Page 1806 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 May 1990
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inflexible about the way in which savings are identified. If we can be shown not to be making the savings in this process, naturally I will put to the Government that we will have to reconsider.
The reality is that there are savings to be made in this sort of consolidation; there is no getting away from that fact. There were considerable savings made at the end of 1988 - of the order of $1.2m. Those are not illusory, make-believe figures; they are actual savings that flowed from the closure of five schools. I think it would be worth while for the Opposition to examine those figures in order to understand what it is we are talking about.
Mr Wood: Will you provide them for us?
MR HUMPHRIES: I have already provided them to many other groups. If you have not asked for them, you can do so and you will get them.
Mr Wood: I did ask some time ago and never got them.
MR HUMPHRIES: I am sorry; I will pursue the matter and get them to you. There are three matters that I want to refer to briefly in Dr Perkins' study. I do not question the methodology that Dr Perkins has used - she is obviously eminently capable of doing that - but I think we must be very sure that we agree on the criteria, the assumptions that she uses to reach a number of her conclusions.
For example, she has probably overestimated the requirement for school bussing as a result of those changes. She has certainly overestimated the number of demountable schoolrooms required in the larger schools. She has assumed that every school would require a demountable school building when, in fact, in the round of 1988 closures, most schools did not. She ignores the fact that there is a very large surplus capacity already in the schools.
The third and fairly serious point on which we have to reach agreement is the extent to which the capital assets freed up by the sale of schools can be turned into money to pay for some of the capital refurbishment necessary to accommodate the new arrangements in some schools. If we were thinking of taking all our costs of refurbishing schools from our recurrent budget, we would certainly have a problem.
There is no question that the sale of some school buildings will generate capital revenue which can be put back into the refurbishment of school buildings. That is a capital cost staying in the capital cost category. Dr Perkins seems to assume that all our capital works will come from our recurrent budget. I do not want to go into any more detail about Dr Perkins because I believe it is inappropriate before we have actually had a good look at the figures.
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