Page 673 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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We heard Dr Bourke say, “The Liberal Party is being divisive.” Attacking religious schools, attacking ethnic schools in this way, the way the Labor Party has, the way Katy Gallagher and Simon Corbell in particular have, is divisive. That is showing what the ALP, what the Chief Minister of the ACT, believes about non-government school funding and about, indeed, their right to exist. In fact, that motion, supported by Katy Gallagher, those sentiments supported by Katy Gallagher and Simon Corbell, actually questioned the right of these schools to exist at all. It is not just about whether their funding will be indexed; they would like to see them not exist at all. They would like to see a situation where the entire education system is public.
We reject that. We believe in educational choice. We believe that parents should be able to choose to send their kids to a good local government school or, if they wish, for religious reasons or for other reasons, whatever their reasons may be, we believe that they should be supported in their choice if they want to send their kids to the local Catholic school or the local independent school, to an ethnic school, as we have seen. And that is something that we will protect. It is legitimate that these questions are asked because of the Labor Party’s record and because of their statements, particularly here in the ACT where they have shown that hostility to the non-government sector. They are not supporters of the non-government sector.
We have seen how they treated the public sector, of course. The biggest thing they have done in public education is, of course, to have gone to an election promising not to close schools and then turn around and rip the heart out of countless school communities around Canberra. So that has been their record in public education.
But let us look at what the Greens have had to say. The Greens, of course, are more extreme on this issue than the left of the Labor Party is and they take a similar view to the existence of non-government schools. They actually want to direct non-government schools in the way that they operate. They actually want to take away autonomy from non-government schools. They want to say that a religious school, a Christian school, cannot have a policy that looks to hire people who share that Christian faith. Likewise, a Muslim school would not be able to make decisions to hire people who share the Muslim faith. If a Muslim school is going to exist, if a Christian school is going to exist, if a systemic Catholic school is going to exist and have that identity, clearly they need to be able to make decisions about whether they hire people who share that view of the world or do not; otherwise they simply cease to exist in the current form. And the Greens have said that. They have said that there would be no discrimination at all in the hiring of staff.
Schools are going to make judgements and are protected at the moment in making those judgements. Non-government schools protect that particular identity. People choose that school for a particular reason. And they know that when they pay their school fees and send their kids to that school, it will have a certain ethos and a certain culture. The Greens, in their policy on education from the last election, want to take that away, as well as having funding pegged to the 2003-04 levels. So ripping the guts out of non-government schools in terms of funding as well as taking away their autonomy is the Greens’ policy. And those two things we reject absolutely.
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