Northern Territory Second Reading Speeches

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EDUCATION AMENDMENT BILL 2000

Mr Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a second time.

This is a fairly straightforward bill. It seeks to make a change to the current chairing and deputy chairing of the Education Advisory Council. The bill has the effect of installing the president of COGSO, as the chair of the Education Advisory Council and to put the chair of the Indigenous Education Advisory Council NT as a deputy chair of the Education Advisory Council.

The reason for proposing this change is that currently the EAC is chaired by the Secretary of Education, Wally Czernezkyj. This is nothing personal against Wally at all, but it seems to us that to have an advisory body whose duties are to advise the minister on educational issues in the Northern Territory chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Education in the Territory is, in effect, giving advice to yourself. It’s a closed loop. I don’t think, even if the practicality of it is the EAC operates as giving independent advice, it’s a good look to have the head of the Department of Education chairing such a body.

I believe it is very important for the EAC to have the ability to give advice without fear or favour and without any perception outside of its operation that it’s dominated in any way by the Education Department in its attitude to particular issues. It also makes good sense if you’re going to have input of this type, supposedly from the professional community and the community at large, to have that advice free of the existing attitudes to issues within the Education Department. If the EAC can provide new approaches, suggestions of a change of direction in areas that its members feel would vary from the current practices within the Education Department, then that can only be good. The minister can reject or accept this advice. But if the advice is unfettered and able to go in the direction that the members fully want it to go, then at least it puts up a wider agenda of ideas that can be taken on board or at least assessed and rejected if they’re rejected for good reasons.

As I said, the bill is very simple. It just replaces the provision under the current Education Act, where the chair of the Education Advisory Council is simply appointed on advice from the minister, to providing for those 2 chairing positions to be generated from what are 2 of the major peak representative bodies within the Northern Territory, one for what I’d describe as the mainstream or urban part of the Territory and the other from our indigenous population. I think that would give the board balance in leadership because indigenous issues would be well represented to the leadership of the council. It in no way impairs the ability of the Northern Territory Department of Education to have input into the deliberations of the advisory council because they will still have representation on it through either the Secretary or their representative.

I believe this would strike a better balance. It’s a cost-neutral change. There’s no expense item required to do it. Again, I commend it to the House.

 

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