Page 1430 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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But getting to Ms Hunter’s motion, I was very pleased to hear Ms Hunter start by talking about a sense of frustration at having to raise this motion because of the length of time it has taken to get to where we are at the moment. Ms Hunter will probably understand my sense of frustration as well when she considers that I brought before this Assembly on 23 August last year a lot of the points in this motion, that a lot of these answers should have been given to the education committee a long time ago and that a lot of these answers should have been sought a lot earlier. Unfortunately the original motion was watered down to such a level that none of that was possible. But I am glad that Ms Hunter has brought this motion before us here today, and we will be supporting her motion.
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the Assembly today on this matter that has all the hallmarks of poor planning, poor consultation, poor strategic direction and even worse community and stakeholder engagement. If this minister had not already lost his boots in a quicksand of errors in the Assembly last week, he certainly gave every indication yesterday that he was about to step into the bog once again in dealing with this issue.
In fairness to the minister, the issue of whether the CIT and the University of Canberra should merge precedes his elevation to the job. As members recall, I moved a motion in this chamber in August last year highlighting the fact that the government, under the then minister for education, now the Treasurer, had overseen three reviews in 12 months that had made recommendations for tertiary education, none of which had examined the financial implications of any mergers; that the latest review undertaken by Professor Bradley had been, in consultant speak, a quick and dirty analysis that was intended to, and did, deliver a finding to government that met their needs but failed the scrutiny test.
I was concerned at the time that there had been no financial scrutiny of the merits of any merger and that there had been no critical and objective examination of current CIT articulations, whether they were viable and whether they met a demonstrated industry need, and the consequences of the suggested changes. Regrettably, at the time the Greens sided with the government, after listening to the presumed promises of accountability and communication, and watered down my original motion so that it held the government to account for nothing. And that is exactly what the government has done in respect of reporting and informing this Assembly and the wider Canberra community—nothing.
They have said nothing, not one word to this parliament and, in fact worse, even the education minister appears to have not been briefed appropriately. If we are to believe the minister’s answers yesterday he does not know who was on the steering group, he does not know whether he or others have met Professor Bradley, he does not know the status of any financial modelling, he does not know what the polytechnic is and its current status. And he does not realise that the previous minister had already announced that the $25.9 million that the federal government provided, which he was at pains to point out yesterday was from the federal SAF, structural adjustment fund, had already been earmarked.
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