Page 2946 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 August 1990
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Health, Education and Arts on the health and education systems in the ACT - and right throughout the whole debate I have not yet heard one person define the attack that Mr Humphries is making on those systems. They have moaned and groaned, and have denied the fact that the main complaint seems to be that there are going to be school closures; that some schools are going to have to close.
That shows the complete duplicity of the Labor Party, and the Labor Party opposite, because it is acknowledged, even by the party itself. Others have already cited examples of where the party has endorsed the concept of school closures, including, I might add, Mr Wood. We have references here. For example, we have the editorial in the Canberra Times of Wednesday, 1 August, saying "School closures sad but necessary". This editorial raises the main issue, which this opposition party has consistently failed to address. It says:
Four main issues face us now. Where do we make up the shortfall in cost savings? How do we ensure the better functioning of amalgamated schools and the schools taking students from areas previously served by schools to be closed? How do we make sure that the sites of closed schools are put to best use ... ?
The editorial is finalised with a very telling sentence:
The mistakes of 20 years ago must not be repeated.
The Canberra Times acknowledges that mistakes have occurred and that school closures are sad but necessary, and it asks those very questions that the Labor Party refuses to answer. They are the important things, and they are the very issues that the Minister himself has been taking on. There has been no attack upon the education system and the health system at all. What he is doing is consolidating so that, as he expressed so capably in the house yesterday, the standard of school education in the ACT can be, if not improved, at least maintained.
What we had under Labor's plan for keeping uneconomic and unviable schools open was a plan to cut costs in other ways. The education system simply has to have reductions in its funding for the simple reason that the whole ACT revenue base is declining.
Mr Berry: That is right. That is what Trevor Kaine said. He said, "Education standards must drop".
MR DUBY: He did not. He said that the amount of money being spent must drop. Your proposals, of course, are to raise the number of students per class; to reduce the number of teachers available for specialist subjects; and to reduce the provision of services such as English as a second language and other such facilities which this Minister has worked extraordinarily hard to be able to
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