Page 2866 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 15 August 1990
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in government. You do not need to move this Bill now. We are all right. You do not have to worry about that". They would also say that if they did move such a Bill they would exclude preschools. This Opposition realises that it has already been compromised; it has already had its hand in the till with respect to preschools. Even with the effrontery that is common to its members, they simply could not sustain the level of hypocrisy that would be required to move a Bill banning the closure of preschools because they announced that they were going to do so when they were in government last year.
What is the difference between preschools and ordinary schools? Apparently it is the fact that they are non-compulsory. I wonder whether Opposition members would accept in those circumstances that it is all right for governments to close secondary colleges which are also not compulsory. That is the only distinction that I can see. That is not reflected in their Bill. It says that governments will not close primary schools or high schools or secondary colleges. So why is it that it is all right to close preschools but not all right to close secondary colleges? There is clearly no reason for that distinction.
The reason is simply politics. The ALP members have already expressed their intention to close preschools, which they would have done had they had the time. Therefore, they cannot logically be seen to say now that they would not have closed any preschools. We all know that the Opposition realises that the closure of schools will produce significant economic benefits for the Territory and that when the time comes it will not be reopening any schools that might have been closed.
Mr Berry, I understand, has already spoken on this matter and has very heavily qualified the promises made to the community. It was not a case of saying, "We will reopen all the schools which have been closed but which have not been bulldozed". It was a case of saying, "We will see whether we can reopen schools if the circumstances permit". That is the qualification that Mr Berry has put on it. We know full well that not one school will be reopened because that is what Mr Berry and his colleagues want. They know that it makes sense, and they know that they cannot afford to undo that.
Mr Wood and others have made a great show of saying that the Government has not done its homework. They keep referring to the fact that figures are not available at this stage on the savings that are to be made from school closures, and they say that this proves that the Government has not done its homework. They continue to refuse to acknowledge what has already been done, and it leads me to believe that, even if those figures were produced and when they are produced, irrespective of what those figures show, the argument will still be that we should not be closing schools. Let us be honest about this: the savings figures are irrelevant. If we could show here and now that we
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