Page 2635 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 August 2019
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In the key areas of health, education, transport, housing, emergency services and government administration, the government has shown its commitment to directly providing and raising the standard of services available to the ACT community. We are showing our commitment by investing billions of dollars in those essential services.
In my portfolio responsibilities you can see the government’s commitment. For example, the $100 million renewal of public housing will see 200 additional properties become available to members of our community who need help to secure a home. Some 1,000 properties will be redeveloped so these people can have the dignity of a modern, comfortable place to live. This builds on the 1,288 homes that have already been built and renewed over the previous renewal program. This is the single largest per capita investment in public housing in the country. By contrast, other Australian governments have sold off public housing.
Equally, in education the ACT government has dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to building new schools and upgrading existing schools so that every Canberra family can have access to a great local public school. The ACT community is responding. Since 2010 ACT public schools have grown from 38,853 students enrolled to 49,150 students. That is more than a 26 per cent increase in the number students attending ACT public schools over the past four years. The average growth has been around 3.5 per cent.
These essential services and facilities are provided for the benefit of our community and are owned by the ACT community through the government for this purpose. When essential services are sold off to private hands, other motives can overtake their primary purpose of providing benefit to people.
The government has also shown its commitment to ensuring that the dedicated people providing essential services are valued and respected. As members know, with the support of my colleagues I have decided that from the beginning of 2020 the government will directly employ a cleaning workforce to clean government schools. It is a rare thing for a government to in-source a workforce, but that is exactly what this government has done.
People fulfilling this often undervalued role are often loved by the school communities they work in. Members may have read in the newspaper the story of Karen Love at Macquarie Primary School, who has become such an important part of the school community. Just as everyone else does, she goes along for the staff Christmas parties, joins in baby showers, and attends student formals.
Alongside this, as members may have noted in the media today, the government has shown its commitment to valuing and respecting the teaching workforce in public schools through the outcomes of bargaining for a new teaching staff enterprise agreement. The ACT government wants to make sure that teachers are paid appropriately in recognition of their critical work and are given time to plan and continue their professional learning around their face-to-face teaching work.
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