Page 493 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 18 February 2015

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(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) provide details of which ACT public schools are without efficient air cooling in classrooms to allow students and staff to work in acceptable temperatures in line with AEU guidelines;

(b) commit to deliver improvements to those schools that do not have them this school year; and

My motion calls on the government to:

(a) provide details of which ACT public schools are without efficient air cooling in classrooms to allow students and staff to work in acceptable temperatures in line with AEU guidelines;

(b) commit to deliver improvements to those schools that do not have them this school year; and

It is important to reiterate these issues. We call on the government to give Mr Rattenbury some time to think—to think of excuses why he cannot support this motion to call the government to account on education and their education commitments. All along, we keep hearing from Mr Rattenbury that he is here for all of the community. But since he has taken on his new role, we have asked him questions and given him plenty of opportunities to have a look at calling this government to account. This motion is one of those. This is not political, Mr Rattenbury. It is something that you should, if you still have any commitment to your broad electorate, be very much interested in.

The ACT public school network of 86 public schools and 33 early childhood and childcare centres is, by any account, a large property portfolio to manage. The latest ETD annual report advised that as at June 2013, the directorate managed assets with a total net book value of $1,965.8 million. The education portfolio budget is, depending on how you measure it, the largest or second largest of this government’s annual expenditure. We know that, by comparison with other states and territories, the ACT is a very high investor in public education.

If you read through the directorate’s annual report, you can see, not surprisingly, that it has myriad issues to cope with in managing such a large property base. We have ageing asset stock; we have an ever-growing need for upgraded information and community technology infrastructure; there are ongoing issues of car parking and traffic management; and there is an increased need and demand for security systems by way of fencing or closed circuit TV and other preventative and surveillance measures to reduce vandalism. And, of course, with Canberra’s growing population and the development of new suburbs comes a need for new schools.

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