School Safety
Wednesday, 24 February 2010 10:23
Hansard Wednesday 24th, February 2010
Dr Bruce FleggSchool Safety
Dr FLEGG (Moggill—LNP) (11.47 am): On 1 September last year I asked the Minister for Education and Training to detail the number of weapon incidents that occurred in Queensland schools. The answer to question on notice No. 1054 in essence says, ‘This isn’t the department’s problem. It’s a problem for individual schools and the police,’ and no details were provided. Similarly, in answer to question on notice No. 1334, no details of the number of lockdowns were provided.
Last year the LNP opposition was trying to urge the government to take the growing concernaround weapons seriously, only to find that the government was so disinterested that it could not or would not even tell parliament the extent of the problem. How can you define the extent of a problem or assess whether measures to contain it are effective if you cannot even provide an answer to a question in parliament about the number of serious incidents? Deputy Premier Lucas said this morning that ‘accountability breeds excellence’. That has been missed by the education minister.
When suddenly, through tragic circumstances, media attention is focused on the issue, the government in fact is able to provide the figures to the Courier-Mail—the figures that it would not provide to parliament. Apart from the obvious disregard for parliamentary accountability, this tragically demonstrates again that on matters of grave importance to Queensland parents the government only acts when it comes to dealing with media fallout. The LNP believes that the government should be proactive in dealing with these worsening trends before they end in tragedy.
Yesterday I placed on notice a question in relation to another serious problem in our schools—the number of drug incidents. Drug incidents are linked to violence in our schools. The problem is serious in our schools. Is the government waiting for this problem to hit the papers, too, before it does anything? Any reasonable person would expect that the government would be closely tracking this problem and will be prepared to answer a reasonable question from the opposition. We shall see in 29 days.