Andrew Leigh

I recently surveyed the Fraser electorate on their experiences with ACT schools and some of their perception regarding our Government’s education reforms.

The results were positive and showed that the Government’s commitment to boosting literacy and numeracy, maintaining a well-rounded curriculum and attracting and retaining quality teachers is shared by parents.
Over 1000 people completed the survey which was distributed between October and December last year. Responses with postcodes from outside the ACT and from the southside were removed leaving 974 responses from Fraser. You may notice that some of the percentages don’t add to 100 per cent – this is due to rounding.

SCHOOL SECTOR

The sample group roughly reflects national numbers in this area. Here is a graph showing the proportion of respondents’ children who attend either government schools, non-government schools or both:

[caption id="attachment_3756" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Type of school attended"][/caption]

SCHOOL RESOURCING

Overall, most parents felt their children’s schools were well resourced. However, there were slight discrepancies between parents whose children attended non-government and those who attended government schools. In the free response section, many parents highlighted the funding gaps between public and private schools. Some parents also spoke about the tired facilities at their local schools and these comments were mostly focused on government and Catholic schools. School funding is an important issue which is why I am a supporter of the Gonski recommendations and why the Gillard government will be pursuing reform in this area. The results below are shown as percentages.

[caption id="attachment_3757" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="School resourcing"][/caption]

EDUCATION POLICY PRIORITIES

I have been really lucky to have met many of the great teachers who work in our north-side schools. The importance of attracting and retaining quality teachers ranked by far the most important issue for parents completing the survey. In the free comments section, many parents spoke about the dedication of their child’s teachers and spoke about the need to improve teacher pays in order to attract and retain more like them. I have written more on this topic which you can read here.

[caption id="attachment_3758" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Ranked most important"][/caption]

Demonstrating the importance of quality teachers continued to rank highly showing that over 60% of respondents ranked it as their most or second most important issue. The Gillard Government’s focus on literacy and numeracy and strong curriculums were mirrored in the results of this survey demonstrating that policy is moving in a responsive direction and that parents and Government share the same priorities.

[caption id="attachment_3759" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Ranked second most important"][/caption]

MYSCHOOL WEBSITE AND BUILDING THE EDUCATION REVOLUTION

The MySchool Website was designed to empower parents with information about their children’s school and help them in their decisions regarding what kind of education is the best fit for them and the results show that most parents have utilised it. This means that more than half of the respondents have a suite of information at hand when making decisions about which school to send their children to. These results also demonstrate that parents are able to have a more informed discussion regarding school resourcing into the future.

[caption id="attachment_3760" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Most people have used the MySchool website"][/caption]

Similarly, a large proportion of the respondents had seen a BER project around the area. This perhaps demonstrates how far reaching the program is and it’s great that many of our local schools have received funding for important improvements to their infrastructure.

[caption id="attachment_3761" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Awareness of Building the Education Revolution program"][/caption]

YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL

Perhaps the most heartening section of the survey was this section which tended to produce very positive responses. The responses show that the ACT has great principals and teachers and that the Territory’s schools are well placed to deliver quality education for our kids. But they also show the strong relationships parents have with their child’s school and this again came out in the free responses where many parents spoke about how wonderful their child’s teachers were.

Please rate how much you agree with the following statements. If you have multiple children as school, please answer for the eldest child.	Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neither agree nor disagree	Agree	Strongly agree
My child's school has a commitment to learning	1%	3%	9%	36%	51%
My child's school is a safe environment	2%	5%	13%	53%	27%
My child has great teachers	2%	6%	18%	46%	28%
My child's school has a terrific principal	3%	6%	24%	37%	31%
My child's school is well-resourced	5%	21%	21%	41%	11%
My child's school has good buildings	5%	14%	19%	44%	18%
My child's school has good equipment	2%	17%	21%	49%	11%
My child's school encourages a love of learning	2%	7 %	16%	48%	27%

The results were also reported in the Canberra Times, with thoughtful comments from other education stakeholders.

I’ll be holding plenty of mobile offices and community events over coming months. These are a good chance to raise policy issues, chat about matters affecting you and your family, or just to say g’day.

Community events:

• Sun 24 February – 10.30am-12.30 Welcoming the Babies, Glebe Park

Mobile offices:

• Sat 9 Feb - 11am-2pm, Multicultural Festival, Civic


• Thu 28 March – 8-9am Civic Bus interchange


• Sat 30 March – 10-11am at Gungahlin (on Hibberson St, outside Big W)


• Sat 30 March – 11.15am-12.15pm at Dickson (outside Woolworths)

For the last week in January we had a chat about superannuation, industrial relations and the Coalition's lack of policy vision.

On 26 February, FARE will be hosting a lunchtime forum at Parliament House with UCLA's Mark Kleiman, author of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment. Mark is one of my favourite criminologists, and I'd recommend the event for anyone interested in crime and punishment.

Details in this flyer or over the fold.

How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment

FARE invites you to a lunchtime forum with special guest Mark Kleiman, hosted by Member for Fraser Andrew Leigh MP

Tuesday 26 February, 2013
Room 1R1, Parliament House, Canberra

Mark Kleiman is Professor of Public Policy in the UCLA School of Public Affairs. He teaches courses on methods of policy analysis, on imperfectly rational decision-making at the individual and social level, and on drug abuse and crime control policy. His current focus is on reducing crime and incarceration by substituting swiftness and predictability for severity in the criminal justice system generally and in community-corrections institutions specifically.

Professor Kleiman is the author of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, listed by The Economist as one of the “Books of the Year” for 2009. In addition to his academic work, Professor Kleiman provides advice to local, state, and national
governments on crime control and drug policy. Before moving to UCLA in 1995, he taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and at the University of Rochester.

Event details:
Date: Tuesday 26 February, 2013
Time: 12:30-2:00pm

For guests without a Parliamentary Pass, please arrive at the Marble Foyer at 12:20pm for sign-in, you will then be escorted to the event.
Location: Room 1R1, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600
RSVP: email glenis.thomas{at}fare.org.au or call (02) 6122 8600 by Thursday 21 February 2013.

A light lunch will be provided. Please advise if you have any dietary requirements with your RSVP.

Note: For guests who are driving to the event, please allow additional time to find a parking space due to the fact that Parliament will be sitting.

[caption id="attachment_3740" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="In about 12 months, people living in the shaded area will be able to connect to the NBN"][/caption]Yesterday, I welcomed the release of detailed maps by NBN Co, showing where construction of the National Broadband Network (NBN) will start in Civic.

This is really exciting for local families and business in the Civic area. In around 12 months’ time, people in Civic will be able to start connecting to the National Broadband Network. The map shows that NBN fibre is being rolled out Civic, Acton and parts of Braddon which will allow more residents access to faster, affordable and more reliable broadband.

The map is another sign that construction of the National Broadband Network is continuing to accelerate, with work now having commenced or been completed to over 784,000 homes and businesses across Australia. The release of this map means that work is starting in this area and over the next few months, we’ll start to see NBN Co workers locally doing the detailed planning and inspection work, and then rolling out the fibre. Within around twelve months, construction of the NBN in Civic will be completed. This means that families and businesses will be able to connect to faster, more reliable broadband services. A standard NBN connection to the home or office is free – and NBN retail services are available for similar prices to what people are paying now, but for a much superior service.

The National Broadband Network is about preparing Australia for the future. It’s about ensuring that our local communities in places like Canberra are not left behind as the world and our local economy changes. From seeing your local doctor from home, to your kids being able to take a specialist class at another school – the NBN will change the way we live, work, and access services. It will lead to a new wave of innovation, and I’m delighted that people in Civic will be among the first to benefit.

On ABC666, I spoke with Adam Shirley about the challenge of balancing local ALP democracy with having a caucus that looks like the rest of Australia. While rank and file preselections are at the heart of the ALP, it's also true that in twelve decades, that system has failed to put a single Indigenous Labor member into the federal parliament.

2CN Morning Show - Nova Peris by Andrewleighmp on Mixcloud

Eight hours to go before voting closes for Triple J's Hottest 100. Here are my choices.

On the ABC website, I have an opinion piece on the upcoming Israeli election.

We owe it as friends to warn Israel, The Drum, 15 January 2013

Israelis will go to the polls next Tuesday to elect a new government.

If early signs are to be believed, Israel's most conservative government ever may be replaced by one even further to the right.

Already, there are signs that settler activity will intensify after the election.

The question for Australia is: what can we do to bring about peace in the Middle East?

First, some background.

In last November's United Nations vote on Palestinian status, Israel lost the support of 95 per cent of United Nations members (including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany). If there was one reason, it was the remorseless spread of settlements.

Around 510,000 Israeli settlers now reside in the West Bank. Since the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord, the number of Israeli settlers has doubled. With every block of settlements, a Palestinian state gets harder.

All these settlements are illegal under international law.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, says "the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies".

This isn't just a matter of legal niceties. From a practical standpoint, settlements make it vastly more difficult - if not impossible - to set up a Palestinian state.

This is a view shared by most mainstream foreign policy makers around the world.

For example, the Conservative British Government could teach a lesson to our timorous Coalition. UK Foreign Minister William Hague said Israel's settlements plans would "alter the situation on the ground on a scale that makes the two state solution, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, increasingly difficult to achieve."

New Zealand's conservative government went further still, voting yes to the UN resolution.

The final United Nations vote last year saw 138 countries vote in favour of giving Palestine "non-member state" status (akin to the Vatican). Forty-one nations (including Australia) abstained. Only nine voted in favour.

According to news reports, Foreign Minister Bob Carr subsequently phoned the Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riad Malki, and warned him to proceed cautiously at the UN now that Palestine's status had been upgraded.

Australia does not want to see early reference to the International Criminal Court or for the Palestinians to use their newly-gained status to seek membership of other UN bodies.

But the response from Israel was deeply troubling.

Within 48 hours of the UN vote, the Netanyahu Government announced it would build 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and unfreeze planning in the area known as the E1.It was difficult for reasonable observers to see this as anything other than the Israeli Government using settlement policy as punishment.

Former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said Israel had "repeatedly betrayed" the Obama Administration. The European Union said that the viability of a two-state solution was threatened by this systematic expansion of settlements. A two-state solution is the key to Israel's long-term security.

Yet that isn't the view from everyone.

In a recent article in The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland quoted two hardline members of Israel's right.

Referring to a Palestinian member of the Knesset, Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party said: "When you were still climbing trees, we had a Jewish state here... We were here long before you."

Projections have the new Jewish Home Party winning as many as 18 of the 120 Knesset seats.

Moshe Feiglin of the Likud party reportedly said: "You can't teach a monkey to speak and you can't teach an Arab to be democratic. You're dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers ... The Arab destroys everything he touches."As former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin has pointed out: "Israel's right-wing parties - which in 1993 rejected the Oslo Accords that envisaged Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the establishment of Palestinian autonomy in those areas - are now using, and abusing, that same agreement to prevent Palestinian statehood".

In this atmosphere, Australia has one responsibility above all: tell the Israelis, as one friend to another, that the path they are on is self-destructive.

Consider what happens if there is no Palestinian state, but only a Greater Israel as some settlers seek: Israel ends up governing a large Arab population.

As David Ben-Gurion famously argued, Israel can be a Jewish state, it can be a democratic state, and it can be a state occupying the whole of historical Israel. But it cannot be all three.

The risk, in the words of Tzipi Livni, leader of centrist party Hatnuah, is Israel becoming a "boycotted, isolated and ostracised state".

As a strong friend of Israel, Australia has a duty to highlight this danger.

The Australian Government has a warm regard for Israel as the strongest democracy in the Middle East. We acknowledge the power of its courts, of judges who can overrule its executive. We respect its freedom of expression, the lively political debate and acceptance of dissent like its vocal peace movement.

As an economist, I am a particular fan of Israel's vibrant culture of innovation, as exemplified in Dan Senor and Saul Singer's terrific book Start-Up Nation.

The Australian Government has firmly asked the Palestinians not to be provocative.

We have stressed that a return to negotiations based on recognition of Israel was the way to get a Palestinian state. But that won't work if Israel imagines it can count on our support even when it pursues a policy rendering a two-state solution unachievable.

There can be no peace without a Palestinian state. And there can be no Palestinian state if settlement activity roars ahead.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser.

Please post any comments on the Drum website.

Update: On a similar theme, David Remnick's New Yorker piece on Israel's rightward shift is well worth a read.

702 ABC Sydney with Richard Glover

2CC Breakfast With Mark Parton - 14 January 2013

I spoke with both Mark Parton and Richard Glover about Australia's gun buy-back program. We chatted about Philip Alpers' new paper for a Baltimore gun summit, and some of the issues it raised. Can population growth explain the increase in the number of guns in Australia? And has the number of households with a gun increased? Have a listen...

Yesterday I spoke with Mark Parton about Australia's gun buy-back program. We had a chat about the latest research coming out of Sydney University and some of the issues it raised.