Page 2966 - Week 10 - Thursday, 16 August 1990
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Mr Duby: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: surely this is a matter of irrelevance to the censure of Mr Humphries.
MR SPEAKER: He might have changed view. All right, please proceed and be relevant, Mr Wood.
MR WOOD: "Please be relevant"? Well, I must not reply to Mr Duby; that is what he seems to be saying. He was so bold as to read an editorial from the Canberra Times. I suggest that he lacks the foresight in debate that Mr Humphries lacks in education planning. I will not embarrass Mr Duby by reading this editorial; I think it has been said enough. But let us suggest to Mr Duby that he should never use a Canberra Times editorial in support of any of his arguments.
Mr Stefaniak made comment about the hard times forced on us by the Federal Government, and I agree with him. It goes back, I think, as far as Phil Lynch and the razor gang since which time the ACT has been on a downward path of funding. We are on hard times. I agree every time that Gary Humphries stands up and says, "We have to fund a budget. We have to make savings", and I think he said something about a very significant shortfall to be made up. There is no problem about that. I accept it. But the question is this, Mr Humphries: if you think you have competence as a planner, as a maker of budgets, as a helper in making budgets, you must be very careful that the actions you take are going to achieve the ends you seek. The plain fact is that closing schools will save, in the long term, very limited amounts of money; closing schools is going to get you nowhere in saving significant amounts of money. It will do nothing towards meeting that target you want. In particular, in this current budget that you are framing for the financial year 1990-91, you will have no savings out of school closures. You will have no savings, so what is all this talk about? You are not going to achieve what you set out to achieve. It simply is not going to get you where you want to go.
I started off two hours ago moving a motion of censure against this Minister. I have been proved right. I went through numbers of members over there, and I have to point out again that nowhere has there been a defence of the Minister because nowhere is there an acceptance that what he is doing is the way to go. This Parliament must censure the Minister for Health, Education and the Arts.
MR SPEAKER: That closes the debate. The question is that the amendment moved by Mr Duby to Mr Collaery's amendment be agreed to. I point out to the house that the Chief Minister is attending the funeral of the late Governor of New South Wales.
Question put.
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