Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

GOVERNMENT: ELECTION COMMITMENTS
Wednesday, 1 June 2011 COUNCIL 1603
available. Some of that information has become
available as a result of the state budget, some of it has
become available as a result of the questioning of
ministers at the Public Accounts and Estimates
Committee and some of it has become available as a
result of statements made to the media by the
government over the six months it has been in office.
In terms of the example of education, it has become
clear through these information sources that there is
some $480 million in cuts to education by the
Baillieu-Ryan government. This is certainly not
information that was put to electors prior to the state
election last year. It is certainly not information that has
been revealed in any statements provided by the
government since the election. It comes through
costings advised by the Department of Treasury and
Finance, but the opposition does not have access to that
information. From information provided at the Public
Accounts and Estimates Committee it has been possible
for the opposition to calculate that that is the magnitude
of cuts to education. What does it mean for schools,
including schools in Northern Victoria Region, the
region I represent in the upper house? It is a region that
covers almost half of Victoria, and it includes a great
many schools that are to be affected by these cuts to the
education budget.
Prior to the election the Labor Party had embarked on a
state schools plan that would have seen every school
across Victoria either replaced or upgraded, and Labor
had made great inroads in implementing that plan. On
the strength of that plan many school communities —
parents, teachers and students — in good faith had
embarked on improvements to schools that involved
detailed consultations with school communities about
reorganising their schools to ensure that parents,
teachers and students had access to the very best
educational opportunities and the jobs that come with a
quality education, which can only be delivered through
quality education facilities; facilities which, of course,
make it possible for teachers to deliver the very best
education to students in schools.
Schools in a whole range of locations have embarked
on major reorganisations on the strength of
commitments which were given by the previous
government. There is plenty of precedent to indicate
that when there is a change of government, or even
when there is a change of minister and a government
continues, commitments that have been entered into
will be honoured by subsequent ministers and
governments. I think that was a very reasonable
assumption for schools — parents, teachers and
students — to have made. I can certainly recall coming
to office as a minister in 1999 and being provided by
public servants, who are not in any way politically
aligned, with lists of commitments made by the former
government and by its ministers, and there was no
doubt that those commitments were going to be
honoured. But it seems to be the case that these
conventions and these commitments are not ones that
the Liberal-Nationals government feels bound by.
Let me be really clear about this: these are not election
promises. These are commitments which were entered
into by the former government, and on the strength of
that communities have gone out and done a great deal
of work and invested a great deal of time, teachers have
gone away and undertaken training, and schools have
moved whole groups of students in order to progress
those improvements to their schools.
Let me also be clear that these are not schools in Labor
electorates that the Liberals and The Nationals might
feel they owe some lesser commitment to, because
these are electorates that do not vote for a Labor
member. These are electorates which vote for
Liberal-Nationals members on the other side of this
house and in the lower house. These include schools
like those affected by the Merbein school regeneration
project, including primary schools and the secondary
college up to year 10. They include schools like
Chaffey College in Mildura, the years 7 to 10 college.
They include schools like the schools in Ouyen which
have also embarked on a reorganisation to deliver better
quality education to students. They include schools in
Robinvale.
This list includes a school in Wodonga. Wodonga had
one of the very first clusters of schools to embark —
without any commitments of government funding at the
outset, apart from planning funding — on a major
reorganisation of schools in order to ensure that
students would be provided with the very best
education opportunities into the future in order to
provide them with the very best job opportunities
beyond their schooling.
I now turn to the health area. There are a whole range
of health facilities which are in the dark as to where
they stand in relation to future funding: they include
hospitals like the Swan Hill hospital, they include
funding for chemotherapy chairs at Seymour and they
include funding for the Goulburn Valley base hospital
in Shepparton.
It is very difficult for facilities like these to plan when
information which should have been made available at
the time of the election, should have been made
available following the election and should have been
made available in the budget is just not made available,