Page 1853 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 May 1990
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local preference ends, schools will compete with each other to attract students. It is quite clear that a snowball effect will develop, so that schools which are perceived as the best will attract the children whose families are most able to afford transport costs and pay extra for school activities. With Mr Kaine's recent hikes in bus fares, including those for children, it is quite obvious that the families that can afford to pay additional transport costs are diminishing, not increasing.
Pretty soon you will find the development of an unequal education system in which some children will have better opportunities within the government system than others. It is precisely because we have such a good public school system that we have to fight to ensure that all children, regardless of background, have equal access to that system.
The impact of school closures on the community goes well beyond educational opportunities. I have spoken before of the closure of the primary school in my suburb and the devastating effect that that has had on community life. Earlier today, Mr Jensen tried to rationalise his Government's approach to that and to say that the community groups have picked up where the primary school left off, in terms of community activities in Downer. I would refer Mr Jensen to the Priorities Review Board's pronouncements on the subject of the use of the now closed Downer Primary School. I think he will see quite clearly that its agenda for what it describes as a piece of prime real estate is to sell it off. So all the pious pronouncements about school closures having no impact on community life are undone by the Priorities Review Board's approach to the matter.
There is no doubt either that parents who used to shop on their way to or from school are now going elsewhere, to larger shopping centres, and that has had an impact on all local businesses in that area. Where a school closes, the range of shopping and other facilities is likely to be severely restricted, simply because they have fewer clients. The restriction of services available within a neighbourhood is a major problem for the elderly, disabled people and any family that does not have two cars. So there is a snowball effect - when you close a school all services in that neighbourhood are reduced.
I said at the outset that school closures cannot be justified on budget grounds and have a lot more to do with the Liberals' philosophical outlook. Mr Speaker, quite simply, I believe Mr Kaine and Mr Humphries have been misleading the ACT community in their story that we will lose $100m of Commonwealth funding at the end of the next financial year. That has never been the Commonwealth's position. The Commonwealth guaranteed to maintain ACT funding on the same real terms for a three-year period, as the Prime Minister has written to Mr Kaine. It runs out at the end of the next financial year. But what the Commonwealth has promised, and what Mr Kaine has failed to draw attention to, is that there will be at least a further two years of transitional funding arrangements.
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