Page 1713 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 May 2013
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If I were the Premier of New South Wales, I would sign up to this because it gives a good deal for New South Wales. If I were the premier of some other states, I would sign up, because I would be getting a good deal. But why is the Chief Minister signing, knowing that this is not a good deal for the ACT?
Based on what we see so far, this is a dud for the ACT in relative terms to other jurisdictions. But she is gleefully doing that. She is leaving the debate. She does not want to stay here and face the music, because she knows that the points that I am making are an accurate reflection of what she is doing, which is essentially doing what the Prime Minister wants her to do.
I can assure you, Madam Speaker, that if this was Tony Abbott proposing this, if this was a coalition government, she would be making the points that she should be making—that is, that the ACT gets dudded. The ACT gets dudded and other jurisdictions do well out of this. She would be coming back here and saying what she should be saying, which is, “I’m going to fight for every cent for ACT students.”
We excel in the ACT. I recognise that. Joy Burch was making some comments about relativities. We have got a great non-public and public school system. We support it. There are problems in it, but when you look at the stats, compared to other jurisdictions we get good results. What the government is saying is, “We don’t think that we should excel in the ACT. What we want to do is bring ourselves back to the other states. We want to bring ourselves back to the field.”
We dispute that. What we want to do is see the ACT excel. That is what we want. We want students here to do better than the national average. You cannot stand here, minister, and say, “Look at these stats. We do better here, we do better there.” This is the case for many reasons, including the fact that we have a good socio-demographic base. You cannot say, “Let’s laud that,” but then say, “Let’s get rid of that. Let’s bring ours in funding terms back to the rest of the field.”
That might be what you want—mediocrity. Maybe what you want are the national averages. That is basically what you are saying out of Gonski, that you want to be at the national average. We want to exceed it. We want to excel. That is the Liberal philosophy here in the ACT.
What the Chief Minister is proposing by her amendment essentially is refusing to provide the sort of answers that Mr Doszpot is asking for. Let me point out a couple of those. What he wants is a guarantee that schools are not going to lose money in real terms. The Chief Minister scrubbed that out. Not only may we have the example where we are brought back to an average with the rest of the nation, which cannot be a good thing, but also we have what Mr Doszpot is raising. It is a concern about schools losing money in real terms. Through indexation, where schools are expecting more than three per cent, they are going to be losing out in real terms.
Why cannot the Chief Minister make that guarantee? When you look at what is happening relative to other jurisdictions, this is going to effectively result in cuts in real terms. In relative terms over other jurisdictions, this ends up in cuts for school
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