Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Saturday I read Ramsey’s column, surprised to find that I was its subject. Good manners, if not the journalists code of conduct, should have meant that Mr Ramsey contacted me. I have attempted to get a letter to the editor published in the Sydney Morning Herald but to no avail, so I take this opportunity in the Main Committee to set the record straight.

I totally reject the theme of the article that I have failed to represent my constituents in the area of public education. Prior to being a member of parliament, I was on the initial advisory committee of the Mount Druitt TAFE. I have seen it grow through eight expansions, and I am very proud of the contribution that that TAFE makes to my constituents. For the record, I was at the forefront of the campaign that resulted in the establishment of the University of Western Sydney, and I savour the memory of a Labor minister who, seven seconds into a conference on the matter, said that we would never get a University of Western Sydney.

Together with my state colleague Richard Amery and the then Deputy Premier, I campaigned in my electorate to establish a senior high school. I very much regret that the Labor government did not implement it. The Greiner government did. It established the first-ever senior high school at St Marys. It is a wonderful institution that has reversed the drift from public to private and receives twice the number of applicants for the positions available. When the Daily Telegraph ran the notorious front-page story on Mount Druitt High School, again a campaign was relaunched for a senior high school with my colleagues Richard Amery, the state member, and the late Jim Anderson, state member for Londonderry. It resulted in the Chifley College with its five member campuses—and it is doing very well.

The Teachers Federation has viciously fought and resisted these initiatives, which have proved to be an outstanding success. Notwithstanding Mr Ramsey, I will continue to fight for education reform until such time as student outcomes match the potential of the youth in my electorate and I will not kowtow to the Teachers Federation. Whilst I would like to see more resources go to public schools in my electorate, I totally reject the Teachers Federation’s proposition that this should be at the expense of private schools in my electorate. Teachers unions in other states abandoned such ideas decades ago.