Page 2724 - Week 09 - Thursday, 9 August 1990
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himself out of the debate. It demonstrates the very serious weakness of his position. He has no arguments that he can sustain for closing schools.
The one argument which he uses time and time again and which the Chief Minister - I think it was yesterday or the day before - used in this Assembly is that we have to save money, that we are in such a tight position that we have to cut our expenses. That is the argument to close schools. I do not argue with the premise that we have to save money. We are in tight financial times; there is no question about that. The Follett Government accommodated that quite successfully last year. But it does not follow that the closure of schools will address that problem. A government has to be sure that it will save money by closing schools. The frustrating part of this debate is that Mr Humphries will not say whether we will save some money.
It has become fairly clear, because of the debate that has been forced on him, that in this current year's budget that is now just about prepared there will be no significant savings - probably no savings at all - as a result of school closures. Firstly, the one-off costs are so great that the fairly limited savings that are made by closing schools will be more than offset. Secondly, there are very limited savings to be made in the future, once those one-off costs are disposed of. The argument for closing schools, that we are doing this to save money, has no relevance because we will not save money.
This tactic of the Minister of stalling over and over again until it is too late is obvious. In today's Canberra Times I note a statement attributed to him. He can, by interjection if he wishes, tell me whether it is an accurate reflection. According to this, he says that he has a breakdown of savings from school closures and could issue all the information tomorrow if he decided to. Mr Humphries said that it had been a Cabinet decision that the details be included in next year's budget.
Finally, it seems that the Government has some figures. It has been forced out of it by the debate in this parliament and the community. We do not know how accurate they are. On all the evidence of what we have seen so far, I doubt that they will be too accurate, and that is the reason we cannot see them. As I picked up in something that he said in debate today, the Minister knows that if he releases them all his arguments will be shot to pieces. He is not game to produce them. He wants to sit on them as long as possible, so that nobody can use them in evidence against him.
Mr Humphries: You can shoot them down next month. They will still be as relevant next month.
MR WOOD: Yes, they will still be as irrelevant in one sense and relevant in the other, but another month or two will have gone by, closer to the closure of schools. These
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