Page 2772 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 17 September 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MADAM SPEAKER: Sit down, please, Minister Burch. Can you stop the clock? Mr Doszpot, you were heard in silence, and I have called you to order I think three times.
MS BURCH: I think that the best that Mr Doszpot’s motion does is to call on us to do more of what we are already doing. Mr Doszpot is not necessarily complaining that we have got it wrong. He seems to be complaining that we are not doing enough. That is the reason why I have moved the amendment.
The reality is that Mr Doszpot knows the truth about the quality of our ACT schools, even though he is trying to paint the picture that they are run down. He has stood in this chamber previously and declared that ACT education enjoys a favourable reputation around Australia and that that is well deserved. Indeed that was backed up by Mr Hanson, who, in May of last year, stated:
We excel in the ACT … 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.
That is closer to the reality of our system. We do get good results and we should be very proud of our education system. Mr Doszpot has also spoken, after every school visit that he has made, about how fantastic they all are.
The document that forms the basis of the motion is the Education and Training Directorate’s “ACT public school enrolment projections—2013-2017”. This is one of the tools that the directorate uses to plan for school growth in response to demographic change in the ACT. It shows that in every school network there is ample capacity to ensure that every student has access to a quality education.
Mr Doszpot has also sought to ignore the decade of investment through budget after budget. All of that investment has been opposed by the Canberra Liberals. Over the last 10 years the government has spent or budgeted to spend more than $800 million on capital works in education and training. I repeat: $800 million on capital works. When the federal government funded the building the education revolution, with the benefits that it brought to the ACT, capital investment in ACT schools reached over $950 million.
As the Assembly is already aware, the government has just awarded the contract for the construction of the new Coombs school, a $47 million school. I say to Mr Doszpot that whilst we might put in a budgeted figure, if we get a contract that can deliver that for less and still give us a quality product, I would have thought that that should be encouraged and given a tick. But that is not how Mr Doszpot operates.
This school in Coombs will be the first of several new schools to be constructed in the Molonglo valley. It will cater for 720 preschool and primary school students. The new Franklin Early Childhood School and the Neville Bonner Primary School were opened at the start of last year. These projects involved an investment of $70 million. They came in on time and under budget.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video