Page 1441 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): Mr Barr, this is not a conversation.
MR DOSZPOT: Mr Barr, we are playing with semantics. I would be very pleased if we can get the answers to what we are talking about, which is covered in enough detail in the motion that has been presented to you.
Amendment agreed to.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: The question is that the motion, as amended, be agreed to.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (3.51): I stand to close the debate. Thank you to all the members who participated today. This is an incredibly important issue for so many right across our community. As we know, here in the ACT we pride ourselves on our educational institutions, our tertiary sector, and we want to maintain that reputation. Part of that is going to be surviving in the new world that has been presented to the various educational sectors in the coming years. That is the uncapping of places and some major reforms going on. This is what Bradley was pointing out—that it is going to be a changing environment; there will be a number of challenges; and, across the country, institutions are going to have to look at how they can best thrive in this new environment.
We had the Bradley report, as Mr Barr has said. There was the “don’t do anything” option. There was the full-on merger between UC and the CIT. There was also the option of giving more autonomy to the CIT. We know that a lot of work was done around those. They are the recommendations that the steering group or the working party went off to have a look at. So as far as this motion goes, that information should be readily available. And, as I said, along the way came this structural adjustment funding, the announcement from UC, and suddenly an announcement from government that there could be another option, this fourth option, which is around this collaborative approach.
I picked up from the minister’s speech that he seemed to be making a statement in there around UCIT so that this new vehicle would be set up as a collaborative venture, even though we do not have details around that, and that that could be the vehicle to take it forward, including a full-on merger. Again, more questions are raised around all of this. It is time that we did get more information out there into the public space. There are many people who are calling for that information.
I understand that these other processes have come over the top with COAG, with the federal government announcing a substantial amount of money for the vocational education sector, and that these things do need to be taken into account. I do understand that. But at the same time, we need to include in this process and in this conversation the people who are impacted directly by decisions that will be made in the coming several months—that is, the workforce. They are the leaders of these institutions; they are the students; and they are other stakeholders who play important roles in this area and who also should be part of that conversation.
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