Page 2865 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 August 1990
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Mrs Grassby: I am sorry it was not over before your parents got married.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is perfectly obvious that those opposite are not prepared to accept the facts. As far as they are concerned, we can provide the same infrastructure that we needed 15 or 10 years ago for a much larger school-age population and somehow experience no difficulty in doing that. Never mind the fact that many resources are being ploughed into schools which are half empty. Never mind the fact that we have many schools in this Territory which are underresourced because the student numbers are so low that the same range of resources available to other schools with larger enrolments cannot be sustained. Never mind about that; that is apparently not very important.
Mr Connolly: My desk is as wet as your argument, Gary; I am sorry.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Connolly has been so upset by this that he has been crying all over his desk. But I am afraid that his tears will not change the fact that we have to make hard decisions. He and his colleagues might weep their hearts out about the fact that governments have to close schools, but if Ms Follett, Mrs Grassby, Mr Connolly and so on were members of the Australian Labor Party governments in other States they would be doing the same things that they are now attacking us for having done.
Ms Follett: Rubbish!
MR HUMPHRIES: Ms Follett says, "Rubbish". She is a member of the socialist left faction of the ALP. Mrs Kirner is, or at least was, a member of the socialist left faction in Victoria. She is prepared, as a former Minister for Education, to get out there and say that the only alternative for a responsible government is to close schools. Why will not those opposite say that? It is because they are in opposition. It is because they can run lines in opposition that they cannot run in government.
Mr Berry: Relevance to the ACT closures, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: There is a point of order. Thank you, Mr Berry, for your observation. Please proceed, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I think we all realise that the ACT faces difficult times. Mr Wood says that the Opposition would like to see this Bill in place sooner or later, but I wonder whether it would support it when it is back in government, whenever that might be. I wonder whether it would restrict its own controls on the operation of microeconomic factors such as that.
I predict that the Opposition members would not do that, that if they were in government they would say, "Oh, the protection against schools closing is the fact that we are
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