Page 4622 - Week 12 - Thursday, 15 October 2009
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Assembly bill on principal-approved school suspensions voted down by the Liberals and the Greens would have brought the ACT into line with other Australian jurisdictions. In fact, as we all know, the Liberals’ amendments would have actually achieved national parity.
So the minister for propaganda once again crafted another fairy tale for the media that misrepresents the actual reality. To their credit, the Canberra Times have carried a retraction or correction in this morning’s paper. I wonder if we can dare to hope for an apology or even a retraction from Minister Barr. If only we had a ministerial code of conduct in the Assembly; perhaps issues like this and similar ones would not then occur.
The aim of education policies adopted by any government should be to develop, as fully as possible, each individual’s potential and equip young people with the resilience to develop in the face of rapid changes in society. Today, I would like to again remind this place that the ALP have been known to embrace sound Liberal Party policy in the past—not that they will ever admit it. The ALP have an uncanny way of putting such a spin on things that one could be convinced that it was their original idea all along, and some are convinced by that. The idea of smaller class sizes was taken to the last election by the Canberra Liberals, only to have the ALP and Minister Barr have a massive change of heart which saw them backflip in the most extraordinary way.
In a desperate attempt to copy the well-thought-out policy of the Canberra Liberals, Mr Barr shamelessly told the electorate whatever he needed to, but behind the scenes he knew he was short on the detail and was not really committed to the policy. However, he saw the community’s reaction and accepted the evidence that suggested that it was good policy, and he acquiesced.
It is also timely to reiterate in this place the shortfalls in recent policy announcements made by this government. The Education Amendment Bill that was voted down in the Assembly yesterday was tokenism at best. The failure of the minister to give principals in the ACT the power that their counterparts have in every other jurisdiction in Australia to suspend students for up to 20 days without going through red tape is appalling.
The minister had every opportunity to negotiate with us on this bill. However, he stayed on his now familiar course, his way or the highway, instead of empowering our principals and our schools. Instead of collaborating to make the policy better, the minister chose to ignore the spirit with which we, the opposition, approached this bill, the spirit which was willing to negotiate. He also chose not to accept the intervention initiatives that we were suggesting, which we were happy to discuss and amend, if better ideas were introduced. Instead of negotiating a position that was acceptable to both parties and fulfilled the aim of the bill, the minister opposed for opposition’s sake. As recently as—
Mr Barr: When they start borrowing your lines, you know you’ve had a complete victory!
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