Hansard Daily: House of Assembly - Tuesday, July 23 2019

Bills

Education and Children's Services Bill

Final Stages

Debate resumed.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: To be clear, I have moved that the Legislative Council's amendment No. 1 be disagreed to.

Dr CLOSE: I will speak very briefly in generalities about these amendments and then we can go through each of them. What I would like to say initially, though, is how pleased I am that we are getting very close now to getting an education and children's services act. It has been very long in the making, and I think it will make a significant difference to the quality of education and children's services that are offered across the state. I am very pleased to have played a constructive role, both previously as minister in introducing it before the last election and then in being largely supportive of it in the terms under which it has been brought by the present minister.

I indicate that our initial position on this side of the chamber had been to maintain our position on the amendments that the government has indicated it will not be supporting. However, there has been very good progress on the question of an education ombudsman, and I am pleased to say that we support the idea of a review, of the fact that a review will occur. It has been agreed with the Hon. Tammy Franks in the other place, and therefore we will support the government in opposing that amendment, which is the initial amendment that we are talking about.

I had items on my list to do that I did not get to finish, as I am sure is true of every minister when they suddenly become no longer minister as a result of an election or any other change. One of those matters was this quite vexed question of exclusions and suspensions for students in our school system, recognising that a disproportionate number of young people who experience suspension through to exclusion are also known to have a disability. When you add in that they are also known to come from families struggling with very real poverty—often multigenerational poverty and unemployment—you realise that, although punishment in an immediate sense might appear to be necessary, it does not get to the root of the challenges that these young people experience.

Punishment—if I can use that term broadly—that is about removing a child from experiencing education is probably the worst thing that you could do for that child or young person, even appreciating the difficulties that teachers, SSOs and principals are managing in classrooms and in schools.

I am very pleased to think that the Child Development Council, with its expertise and any additional expertise that is made available to it through the government making this decision, will be deeply contemplating this systemic question. I am very pleased to think that will happen and I very much hope that there will be a bipartisan view formed as a result about how this might be managed better within the school system in the future.

I would like to pay tribute to the Hon. Tammy Franks for not only continuously raising this as an issue but also being prepared to be flexible on an amendment that I know matters a lot to her—to have an education ombudsman—in order to advance this case and, at the same time, to further interrogate whether the changes that have been made within the department in complaints handling and whether the powers and interests and concentration of the ombudsman are sufficient so that we can have a better and more informed view about that in the future. On that basis, on the first amendment we will vote with the government and support their position, as I understand will occur in the Legislative Council.

I will just say briefly that, on the other two, we maintain our position here. Clearly, that does not make a difference in numbers ultimately in the lower house. On the religion question, it will be interesting to see what kind of discussions we have, should we have to invoke the deadlock provisions, assuming that the Legislative Council insists. There are many ways to manage the question of religion in our schools. I do not believe that there is any practice occurring in public schools that is problematic. I have not had any raised with me. It is not something that you hear on the radio. It does not appear to be, in practice, a problem.

However, we do need to be sensitive about the way in which we talk about, particularly in a multicultural society, the variety of religious beliefs that exist within the community and how they are expressed in what is fundamentally a secular institution, which is public education for all. I think we are all well intentioned about that and there will likely be quite a sensible resolution. We will be continuing to support the involvement of the governing council in helping to be decision-makers.

We maintain our position that the union is an important representative of the workers within the public education system—that is not the same as simply selecting a representative from an individual school—and that with the union comes more weight in negotiations that might be necessary, particularly in the context of a school closure that not everyone thinks is a good idea, that is a genuine interrogation of whether or not a school ought to be closed. Having a union with a separate voice, rather than a teacher who might be concerned about their future, on that committee remains important to the Labor Party and we will be voting that way.

Motion carried.

Amendment No. 2: