Page 2555 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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classrooms. The government will continue to monitor that situation and work with the Garran community, as I have done since I came to the portfolio.
Similarly, I thought the comments on Telopea could most generously be described as churlish. I assure the house that, when it comes to the Telopea school ovals, the lease for the tennis courts and Montgomery Oval has been returned to the Education Directorate. It is a 99-year lease because the lease had to be reissued. I have worked through that process, and I can assure the house, as I have written to the school community, that a new 99-year lease for that site now sits back with the Education Directorate. That is where it should sit, and that should give the school assurance that I as the minister see that as a very important part of the school’s facilities. I see no plans for any other use for it other than with the school.
In terms of other areas, I will briefly touch on the issue of domestic violence, because this has a very significant impact in our schools. The government is taking a holistic approach to respond to it. Through this budget the ACT government will support ACT public schools to continue to deliver a system-wide school program to effectively and sensitively assess students dealing with the impacts of trauma. Some $100,000 has been set aside to respond to this important initiative in an education context in the 2016-17 budget. This forms part of a broader package in response to domestic and family violence. Given there is an impact in our schools, I think this is an important focus.
In terms of other matters, I welcome Ms Lawder’s comments on the issue of early childhood education and care, particularly the discussion around there being too many places. The closure of the facility at Fyshwick raises questions about capacity in the ACT. I have commissioned a piece of work by the Education Directorate to look at these issues. Shortly after the closure of the Fyshwick centre I convened a stakeholder meeting at the Hedley Beare Centre for Teaching and Learning to which quite a few stakeholders in the industry came. The government presented the initial research that had been done to peer test it with the stakeholders in the area.
There is quite some discussion about capacity. There is a sense that, as you touched on in your comments, Madam Assistant Speaker, there seems to be an uneven distribution of capacity across the system. I am raising this with my colleagues in the cabinet process because we need to look at this in a whole-of-government way to ensure we are managing capacity. We are in a situation where this market has developed essentially as a very significant free market; there has been limited government intervention. Although there has been a deliberate effort in recent years to release more sites, I think we need to think carefully how government strategically intervenes to ensure stable provision of services. We do not want to see services going bust, but we must do that in a way that does not unnecessarily curb the capacity for new centres to arise where there is demand. I welcome the conversation on that. More thinking needs to be done in that space and I can let the Assembly know that the directorate is continuing to work on that for me and that I will be taking that discussion further with my cabinet colleagues. It is one that, no doubt, the next Assembly will need to contemplate as well.
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