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Privatisation of schools an "ALP furphy"

Education Minister Phil Gude has dismissed the ALP’s claim that a Coalition Government would privatise the state’s schools.

Mr Gude’s comments follow the release by the ALP of a draft document from January 1997 which was drawn up as a discussion paper for a seminar of Education Department bureaucrats.

He said the working document never went beyond draft stage and has no official status.

"One of the roles of bureaucrats is to develop and put forward a range of ideas regardless of how lateral these may seem. It is then the role of Government to either take on board or dismiss these ideas.

"In this case the draft working document was deemed by the working party to be inappropriate and was discarded without ever being passed on to myself," he said.

(News Release, Office of the Minister for Education, 7 September 1999)