Mr TOYNE - 1999-02-18
Under the Planning for Growth exercise, the Country Liberal Party has announced that it will take $20m out of education. Whilst the Country Liberal Party has claimed that it will put the money back into education, only $4.4m of additional educational expenditure has been announced to date.
What has happened to the remaining $15.6m?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I do first of all acknowledge a question from the honourable member for a change, and I welcome it.
Can I say from the start that we did not at any stage say that we would be taking $20m out of education. We need, at the start of this reply, to state that quite categorically because, quite frankly, the member opposite is simply distorting and misrepresenting the facts. What we are doing is most certainly restructuring the department in a number of ways. We are restructuring in terms of the overall departmental structure and also trying to restructure the entire thinking and philosophy of the department.
In terms of the $20m, the answer is quite simple. The whole process ...
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the minister resume his seat for a moment. The question has been asked of the minister. If you are unsatisfied with the answer, you can ask again but please let us hear him in silence.
Mr ADAMSON: Thank you Mr Speaker. The fact is that even before $4m worth of savings and reallocations have been realised, we have already put those dollars straight back into extra teachers. So that is before we have even started to implement the changes that we have talked about. If you look at the additional funding in areas such as the bilingual education, this has attracted much misinformation from members opposite, and we can go through the entire list. I will be only too happy to make available the briefing documents that have gone out to all electorate offices for instance - Labor and CLP offices - which explain in detail the 17 different measures that we put in place and where these dollars are going.
That information is out there in the electorate offices already. I know that in some offices on this side, members of the public have come in and collected that information and I would assume that, hopefully, it is also readily available in opposition members’ offices, although I do have some doubts in that area. But the fact is that all those dollars will stay in education. We have given that guarantee. We can be scrutinised on that particular guarantee when we go through the appropriation debate and the like. We will stand by our commitment to keep that money in education and for people like the member for Stuart to say that we were taking $20m out of education is a bare-faced misrepresentation of the facts. That money is staying in education. It has been redirected. Some of it is already being redirected into schools and more will be redirected.
This is the person who refused to have any input into the review. He says he wants to work in a bipartisan manner, and then he refuses the opportunity to have anything to do with this. He has refused time and time again to acknowledge the good work that they are doing. But I can tell honourable members, and I can tell Territorians listening to this broadcast, that money is staying in education. We have given that commitment from the word go. We will keep that commitment. We are good to our word. Do not listen to the member for Stuart, because once again, he is totally incorrect.
What has happened to the remaining $15.6m?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I do first of all acknowledge a question from the honourable member for a change, and I welcome it.
Can I say from the start that we did not at any stage say that we would be taking $20m out of education. We need, at the start of this reply, to state that quite categorically because, quite frankly, the member opposite is simply distorting and misrepresenting the facts. What we are doing is most certainly restructuring the department in a number of ways. We are restructuring in terms of the overall departmental structure and also trying to restructure the entire thinking and philosophy of the department.
In terms of the $20m, the answer is quite simple. The whole process ...
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the minister resume his seat for a moment. The question has been asked of the minister. If you are unsatisfied with the answer, you can ask again but please let us hear him in silence.
Mr ADAMSON: Thank you Mr Speaker. The fact is that even before $4m worth of savings and reallocations have been realised, we have already put those dollars straight back into extra teachers. So that is before we have even started to implement the changes that we have talked about. If you look at the additional funding in areas such as the bilingual education, this has attracted much misinformation from members opposite, and we can go through the entire list. I will be only too happy to make available the briefing documents that have gone out to all electorate offices for instance - Labor and CLP offices - which explain in detail the 17 different measures that we put in place and where these dollars are going.
That information is out there in the electorate offices already. I know that in some offices on this side, members of the public have come in and collected that information and I would assume that, hopefully, it is also readily available in opposition members’ offices, although I do have some doubts in that area. But the fact is that all those dollars will stay in education. We have given that guarantee. We can be scrutinised on that particular guarantee when we go through the appropriation debate and the like. We will stand by our commitment to keep that money in education and for people like the member for Stuart to say that we were taking $20m out of education is a bare-faced misrepresentation of the facts. That money is staying in education. It has been redirected. Some of it is already being redirected into schools and more will be redirected.
This is the person who refused to have any input into the review. He says he wants to work in a bipartisan manner, and then he refuses the opportunity to have anything to do with this. He has refused time and time again to acknowledge the good work that they are doing. But I can tell honourable members, and I can tell Territorians listening to this broadcast, that money is staying in education. We have given that commitment from the word go. We will keep that commitment. We are good to our word. Do not listen to the member for Stuart, because once again, he is totally incorrect.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016