Page 2172 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 June 1990
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Mrs Grassby: You have done no survey?
MR HUMPHRIES: How can you possibly survey the ACT to find out what parents will require? It is quite impossible to expect people to make those kinds of assumptions and work out those sorts of projections in the absence of the vital piece of information about which schools will close. It is obvious that members opposite are intent on ensuring that people are as alarmed as possible as quickly as possible about this process, and in particular they want the Government to name as soon as possible which schools it wants to close. That is the object of the exercise. Obviously, they also seek to prevent the period of community consultation that the Government has made quite clear it is anxious to provide.
Mrs Grassby: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. All I did was ask for an answer; I did not want a ministerial statement.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, you are getting one.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR HUMPHRIES: I withdraw that.
Mr Berry: I raise a point of order. I think the Minister needs to be reminded of the need for brevity. On his own admission, he said there was a ministerial statement involved in this.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you. Mr Humphries, please be brief.
MR HUMPHRIES: I will make one last point in response to Mrs Grassby's question. Children moving to a new school do not necessarily have to change their uniforms, particularly where that occurs as a result of a school amalgamation. In previous rounds of closures, children from the old school were allowed to wear their uniforms until they grew out of them or wore them out. Those kinds of transition problems are not really as nasty as Mrs Grassby perhaps imagines they could be.
Hospitals
MR JENSEN: My question is directed to Mr Humphries in his capacity as Minister for Health. Can the Minister assure the Assembly that the current closure of hospital beds at Royal Canberra Hospital, which is said to be due to fire penetration works, is not part of a plan to reduce the overall number of hospital beds available in the ACT?
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, I can assure the Assembly that the current building work at Royal Canberra Hospital, which has necessitated the closure of beds and operating theatres, is
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