Page 2885 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 2013
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Is the clock working or do I have as long as—
Mr Barr: No, you have unlimited time.
MS GALLAGHER: That is an attraction. I could keep going. I have got a big folder to read out here. I would again go back to some of the wage outcomes. When you look back to any wage outcome that was less than two per cent, you have to go back to 2000-01 and 2001-02, prior to our election to government, when the wage offers were 1½ per cent, along with some considerable job losses. So we have been a good employer. We will continue to be a good employer and we will negotiate with the unions. But just because we have connections with the unions, it does not mean that we are not going to have some hustle and bustle on the EBA front. I think the people of the ACT would expect us to be responsible in that regard.
In relation to Gonski, I think it is, again, important to go through the position. We did go through this in estimates and I know the minister for education went through it in estimates as well. No state got a better deal. The principles that are applied to needs-based funding are the principles that are applied to needs-based funding. All of the states that have signed up have signed up to the same conditions that the ACT government signed up to. I think there were some issues around the cost of WA providing the same level of education because of some of the impacts of their rural and remote education services which influenced the additional offer to WA. But at its heart, in terms of what it costs to educate a child in the ACT, the offer is the same to all states.
Mr Hanson likes to peddle this belief that he peddled through estimates. He actually got quite heated at officials, which I thought was very unfortunate because the officials are there to assist the committee. I certainly watched the education part from my office. I happened to be in my office and I saw the way that that segment of the estimates committee was handled and the pressure that was placed on officials to answer in a particular way.
But Mr Hanson continues to peddle the myth that we are $30 million worse off. We are not. The issue is that the indexation arrangements that were funded and forecast in the budget were based on the AGSRC index growing at around six per cent. What happened was that state Liberal governments, which contribute to the indexation arrangements, cut their education budgets so savagely that that indexation arrangement was actually going to be less than three per cent. It was going to be around two per cent, I believe.
So this myth that there is money missing from education is just simply wrong. That is because of the cuts to education funding by other state governments. I think we need to put that to rest. We also need to acknowledge that the ACT kids—this is supported by the Catholic Education Office and the non-government schools association, the Association of Independent Schools—have got a good deal, a fair deal and the only deal that the ACT should have got, which was based on our relative level of need which is the whole thing behind needs-based funding.
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