Page 1801 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 May 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (10.50): Mr Speaker, we have seen a fairly clear indication today of the joys of being in opposition - being able to articulate a point of view that taps into a vein of anxiety and concern on the part of the community, without the attendant responsibility that comes with being in government of having to pay for and cost the sorts of alternatives that necessarily flow from the rejection of particular options. That is exactly what is happening in this case today.
The Labor Party says that the Government is wrong. Labor members reject the idea of making savings in education despite the fact that when they were in government they made a very considerable attempt to make savings in education. Nonetheless, apparently their savings were genuine, thoughtful, caring cuts and ours are thoughtless, heartless, uncosted, lacking in compassion types of cuts. When we get down to the bone of things, we realise that the sorts of cuts that Labor made in government directly affected the quality of education being provided in our schools.
These included cuts in the numbers of relief teaching hours available in our school system, cuts in the numbers of teachers available in the secondary college system and an attendant increase in the average class sizes in those colleges, and cuts in the numbers of relief teachers available to engage in activities such as school sport, for which Ms Follett criticised me the other day. What effrontery! A whole series of measures were taken by the previous Government which directly affected the quality of education available in this Territory. That is not the path that this Government has chosen to take.
We have instead preferred a course of action which, we believe, will retain the quality of education in our system by reducing the infrastructure costs and reducing the waste and inefficiency inherent in a large number of schools with large capacities and small numbers of students in them. That is a sensible course of action to take. It is a course of action being adopted not just by this Government but by governments all over Australia.
It may interest members opposite to know that in the last 10 years or so about 1,000 schools have been closed all over this country by both Liberal and Labor governments. There is plenty of evidence to show that, to be adaptable to the needs of the twenty-first century, we have to start planning and adapting our resources. We simply cannot retain education institutions once built as temples of education on the assumption that, having opened a school door, it should never close, irrespective of the numbers of students that might be accommodated in that school. That is simply a stupid point of view, but is a point of view put by Labor members opposite.
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