PARLIAMENT OF TASMANIA

Excerpt from Hansard

Wednesday 5th March 2008

Education

Mr GUTWEIN (Bass) - Mr Deputy Speaker, it gives me no pleasure to rise and speak in this debate.

Mr Bartlett - Mr Deputy Speaker, we know the member is misleading the House now! If he'd kept the smile off his face when he said that we might have believed him.

Mr GUTWEIN - I think the spokesperson for the Greens would agree that this is about kids in our schools. That is what we have to come back to. What I heard yesterday unfortunately - and I say unfortunately, Mr Deputy Speaker, because it is unfortunate that the Premier had to come in here and once again announce that a minister of his Government is not doing their job. What we have heard for the last six minutes has been a case put up about denial. The Premier of this State has finally announced and said what we have believed for a long period of time and that is that our results are unacceptable. The member for Braddon, Mr Best, said a moment ago that the truth hurts. Well, the truth certainly hurts, doesn't it, because the results are unacceptable.

Let me make a case, Mr Deputy Speaker. What is going on here is abject systemic ministerial failure, that is what has gone on in education. We know that because yesterday the Premier came in and said with no equivocation or misunderstanding that what has been going on is unacceptable. When this minister took over from the previous minister, we know what he thought about her performance because he said that we had not done a very good job. In fact, he said in regard to the essential learnings curriculum -

'We did not do a very good job of communicating the new curriculum with parents and the wider community. We did not do a very good job at managing change within the department, we did not do a very good job of the broader aspects of assessment and reporting.'

We did not do a very good job, Mr Deputy Speaker, and it is unfortunate that what we heard yesterday we had to hear from the Premier - that the results that this Government has been achieving after 10 years of a Labor government are unacceptable.

I would like to give the Minister for Education some advice. Focus on the children, not your own career. Focus on your own self-professed core business, literacy and numeracy, not your own career. Focus on doing your job, not on the job that you covet. That is what has to happen because what we are seeing - and we have seen it with successive education ministers now - is a drift away from the core business they should be engaging in. That is looking after Tasmanian children, making certain that they get the education that they deserve, that their parents want them to have and that they need to survive in this century.

What we are finding, unfortunately, is that this minister is now going through a period of denial, not even agreeing with what his Premier said yesterday. He cannot bring himself to agree with what the Premier said yesterday. One of the key things you will learn is that before you can accept that things are not good enough, you have to stand back, look at it, do an honest appraisal and be prepared to say, 'The job that I've been doing hasn't been good enough, I've let the children down'. You cannot continue to deny the facts. The Premier yesterday put them clearly on the record - that is, that literacy and numeracy in this State is not acceptable and it is about time, Minister, that you start to do your job. Stop focusing on his job, get on with it and give our kids the education they deserve.