Page 1888 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019
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same privileges as others. I table a number of media statements and articles which show my very consistent position on these matters:
Media releases—
School isn’t a competition but maybe we’re treating it like one—Latest news from Yvette Berry MLA, dated 27 March 2018.
Canberra students show overall high NAPLAN performance, dated 28 August 2018.
NAPLAN review a mixed outcome, dated 22 June 2018.
Audit report backs up government direction on the Future of Education, dated 1 June 2017.
The motion by the Canberra Liberals today is a poor attempt at scoring some political points when my record has been very clear publicly and in this place. I will continue to work towards improving education for all our children and to ensuring that no stress or anxiety is caused to young people as a result of NAPLAN reporting.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (6.11): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for moving this important motion today. A decision to move a censure motion is never taken lightly but, like other influential members of our community, politicians must be held accountable for their words and their actions. The words that the minister for education used, apparently last month but publicly broadcast on WIN television this week, were extraordinarily inappropriate, highly offensive and utterly disrespectful. Yet for some time they remained on the public record without apology or recognition.
There does appear to have been some apology that has been amplified today but only because of Mr Coe’s censure motion. Understandably, there was outcry from the Canberra community. So this minister goes on the defensive. Her lame defence for this is, “I used a poor form of words.” I do not know what planet we live on when the minister for education would use the words “dumb kids” in relation to school testing.
There is certainly no doubt that this was a poor form of words. The minister’s behaviour goes utterly against the government’s own policy of encouraging students, giving them a lift and not isolating them. Is this the best that the Minister for Education and Early Childhood Development can do? To make this reference, even in passing, to kids who are doing exams as “dumb kids” is a poor choice of words.
Perhaps she thought her comments needed further clarification when she said, “I do not and never would call any person dumb.” But that is exactly what she did. They were the words on WIN television the other night. But even that is insufficient. On the one hand she had derided a group of students and on the other hand she says that she would never say such a thing about an individual person. Does this mean that the minister thinks it is okay to insult a group of people?
In her lame explanation this minister failed to recognise the hurt that was inflicted on students who had been labelled as dumb by the education minister. The minister failed to recognise the anger that would be felt by those parents in our community who have had their children labelled as dumb by their education minister. The minister failed to
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