Page 1981 - Week 07 - Thursday, 31 May 1990
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MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Please proceed, Mr Jensen.
MR JENSEN: You are just trying to take up my time, Mr Berry. All right, let us move on. There have been attempts by the Labor Opposition to continue this practice, assisted by their Federal Labor colleagues, of distorting the debate. My reference to flooding the market, which Mr Connolly mentioned, was to show how stupid such a statement was. It shows how desperate the Opposition is to seek to score cheap political points on this issue. Clearly, Mr Speaker, no organisation, no government, no business organisation would be seeking to do that. As my colleague Mr Humphries has said, any proposal that comes forward to close schools would be done over a long period of time.
Let me make some comments about the Labor Party's policy in this area. They have been doing some talking about the Residents Rally policy just recently. Let me refer to their comments about education. Because
the emergence of the Residents Rally is such a threat to the Labor strategists and the established political order, Labor members have decided to cynically exploit the strong protective feelings we all share about the education system. Despite the clear endorsement in the ALP election policy of school closures being an acceptable option, Rosemary Follett and her MLAs have shielded their policy from debate by creating a hypocritical smokescreen. They have accused the Rally of abandoning an election commitment. Let me quote from their election commitment on this issue. It says:
School closures: The ALP is committed to the neighbourhood school concept and to the freedom of parents to select a government school of their choice for their children. In general, no school will be closed or amalgamated unless the school community agrees. If circumstances arise where the educational viability of a school due to significantly declining numbers needs to be examined, we will ensure thorough and genuine consultation with the community based on recognised procedures. We are serious about our policy of participation.
I wonder whether members opposite, when they go to these meetings, have been prepared to read this policy out in the public debate, because that policy clearly shows that there is support for the possibility of closure of schools in the ACT. But no, Mr Speaker, they continually have to say, "We are not going to close any schools", as they did on the preschool issue. We recall when Ms Follett was required, because of pressure from the Rally at the time, to reverse her decision in relation to the preschool issue and call for a review of the preschool issue, a review that we clearly see is due to report back in June this year.
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