Page 1893 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019

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say. The difference is that only one party in this Assembly is saying that words have consequences and that the minister should be held to account. For Mr Rattenbury and Ms Le Couteur to let the minister get away with this and not reprimand her for these comments once again shows that they value their relationship with the Labor Party more than they value the Canberra community. If the Greens put the Canberra community first they would hold this minister to account. Instead, they continually run interference for a minister who describes kids in the ACT as dumb. For the minister to deny that she said it about kids pretty damning.

Can you imagine what would happen if a Liberal MLA had been on TV on Tuesday night and described students as dumb? Can you imagine the outcry? Can you imagine the emails we would have got from the AEU? Of course, when it is the Labor Party it is a different story. We will stand up for the teachers of Canberra, who have been let down by their minister. They have been let down by the Labor Party. They have been let down by the Greens. The kids, families and teachers of our system deserve much better than they are getting.

To Mr Hanson and Mrs Dunne those stories are real and you just cannot just say, “Oh, I misspoke and that’s that.” I wonder how many hundreds of kids heard this. I wonder how many families in the ACT heard Ms Berry say that kids in the ACT who do not perform as well other students in NAPLAN are dumb. The minister is guilty of far more than any of the people she criticises for supporting NAPLAN. She criticises people who want to get a benchmark of where kids are at. They are not allowed to have that view, but she is allowed to have her view that some kids in the ACT are dumb. She, the Labor Party and the Greens have double standards. We will keep fighting for the integrity of this place.

Question put:

That the motion be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question resolved in the negative.

Working With Vulnerable People (Background Checking) Amendment Bill 2019

MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee—Minister for City Services, Minister for Community Services and Facilities, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Roads) (6.35): I present the following paper:

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