Page 2424 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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Any decisions on redeployment require for their success, a commitment from those directly concerned. To achieve this it is necessary to develop a process which allows more people to take part in decisions and provides for wide consultation within the community, e.g. in the form of public hearings, inquiries, etc.
Now, your concept in terms of that decision is to say, "We are closing 20 to 25 schools". With the "Yes, Minister" approach, that really means 10 or something along those lines. "We will start with that and then see how you like it. You can discuss which schools and the criteria for which ones we are going to close". The OECD actually talks about the process. They go on to say:
Such a process hinges on better and more widely disseminated information, in particular as regards the cost implications and relative advantages and disadvantages of various options.
Those options were never presented to the community and will not be presented to the community by this Government. The interesting part is that the OECD also forecast what would happen, and it is happening now, and listen to it:
There are numerous examples to show that technocratic blue-prints imposed on a population by an authority result in protests and distrust, particularly when they involve the closing down of schools.
This is what you have got. You have got protests and distrust, as you would know if you had been to any of the meetings that have been held in the last week. One of those distrusts is about economic grounds and about when you talk about savings. If you go back, very few people accept the notion that there are no particular costs added to school buses. In the Concrete Construction case, the transport planner, Ian Morison, gave in evidence to the Supreme Court that a bus with driver and all the other costs associated costs in the order of between - as my memory serves me - $80,000 to $100,000. Certainly, in today's money, probably in the order, for easy calculation, of $100,000. This allows you to try and assess what it is going to cost if you need buses.
The Grants Commission is even more interesting considering that you said in your speech a short while ago, Mr Humphries, that there were $1.25m in savings, but no doubt there were costs. Those costs were identified by the Grants Commission on page 48 and they were projected costs. Initially, the closures will mean additional estimated recurrent costs of $2.4m. So, you can work out the difference.
We go on to say that "Any sensible person would recognise the need to close schools" - a quote at question time from
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