Page 4277 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
wonderful measures that are in place to stop truancy, and all of these measures work so well that the principal of Lanyon high school has felt the need to go to the local shop owners and say, “Will you work with me?”
What part of that do the Greens and the Labor Party not agree with? What is it that they object to about a principal saying, “We are not actually stopping truancy; we know that a lot of them go and hang out at the shops. I am going to work with the community, I am going to say to these shop owners, ‘You can voluntarily help, you can assist, you can, as a community, work with me to try to make my school work better, to try to keep kids in school, to try to get better outcomes for these children’”? Clearly, the Labor Party and the Greens do object, because what they are voting against today is endorsing the actions of this principal.
Mr Doszpot has put a very simple motion, in many ways. I would have thought it was a very unobjectionable motion. It is a motion which states a couple of things. It talks about the importance of working against truancy, and then it says: “We will back the principal. We will back the principal in this case.”
We have had debates in this place in recent times where we knew that the Greens did not trust principals. We have had the debate before about suspension powers, and seen that the Greens do not believe that principals will act reasonably with suspension powers—what they believe is that principals will just go nuts and start suspending kids willy-nilly.
That is their view of principals. We have taken a view that we thought was a view that was shared by the Labor Party. We thought our view was shared by the Labor Party—the view that we can trust principals. We actually do believe that they are best placed to manage their schools, and, in this case, we have got a principal going over and above the call of duty.
This principal has done something they were not required to do by law. What they have said is: “How can we work with the community?” And what the Assembly will today be saying, through the Labor Party and the Greens party, is: “We do not support your efforts.” The Labor Party and the Greens are voting against endorsing this principal in their efforts to work with the community to stop truancy. So we have to ask why. We have to ask why it is that the Labor Party and the Greens have come to this conclusion.
We can speculate. The Greens’ view is not a surprise, because they have made it clear before what their views are about principal autonomy. Regarding the Labor Party, it is somewhat of a surprise. We can speculate whether or not Andrew was again rolled in cabinet on this and whether he was rolled by Simon Corbell. Did Simon Corbell say, “Come what may, we are going to back the human rights commissioner over the principal on this”?
If so, the education minister had two options: either to fight this or to roll over—and what he has done is to roll over. He has chosen the latter path: he has rolled over. And this principal has been hung out to dry as a result. And there is no doubt that, due to the intervention of the human rights commissioner, whether or not the reading of the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video