Page 4711 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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MR DOSZPOT: I am sorry: Ms Porter. How dare you suggest for one minute that the Liberal Party have stood in the way of funding for specialist education in this place? This minister, Mr “Backflip” Barr, has an atrocious record of non-performance, reversal of policy and lack of concern for those in his portfolio area.
Education policy in this place has been driven by the opposition parties, who do have a genuine interest in real progress in education and do more than merely put out furphy media releases. We have been forced to pull up Mr Barr on no fewer than nine occasions in the three years of this Assembly to date; I will come to these shortly.
Chief Minister—I would like to address the Chief Minister; she is not here, but she is listening—I feel sorry for you. If Mr Barr is, after you, the next best performer in this place, if he is your best shot, you have a problem. If this motion is what he portrays as policy and debate, he is shooting blanks. He tried it last year. He suggested last year that the Liberals had opposed new initiatives in education. He rolled out all these claims last year. Let me refresh the Assembly on some of these Barr-isms. I quote Mr Barr:
I am determined to give principals … the ability to attract and keep the best teachers in their classrooms, with faster promotions and a salary structure that better reflects the professional standards … that will be part of the education landscape from 2011 on. The key here is … that we continue to attract and retain the very best teachers.
That was what Mr Barr said a year ago. This is a response I received this week from one of those “very best teachers” he is supposedly working so hard to attract and retain:
Ten years ago, with education under a Labor government I quit the ACT Teaching Service to join the Federal Public Service. I was disillusioned with a regressively run-down education system and poor National teaching salary parity. Things haven’t changed even though I returned to teaching last year. How can I really justify my $30,000 pay cut from the Public Service to return to a profession that I love when it is so undervalued by the ACT Legislative Assembly?
The debate last year, in which Mr Barr gave such an insightful view, was a result of an appalling lapse of judgement in trying to drive an efficiency dividend in education. To be more specific, it was special needs education that was targeted. It was a drive that would have resulted in cuts of two early intervention preschool support teachers, two support teachers for early childhood English as a second language program, one early childhood support teacher for behavioural management and four school counsellor positions; reclassification of student management consultants; cuts of two hearing support positions from a head count of 10.3 FTE and one of four vision support teachers; post-school options teachers being discontinued; two disability support officers going; five classroom teachers and one SLC position in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literacy and numeracy program being discontinued; a cut of one SLC English as a second language position; and closure or break-up of the CTL resource centre.
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