Page 1956 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
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Just briefly on sport, we particularly welcome the funding for the new Gungahlin pool. I think it is long overdue. Gungahlin needs these sorts of facilities and I am pleased to see it going ahead. Overall, investing in community sport delivers the most bang for buck. I think the Gungahlin pool fits that model. The other initiatives, including the bringing of playing fields back on line, also fit in that. I would like to explore in estimates in a couple of weeks time the issues around the new Molonglo leisure centre.
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (4.57): I welcome this opportunity to provide commentary on the 2011-2012 ACT budget, the third Stanhope-Gallagher budget the Treasurer has delivered—a task she suggests is an exhausting and rewarding privilege. Well, clearly, while the activity might be a rewarding one for the Treasurer, I suggest it is not rewarding or a privilege for those Canberra families who have to pay for it and who face ever-rising charges for their water, electricity, their rates, their children’s education—the list goes on. There are record borrowings, record rates, record taxes—all this under conditions that have also provided record revenues.
Disappointingly, but not surprising to those of us on this side of the chamber, we hear the same whingeing rhetoric of how tough it was to put the budget together in such changing economic conditions—the ongoing loss of GST revenue and increasing cost pressures. Yet, the Treasurer acknowledges that revenues have improved due to stronger economic activity. And, of course, let us not forget the $80 million windfall courtesy of News Ltd.
In turning to the Education and Training budget, I note that it is the second largest financial commitment for the government. That is appropriate. Education is the window to a lifetime of opportunity and if we do not get the settings right, we condemn a generation of young Australians to failed aspirations. My overwhelming concern with this budget is that it is what the Canberra Times suggested in its post-budget editorial, a budget “with a clear purpose in mind: the re-election of the Stanhope government”.
I suggest the government has taken the children’s birthday party approach. Almost everyone gets an invite and a little gift and almost everyone can feel they have been noticed. I said “almost”, because there is one quite significant omission in the Treasurer’s speech on Tuesday. Incredibly, not once did the non-government school sector get a mention. Not once. In a speech of almost 40 minutes, this Treasurer did not have one single comment to make. And yet over 40 per cent of the territory’s students attend a non-government school.
Clearly, parents who choose non-public schooling for their children are not part of the community, not part of the community that the government is responding to. Clearly, in the eyes of this government, this Treasurer and this education minister, parents of children in the non-government sector require no additional support. This is another sector of the community already hit hard by rising costs. Quite clearly, the Treasurer’s budget presentation highlights and reaffirms this government’s ongoing and clear lack of commitment and disregard for the independent education sector.
Over 40 per cent of Canberra’s students, their parents and their school community were totally ignored. This was not a one-off oversight. The government and the
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