Page 11 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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You have come in here on the first day of the Assembly sitting with an opportunity to say to Canberra what your vision is, what you choose to put in front of the Canberra community for the future. Instead, you have come here with this slight and attack on me. I have been quietly getting on about business. Just this week, for example, I launched the “Bullying. No Way!” campaign to make sure that kids and schools across the country have a safe environment within their school. There was a nation-leading launch here for Kulture Break—an Australian curriculum-aligned online dance program that was developed here by our very own community members. That is leading. That was part of what I was involved in this week.
The Chief Minister and I launched fresh tastes, which provides a safe, healthy environment for kids where we will remove sugary drinks and put in cool water for our kids at school. I went to a Catholic dinner. While you are trying to say community groups have no faith in me, Mr Doszpot, if you had arrived on time you would have seen that the Catholic community do indeed have faith in me. On Saturday night, I was supporting the launch of DonateLife Week, which is an incredibly important activity to be involved in. And on Monday, yesterday, I was launching the literacy and numeracy statement that in public schools teachers will be in the top 30 per cent. That is good policy, forward-looking policy that will benefit our kids.
Just last night I was at the Ricky Stuart Foundation launch. They are raising money—good money from good Canberra folk—around respite services in the community. You are saying that people in the community do not have faith in me. Again, I beg to disagree. In fact, in the Ricky Stuart Foundation program last night, it was written that the Ricky Stuart Foundation had had very positive discussions with Minister Burch and senior officials, and that they are confident that this program will go to fruition and be a success.
On the important matter of how we ensure quality teachers for our students, in today’s paper the Australian Education Union not only backs a new literacy and numeracy test for qualified teachers but thinks there is more work to do. The union has said that the announcement that the government will only hire government school teachers in the top 30 per cent of the general population was an important step forward in recognising and valuing the teaching profession. Again, that is in contradiction to your statements about having no support from the community. They are clearly wrong. I have received letters from the independent schools association and from the Catholic school authority making clear statements of support to me.
Let me go through some of the other points that you have raised. Let me go to the tweet. There is no doubt—I have been straightforward in this—that that was a mistake. It was an absolutely shameful mistake, but it was a mistake. What do you do when you make a mistake? You stand up, you admit it, you accept it, you make an apology, and you do all you can for that. There is a comment, and it is an old adage, that he without blemish should throw the first stone. You yourself admitted that mistakes happen. As you were getting to the end of that, I think you said that it is a test of somebody about how you respond. There was an up-front apology—very clear, absolute—and contact with Mr Pyne’s office. I do not know what else someone can do when such a mistake has happened. Let us be very clear: it was a mistake. It is something I am deeply sorry for, and any offence caused I regret absolutely and deeply.
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