Wednesday, 4 October 2023

Teachers

Matthew BACH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:00): (479) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Education, and praise God that we have a new one. Just yesterday I tabled a petition in this place regarding the former minister’s plans to sack 117 specialist teachers for children with oftentimes significant disabilities and on other occasions with life-threatening illnesses. In the period between the commencement of that petition and the tabling of the petition yesterday, members of this place will be aware of course that the minister did back down. She did another spectacular backflip.

Bev McArthur: She could go to the Olympics, that girl.

Matthew BACH: She pledged that her new schools tax would hit schools, all of which she called high-fee private schools, with fees of $15,000 and under, but she did a significant backflip there. Mrs McArthur is right: she could perform at the Olympics at this rate.

When it comes to the so-called visiting teacher program, the minister also backed down, and that is an excellent thing. But I am worried about the parents whom I met with at that point in time. The minister had not bothered to meet with them before announcing this new tax. It is a Labor theme, isn’t it? You go out and you announce a poorly calibrated new tax without talking to anybody. She had not spoken to any schools – not one. Mrs McArthur knows this full well because she discovered this information at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. She asked the minister, ‘Who had you consulted?’ I was watching. There was an extraordinary pause of about 30 seconds, and the minister said she spoke to some schools at a dinner. Well, I was at that dinner; it was a jolly nice dinner over the road at the Park Hyatt. Then Mrs McArthur asked, ‘Well, which ones?’ The minister could not name a single school, because she had not spoken to one.

The same was the case when it came to her decision to sack 117 critical specialist teachers for children with disabilities right across our state. She had not bothered to speak to a single one of these important teachers or a single parent of a child with a disability who had benefited, manifestly benefited, from this important program. But what I heard when I consulted with these parents was a real worry that despite our pleasure – our great pleasure, our glee – that the minister had backed down, these jobs had been saved and these children with disabilities would continue to get this service, there is no guarantee from the government they will not come after more frontline teachers. In the other place it was put to the former Minister for Education, recently sacked, that she should guarantee that no frontline teachers will be sacked as a result of the government’s efforts to introduce some savings measures. Now, if the government would like some help from those of us on this side of the house, we will help. I do not doubt that there is very significant waste in the Department of Education that you could cut, but never frontline teachers and certainly not teachers for children with disabilities. The action that I seek from the new minister is the guarantee the previous minister could not give us that there will be no sackings of frontline teachers.