Page 2430 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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MR ACTING SPEAKER: I ask you to withdraw the remark that Mr Duby is a hypocrite, Ms Follett.
MS FOLLETT: Mr Acting Speaker, I withdraw the remark, but I maintain that Mr Duby has demonstrated today the utter contempt in which he holds the Canberra community. His assertion here today that this matter of public importance is not, in fact, of public importance is an outrage that is equalled only by his political actions, where he has swapped from being a No Self Government person to being a so-called independent - as independent as a newt, if you ask me. I believe that any minute now he will be joining the Liberal Party along with the rest of his colleagues.
Mr Acting Speaker, from the very outset of this debate a number of crucial questions have been asked of this Government in regard to their proposals to close Canberra schools. Those questions are: how much are you going to save; how are you going to make those savings; what are you going to do with the money? Those questions have been asked throughout the months of this debate. We have never in all of those months had anything like a reply from any member of this Government. I think that the community holds them in contempt for that total failure to answer the basic questions. Furthermore, today we have heard from the Treasurer that, in fact, there was never even a target for savings on this project - never even a target. He said so himself.
Mr Acting Speaker, I think that we must ask the Government, as the Canberra community will ask it: "Why on earth are you doing it? Are you doing it on a mere whim; have you got it in for schools?". You have not even set a target. I find that extraordinary. Are you doing it on an ideological basis? We know that Mr Humphries has said publicly that in an ideal world, in his view, we would have all children in private schools. It must be an ideological whim.
Mr Kaine: I am surprised that you would say that, Mr Humphries.
MS FOLLETT: Mr Humphries said that in public. I think that that really does go to the heart of the matter. We have had a contrary view put by Dr Frances Perkins, to whom I believe we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude. She has put the view that the school closures being proposed by this inept bunch opposite will, in fact, cost the community money. Its members have not denied it because they have never put forward any figures.
Mr Acting Speaker, I think that their attitude on this as a so-called cost saving exercise is absolutely pathetic. There was never even a target. They do not know how much they are going to save. They are not even game to hazard a guess at what might be the savings on any particular school, let alone on all of them, and yet they proceed. Talk about the blind leading the blind.
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