.
Mr Doszpot: So will you.
MR BARR: We will be voting for our bill, Mr Doszpot, and you and others will need to reflect on your position in relation to suspension policy.
Mr Seselja: It is embarrassing for a minister again to come away with nothing.
MR BARR: It is minority government, Mr Seselja; that is life. And I would prefer to see this bill go down than vote for poor public policy as articulated.
Mr Seselja: Well, you’ve done a good job.
Mr Hanson: You’ve got that right.
MR BARR: Given the choice between voting for the rubbish that you put forward or not having change, not having change is better than the sort of rubbish that you put forward. We believe that the position that we have put is a sensible, moderate, well-informed reform that has the support of the key stakeholders in the area in which we are seeking to make a reform. Once again, we have opposition for opposition’s sake from the Liberal Party. They have nothing positive to contribute. All they can do is vote no, and we are going to have another exercise in that this afternoon, it would appear.
I signal that this issue will come back again for the Assembly to consider and the Liberal opposition will stand condemned for their failure to support a sensible policy measure this afternoon.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (4.49): Again, I will go over a few points that I put forward earlier in this debate around the proposed amendments that students who are suspended from school for more than 20 days must undergo at least three counselling sessions. Some of what I am going to say will echo what Mr Barr has just said. I am very unclear about why the number of three was chosen, and why the Liberal Party is insisting that this particular approach be put into the legislation.
Obviously, when you have a situation in a school where there has been antisocial behaviour or some critical incident has occurred then there may be many different approaches. There may be many different support services that need to get involved. I am not clear as to why we would put in legislation one approach that is certainly being prescribed. It means that children and students who are in this situation must do this. I just think that it has not been well thought through and certainly we have not had the opportunity to understand the approach being taken here.
As I said, when there are critical incidents, when there are safety issues at school, when there is antisocial behaviour, of course action needs to be taken; of course there need to be consequences. But that could involve many different approaches, engaging
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