Page 3281 - Week 10 - Thursday, 25 September 2014
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And that is exactly the point, Ms Burch, of today’s MPI: the inability of this government—of you—to recognise priorities and to set them appropriately.
A previous education minister was legendary for his glossy brochures and various strategic direction papers. We had Every chance to learn, Excellence and enterprise: advancing public schools of distinction, the latter designed to counter the success and popularity of ACT non-government schools. We had School improvement in ACT public schools: directions 2010-2013, Priorities 2014, Improving ACT public high schools and colleges—every year another glossy brochure, another set of buzzwords, all designed to give the impression they knew what they were doing and where we were going.
In the meantime we had schools falling down, overcrowded, teachers fighting the directorate on pay rates and conditions, and hot classrooms. We had an IT strategy that rolled out IT in our schools, a worthy objective, but, at several schools I visited, I heard about the litany of disasters with printers that did not work, that were not connected to the network, that needed to be serviced or upgraded, and schools unable to get information out because there was no-one on the help desk in Shared Services available to fix the problems.
In 2012 I raised the issue of disgusting foul-smelling toilets, weed-infested bubblers, and dirt-covered classrooms at Forrest Primary School that had been in desperate need of upgrade and repair for years. At another school, the principal was so excited to show me her new toilets, because she had waited almost a decade to get them. And who could forget the years of neglect that affected Farrer Primary School, where mould continued to spread throughout the school building and sickness increased in both children and staff. It was identified by the Canberra Times that several recommendations from a civil engineer to fix moisture problems going back two more years had been ignored—another example of poor priority setting, Ms Burch.
We move to the 2012 election campaign, and ACT Labor came out with the $28 million to fix Belconnen, with a time frame that said it would be done early in the new term. Two years later, and most of the money is still to be spent. But of course we will hear that they are in active consultation or that preliminary designs have been considered, or some other stalling tactic. In the meantime Belconnen High was evacuated a couple of weeks ago due to some fault that caused the smoke alarm to be triggered.
The same 2012 election manifesto talked about an extra $70 million for what was termed “school infrastructure for the future”. Well, I can agree at least that it was well named, but, two years down the track, I believe that even the ACT education union question the legitimacy of that election promise.
Well you may laugh, Ms Burch, but you have not given us any answers. In the 2012 ACT election campaign, ACT Labor issued an education policy which made commitments totalling an additional $250 million over four years. Included in those commitments was the significant sum of $70 million to refurbish older schools. To the ordinary person, to the ordinary voter, that commitment meant $70 million extra
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