Page 3385 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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Gonski review yet. When that response comes through I will be looking forward to sitting down and negotiating with the commonwealth, along with other states and territories, about our response to that.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Doszpot, a supplementary question.
MR DOSZPOT: Minister, we understand federal DEEWR distributed information to all state education directorates and your directorate had the resources to identify the impact that the Gonski reforms would have on Canberra schools. When did they provide you with the data that appeared in the weekend papers, or did they provide different figures? If so, how were they different?
DR BOURKE: I think Mr Doszpot is referring to the “leaked documents”. In the Liberal Party press release that is what they are referred to—leaked documents in inverted commas. I am not sure where they have been actually leaked from, perhaps the Victorian Liberal Party. This scaremongering is the kind of scaremongering that the Canberra Liberals have been running with, that the federal Liberals have been running with, the scaremongering that the New South Wales education minister, Mr Piccoli, has stepped away from. He said that what we should be doing is focusing on what is in Gonski, the principles of Gonski, and I should remind Mr Doszpot what they are like.
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order! I cannot hear Dr Bourke. Dr Bourke, you have the floor.
DR BOURKE: The principles of the Gonski review, Mr Doszpot, are fairness, transparency and funding for those most in need. And those are the very principles
of the Gonski review that Mr Piccoli endorsed in the Sydney Morning Herald today.
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, a supplementary question.
MRS DUNNE: A supplementary question, minister.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order, members! I cannot hear your own colleague.
MRS DUNNE: Minister, if you had such information, why didn’t you make a public statement to assure Canberra schools that they would be safe, given that the Prime Minister some months ago suggested that no school would lose any money?
DR BOURKE: Mr Speaker, it does not surprise me that the Canberra Liberals do not bother to read my press releases, which I have been putting out time and again this week, telling people—
Mr Hargreaves interjecting—
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