Page 3610 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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The figures that we were using were accurate enough for the Prime Minister to actually back down and not announce the figures that she was going to announce. The Prime Minister was going to make an announcement on viability and on the Gonski review. Because of all the figures that were put before the parliament, the Prime Minister put that off for a month so that she could go back to the drawing board and have a look at the figures that of course everyone has seen, except Dr Bourke.
The Prime Minister, after last weekend’s headline showed schools would be devastated, was forced into making what is, very likely, a hollow promise that no independent school will be left short of funding. In fact, she went further. As ABC News quoted:
Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced plans to provide the same funding for all school students, regardless of the type of schools they attend.
The shake-up, announced in a speech to the Independent Schools Council of Australia this morning—
these are Ms Gillard’s words I am using on the day—
will result in every independent school receiving a funding boost.
Ms Gillard said the funding rethink would help the Government lift education standards for all children, in both the private and the public sectors.
But the government, which has delayed its formal response to the Gonski report into school funding, will not say how much extra money schools will get.
She was addressing the Independent Schools Council. So she obviously had to come up with something. It was something, but how true is it? It sounds a bit like “no child will be living in poverty after 1990”, from then Prime Minister Hawke, and “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”. I am not sure whether I need to put a postscript as to who said that but, for the record, it was Prime Minister Gillard in 2010.
We know the Federal Labor government has been forced back to the drawing board and when the revised version comes up—and it will come up for debate—is anyone’s guess. Maybe you can elucidate on that, Dr Bourke. What I would like to know is when the ACT government knew what impact an unadulterated Gonski would have on Canberra schools.
That is a question you have been asked this week in this Assembly, Dr Bourke, and all you could do was try to filibuster your way through it, saying that you were not aware of the figures. I guess the question that needs to be asked is: has your directorate been brave enough to show you those figures? And if they have not, if I were in your position I would be asking a few questions.
If Minister Bourke knew what an unadulterated Gonski would mean for the 26 Catholic schools, the 73 government schools and the 13 independent schools here
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