Page 2932 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 August 1990
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MR COLLAERY: I will be.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Wood!
Mr Wood: Now, you give me a fair go.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Wood, please!
Mr Wood: Well, let us understand what is happening here.
MR COLLAERY: What I do understand, Mr Speaker, is that Mr Wood's voice has broken over the school closure issue. We are hearing a lot more from him. Obviously he needs a bit more strength in his preselection for his party, because they dealt him out the other weekend, and he knows it.
The greatest deception and inconsistency of this so-called Labor Opposition is, of course, that they had a policy on school closures, which they coyly and constantly keep from the public. I was on the Pru Goward show recently with Mr Wood and Mr Wood said that the difference between the Rally and Labor was that Labor kept its promises and did not close any schools. Well, what a load of nonsense! Firstly, Labor's pre-election policy was predicated on school closures. Its own Minister Ros Kelly had been closing schools in the lead-up to the last Assembly elections. It was an issue at the last Assembly elections, as Labor well knows, and it continues to be one. It will certainly haunt the Labor Party because at least we have not been hypocritical about the issue. The Labor Party has been - entirely hypocritical. The Labor Party's pre-election policy was:
If circumstances arise where the educational viability of a school due to significantly declining numbers needs to be examined, we will ensure thorough and genuine consultation with the community, based on recognised procedures -
whatever that means -
We are serious about our policy of participation.
If serious consequences can be clearly demonstrated by a school remaining open, the interests of the ACT must be served.
So, clearly, in anyone's language, either that is doublespeak or it says what it says - and what it says is: schools could remain open if serious consequences can be clearly demonstrated. Otherwise, the other matters are initiated and a school can close.
That has been kept from the public. In fact, to give Mr Wood his credit, he was pressed at a public meeting at Weetangera, on my advice, on whether Labor would close schools during the first Parliament. They had already attempted to close preschools, as we know. Mr Wood replied
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