Page 1825 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 May 1990
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As I was saying, I wrote to Minister Humphries on Monday about the outside school hours care services. I wrote a strong letter. I am happy to table that letter as proof of the effective consultation going on in the Government. It is effective. There is no split; we are dealing our way through the matter. If imperatives result from this debate, I am sure that the Chief Minister and the rest of us will be the first to act on them. It is a consultation phase that Labor wants to kill and use as the ideological base for its own electoral gains. That is something that deserves comment, Mr Speaker.
It is now very clear that there are some people in this Assembly who do not care to serve the whole community; they are there to serve themselves, their political aims and their electoral gains. Certainly, Mr Speaker, you will see all the little shibboleths come out. I have not heard a word in Cabinet or in our joint party room about the green space zealot. What a myth that is!
The Labor Party closed five schools in 1988. So it started the roll on those issues. There has been vast and very hurtful hypocrisy in this debate. Those people in the media who have attended outside meetings on this matter have seen and heard all the spite and rancour there that Labor members put out here occasionally against us. They are reluctant to assist us to move the population onto a reasoned and constructive debate; they do not want that debate.
Mr Wood: Well, you certainly cannot do it on your own.
MR COLLAERY: You do not want that debate, Mr Wood. You do not want to hear it. I am particularly disappointed to hear Mr Wood adopting that approach because he is a school teacher. He has walked through classrooms and he knows the state of them in the ACT. I am not talking about the broom cupboards either, although some of the Labor members are taking - - -
Mr Kaine: They are hiding in them.
MR COLLAERY: Yes, hiding in them. Thank you. I nearly said something worse! There is a letter in today's paper about one school group that has effectively organised itself to look after the joint resources in a community context - that is, the neighbourhood school thing.
I do not know the exact figures, but Mr Humphries says that half of our enrollees are out of their catchment areas. Do you know what a leading community server, a great, but humble person in this town, said to me yesterday when I was giving out some cheques to some parlous community groups? She told me that in the United Kingdom and other countries school buses were not provided for out-of-area enrollees.
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