Page 37 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 10 February 2015
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I have held a number of portfolios in this place. Mr Hanson raised care and protection. Let us be very clear: there was no breach of law. That has been stated and provided by the GSO. Mr Smyth laughs. He thinks he has more authority on this than the GSO. The public advocate at the time agreed and accepted that there was no breach of law.
What else have we done in care and protection? Just let me read through some of the things that I have been responsible for. There was a record in care and protection of an unprecedented increase in funding. There was the development of a 10-year out of home care strategy. Mr Gentleman will have the absolute honour and privilege to deliver that to make sure our vulnerable kids get the care they need. We launched the justice blueprint. I put in place an after-hours bail service, youth justice single management and the Bendora transition program. All of this has resulted in fewer youths in Bimberi and fewer nights they spend there. That is a good outcome, and I underline that. We have seen the parent-child interaction therapy program. We have seen many things.
We have the Liberals over there trying to besmirch and put out false information on care and protection. So wrong was Ms Lawder’s media release that she needed to be rebutted by the chair of the child death review committee, saying that Ms Lawder simply and absolutely got it wrong.
Let me go to education and training. Apparently there are problems with maintenance at schools. We have a number of schools, some of them ageing. I accept that sometimes there are maintenance problems. But I will not be held responsible for a tradesperson who cannot recap a utility in the school. I am responsible for the redo of Mount Taylor, Franklin school and Bonner school. That is what I am responsible for. I am responsible for making sure English is compulsory in year 12. I am responsible for making sure that we will only recruit the best teachers. I will only take into our schools the teachers that sit in the top 30 per cent of numeracy and literacy. Yes, I will own that one.
I will own the fact that we are leading the nation in implementation of the Australian curriculum. I will own that. I will own the fact that now we have common reporting against all schools. And I will own that I am the minister for all schools and supported by all sectors in this community. I will continue to fight for the funding that the Liberal Party have put out. You, the Canberra Liberals, have stood in this place and accepted that $30-odd million can be whipped away from the independents and Catholic schools, without any argument whatsoever.
I will also own that Education and Training has managed to secure a Google education summit for the ACT in March of this year. This is the first of its kind in Canberra and only the third such event to be held in Australia. We will hold it at Gungahlin College. It will be open to all schools. (Time expired.)
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.03): That would have to be the most feeble defence for a minister to keep her job that has ever been presented to this place. The minister opens up with, “Here we go again.” Yes, here we go again. From the end of the sitting season last year to the opening, we had two major events—the debacle of the poker
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