Public Education

Ms LEE RHIANNON [5.16 p.m.]: The Greens wish to draw honourable members’ attention to the attack on the public education system that is occurring under the Carr Government. It is a sorry day when Labor members of this Parliament do not stand up for the right of youth in New South Wales to access top-quality education. But, thankfully, there are those who do stand up for public education in this State: teachers, librarians and other staff employed at education institutions. The Greens congratulate all those who, in the past weeks, have taken strike action to safeguard vocational education and support an increase in teachers’ salaries in this State. Thankfully we have progressive unions such as the Teachers Federation, the Public Service Association, and the Australian Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union. All these unions are fighting to stop the privatisation of TAFE.

Labor’s most recent attack on TAFE is part of a seemingly endless restructuring process which is sapping TAFE of its staff’s goodwill. The Labor Government has failed to provide the consistency of policy setting that could have assisted TAFE teachers to achieve excellence. Cuts of $67 million in real terms and 630 full-time positions from TAFE, combined with the opening up of vocational education to private providers, adds up to privatisation.

Labor people are studiously avoiding the use of the "p" word after the debacle of the electricity privatisation push. But that is the agenda here: privatisation of parts of TAFE. Only a TAFE system that is publicly owned and well funded can deliver quality vocational education to all students, regardless of income levels and socioeconomic background, and respond to the special vocational education needs of disadvantaged regions such as western Sydney and rural New South Wales. TAFE makes a special contribution to our society, and in particular to working class families. It is this desertion of working class families that makes it so surprising for many people when they look at Labor policies on this issue.

Page 378

Labor’s plans for TAFE have been surrounded by excessive secrecy - always an indication that it is about to violate its own policy platform, which, incidentally, calls for no funding cuts to TAFE. The Australian Labor Party’s secret education agenda is becoming increasingly clear: to increase casualisation of the work force and to push vocational education into schools. This program, if it proceeds, will lead to the destruction of TAFE as a separate undertaking - clearly, privatisation by another name. TAFE workers and many parents and students are angry; they know they are being sold out. Across New South Wales, TAFE workers are campaigning in pursuit of a series of demands. For the record, those demands are to:

Protect TAFE funding at 1997 levels, in real terms;

Restore the 630 positions cut from TAFE;

Re-establish the class size committee, with Teachers Federation representation. This class size committee centrally determines legally binding maximum sizes for each class type, taking full account of maintaining educational outcomes and occupational health and safety considerations; and

Establish a timetable to restore the percentage of permanent full-time teaching hours to 70% by 2009.

As can be seen, those demands are in no way excessive. They attempt to protect a most important institution, an institution that really is part of our democratic process in providing education across a whole range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Quality public education is the foundation of a healthy democracy. The Greens are beginning to wonder whether that is why the New South Wales Labor Government is doing so much to undermine public education in this State.