Page 2616 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 8 August 1990
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be asking those people in those units where they would like to go. I will be asking those students - their parents in the case of younger students - what sort of environment they would like to be in before I make decisions about what should happen to those units. To suggest that no-one is giving any thought to that process is a grossly misleading misrepresentation.
I think another furphy has also been thrown up by Mr Wood's comments: the suggestion that the value of housing in the areas where schools close will decline. I am not an expert in matters of that kind and I am happy to rely on other people's opinions in that regard. The opinion that I think we can safely rely upon is that which emerged from the report of McCann & Associates. McCann & Associates are professional valuers in the Territory who were commissioned by Dr Frances Perkins' group, the Save Our Schools group, to give an indication of the sorts of impacts that closing schools would have on a number of areas.
One of the conclusions they reported was that they saw no significant effect on the value of housing in areas where schools close. I might point out that that was also confirmed by Mr Bruno Ivanovic from the Real Estate Institute of the ACT. He made a similar comment only a couple of weeks ago. Of course, members of the Opposition would rather rely on their own rumour-mongers and scare tactic creators to put different versions to the community.
Mrs Nolan: What about Isaacs and Stirling. Houses there have good values.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is a very good point that Mrs Nolan raises. Places like Isaacs, Stirling and South Bruce have no primary schools; they have never had primary schools and they have very high value housing. To suggest that we cannot achieve those things without schools is just not true.
I want to make one final point. It was suggested by Mr Wood that we should be accountable for the decisions we make and that we should be accountable for school closures. I think the Assembly needs reminding that the very fact that we are accountable is why school closures are required. We are accountable for our stewardship of public funds over the next year and a half. If we do nothing in this area, if we make no attempt to trim the costs of providing services in the Territory, including services in the education budget, we will have failed the people in the Territory and I believe that we will be rightly repudiated at the next election. That is why this Government intends not to follow that foolish course of action.
DR KINLOCH (4.03): I was very interested to hear Mr Humphries' point that he had changed primary schools several times during his childhood. Mr Wood gave us some interesting case studies. Let me tell you about my background. When my sister, Helen, a Down's syndrome
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