Mr FERGUSON (Bass) – On 23 March this year the Launceston School for Seniors chairman, Mr Barry Lumley, wrote a letter to the Minister for Education and Skills to take certain steps to sustain the school into the future. In that letter Mr Lumley gave the minister the good news that enrolments on their March enrolment day for the first term of 2012 had reached 461 students, which included 103 new students. With further enrolments that occur during the term, they anticipate they may well reach the figure of 500, which would be a record. In fact, at the date of the letter Mr Lumley indicated that enrolments had climbed to 483. Mr Lumley writes:

Once again the question on everybody’s lips is whether we are still under the threat of losing the use of the High Street premises and will we be forced to relocate to a less-suitable venue?

Later in the letter Mr Lumley writes:

In your letter to me of 21 December 2011 you advised that ‘the School for Seniors is now the major tenant of the High Street complex, with the organisation representing more than 50 per cent of the usage.

Surely as a key stakeholder and in view of your statement that your department is committed to ongoing communication with us, you would agree that we should be included in the review process rather than be placed in a reactionary situation when the report is completed.

Minister, we respectfully request that you authorise your departmental officers to enter into a meaningful discussion with us as they seek to complete the review.

Later in the letter, Mr Lumley points out that in February the George Town council passed a motion of support as did the Launceston City council and the West Tamar council. These councils, as local government authorities, have an interest in seeing their older Tasmanian ratepayers in their municipal areas being able to continue to access the very successful Launceston School for Seniors.

He points out that a petition that was tabled in the other place late last year saw the total number of signatures reach 1 775 people. It was the contents of that letter which I used to fashion the motion which I tabled this morning in the House. While I was reading the motion into the House, the minister interjected a number of times and one of the things he said to me was that he has been to visit Launceston School for Seniors. That is correct. I then made a quip myself, that you should answer their letter of 23 March which you have not answered. The minister quipped back.  He said, ‘I have answered that.’

I have gone back to the Launceston School for Seniors. The minister has not answered that letter of 23 March 2012. In fact, the chairman writes to me today and says that in response to the minister’s reactions this morning, on 23 March he forwarded an e-mail to Minister McKim and attached the letter and on 26 March I received an e-mail from Anne Fagan, executive officer and diary manager of the minister, which read only as an acknowledgement. On 24 April he received an undated letter signed by the head of office to Mr McKim, which again said that the minister had asked that the recent letter concerning enrolments for the first term of 2012 be acknowledged.

Mr Lumley makes it clear that no further correspondence has been received and, damningly, continues. He says:

I am extremely disappointed that the letter from Mr Perry simply referred to enrolments when, as you know from the copy that you have, that reference to enrolments was an introductory paragraph explaining our success, which was later forwarded by our request to be included in the current discussions about the buildings in Launceston rather than having decisions foisted upon us as a fait accompli. Either the minister’s staffers are deliberately ignoring the true content of the letter and our request, and are not informing him, or the minister has reached a decision that if we continue to be ignored by him, we will just go away.

He continues by saying:

I can tell you that our members are extremely angry at the moment as they clearly believe they are being ignored and treated as second-class citizens. I did send a copy of the letter of 23 March to our local members who are supposed to be representing us in parliament, asking for their comments and support. We have received acknowledgement and support from Legislative Councillors and opposition members but absolutely nothing from Michelle O’Byrne, Brian Wightman or Kim Booth. Why shouldn’t they be angry? To not even acknowledge the feelings of their constituents is pure ignorance.

We are completely frustrated at the moment by just being ignored, but it is made worse when we are told mistruths.

There is a question for the minister to answer today. The question is that posed in the original letter and I challenge the minister to get off his hands and deal with this issue. Will he ensure that his departmental officers are obliged to enter into meaningful discussion with the Launceston School for Seniors to give them security for the future, to treat them with respect and not expect them to be happy with a lease agreement that runs out in around a year from now. The continuing provisions within that lease agreement mean that if the High Street site is sold, they can simply be shuffled off to York Street premises which are utterly unsuitable for the purpose.

The Liberals stand with the Launceston School for Seniors, and their nearly 500 students, because we believe in lifelong learning. We support the innovative model that has been established, a model which is volunteer driven and draws down nothing from the Government except access to the High Street campus.

I endorse the excellent work they are doing. I sympathise with them in that they have been unable to get a satisfactory treatment from this government. I finally challenge the minister to get off his hands, not just rely on hearsay and what his staff are telling him, but support that school, show the support and give it the tenure it needs.

The motion I tabled this morning reads as follows:

Mr Speaker

I give notice that on tomorrow I shall move that this House:

1) Notes that the Launceston School for Seniors provides a valuable service allowing senior Tasmanians to continue life long learning together with social interaction and inclusion benefits.

2) Notes that at the registration day in March this year over 100 new members joined, taking the number of people who benefit from the School for Seniors to around 480.

3) Notes that the Launceston School for Seniors is self-sufficient with the only government support being the provision of the High Street campus.

4) Notes comments in the Examiner newspaper on 29 March 2012 from the school chair in relation to Mr McKim’s supposed consultation process about the site saying “I don’t know how they can say we have been consulted when we haven’t”.

5) Condemns the Minister for Education and Skills for failing to provide certainty for students by ruling out the sale of the High street campus from under their feet.

6) Calls on the Minister to get his act together, start treating these students with more respect and finally rule out selling off the Launceston School for Seniors site to plug his budget black hole.

Instead of hiding behind the Premier, Nick McKim as Education Minister must immediately release the findings of the recent VET review.

He released the Fairbrother report into school closures immediately upon receiving it as well as the report investigating the 4-term school year.  In both instances he boasted that he had always demanded the immediate release of government reports in the past – so he should do the same with this report, in the public interest.

It is clear the Minister is trying to avoid accountability by buck-passing responsibility to the Premier and delaying the report’s release past the budget and estimates scrutiny processes.

Mr McKim had an opportunity to hold true to his Green election promise and return to a single VET provider (TAFE) when the Liberals approached the Greens two years ago to join with us in parliament to fix the Tasmania Tomorrow mess.

Now that the Minister has been dragged reluctantly to our position that the current VET system doesn’t work, he needs to stop procrastinating and start acting.

The last two years have not just wasted opportunity to fix the mess as soon as possible, further damage to our system has occurred resulting in financially crippled training organisations, loss of teaching staff, loss of courses and a reduced ability for our state to successfully reinstitute a rebuilt, modern TAFE Tasmania.

We cannot afford any more delays. Everyone knows that the Tasmania Tomorrow experiment has utterly failed Tasmania and Mr McKim has made things worse by sitting on his hands and defending that broken system since becoming Minister.

The Liberals support a single, more efficient government training provider, a modern day TAFE that matches skills training with industry workforce demand.

Removing the current duplication and inefficiencies would save around $7 million per annum – this is precious funding that could be utilized to invest more in skills and education, instead of the government approach which is to cut courses, sack teachers and close schools.

Tasmania’s kick in the guts from the Federal Budget is final confirmation that we need to throw away the begging bowl and instead focus on strengthening our economy and making Tasmania more self-reliant.

We’ll never get our fair share of Federal funding unless we actually do more to help ourselves – grow our economy, grow jobs, and stop shutting down pillar industries like forestry, as Labor and the Greens are doing.

A majority Hodgman Liberal Government has an economic blueprint for a more self-reliant Tasmania.

We will invest in and grow the five Pillars of Tasmania’s future economy in order to generate the wealth and prosperity needed to create jobs and properly fund essential services and jobs.

We’ll implement a single state-wide planning scheme, and ban frivolous third-party appeals, to encourage development, and we’ll extend our High Schools to Year 12, to improve productivity.

By growing the economy, instead of shrinking it like Labor and the Greens, we can once again proudly stand on our own two feet, and break the habit of constantly expecting bail-outs from others.

Will Hodgman is Leader of the Opposition

Mr McKim should immediately release the findings of the recent VET review.  He released the Fairbrother report into school closures immediately upon receiving it; and should do the same with this report.

It is clear the Minister is trying to avoid accountability by delaying the report’s release past the budget and estimates scrutiny processes.  What has Mr McKim got to hide? He talks about transparency but runs a mile when scrutiny doesn’t suit him.

Tasmania’s vocational education and training system is in urgent need of repair. Duplication and inefficiencies mean it is bleeding money and courses and jobs are being cut to compensate, when it is actually the structure that needs to be changed.

We cannot afford any more delays. Everyone knows the Tasmania Tomorrow experiment has failed and Mr McKim has made things worse by sitting on his hands since becoming Minister, despite his election promise to bring back TAFE.

The Liberals support a single, more efficient government training provider, a modern day TAFE that is responsive to industry. Removing the current duplication and inefficiencies would save around $7 million per annum, this is funding that could be utilized to invest more in skills and education, instead of the government approach which is to cut courses and close schools.

We welcome the significant growth in international enrolments at UTAS campuses.  The Liberals see education as one of the five key pillars of Tasmania’s future economy.

Our vision is to grow our education industry to the national average, where it ranks as the second largest export, and would then be worth more than $400 million to the Tasmanian economy a year.

A majority Hodgman Liberal government would work closely with the University of Tasmania to assist them in their goal of growing the education industry in Tasmania and lifting UTAS into the top 10 research universities in Australia.

*The five key pillars are education and technology, resources, agriculture and fisheries, tourism and energy.