Page 2722 - Week 09 - Thursday, 9 August 1990
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needs of the local and wider community. That is the framework in which this Government will be working to address the problems of efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Mr Acting Speaker, it is obvious that the Government is not marking time; it is moving ahead in these areas. It is attempting to secure a reasonable arrangement and to honour the promise that I have made, that the reshaping of schools, particularly the consolidation of school numbers in the Territory, will not be a process whereby only the compulsory years of schooling deliver savings to the Government. I have made it quite clear that there are other issues and other areas which the Government must be considering.
The suggestion has been made time and again by those opposite that the only place in which the Government is seeking to make savings is through school consolidation. That is not true. Savings will come from elsewhere, including the bureaucracy. I emphasise the statement that I made the other day, that savings, at least in the order of those expected from school consolidations, will be achieved in the context of restructuring of the education bureaucracy. Note that, Mr Moore. In the circumstances, every effort will be made to achieve the appropriate environment for savings across the board.
MR WOOD (3.53): At the outset I want to dissociate myself from those remarks that Mr Moore made about the education bureaucracy. I have had some experience in Canberra with that bureaucracy, as a teacher and as someone who worked in it. I am not merely defending myself, though; I did not work in it at a high level. However, I worked as private secretary to a Commonwealth Minister for Education for two years. All in all, I have had a deal of experience with that bureaucracy, and I have found it to be nothing but highly dedicated and competent. I think Mr Moore is grossly in error in what he says.
There may be problems - indeed, there are - in education in the ACT, but the source of those problems, the Minister, sits in this chamber, as do the people who back him up on the government benches. I was disappointed to hear the Minister say a moment ago that there would be some cuts in the educational bureaucracy. I think there is no scope for cuts there.
Mr Humphries: Where do you make savings?
MR WOOD: I do not think you could make them in that bureaucracy. It has been trimmed as far as it needs to be. I want to make some comments about preschools because that is a significant part of this MPI. Mr Humphries does not fully comprehend the difference that exists between preschools and primary schools. The fact that he often accuses the Follett Government of closing schools, because of some of the measures that we were considering in relation to preschools, exemplifies that lack of knowledge.
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