Page 3112 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 12 September 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
confidence in any independent inquiry that may be announced.
Another report which does not fill anybody with any great amount of confidence was the preschool task force report, albeit that it was introduced by the ALP. Its work was substantially done, and certainly completed, under the protection of this Government. That report had 52 errors - and not typographical errors but errors of data, errors of number - and had to be withdrawn.
So we are not confident in independent reports. Certainly, I would have to reserve my judgment until I see the composition of any independent inquiry, but so far the reports that the Government has tabled have not demonstrated that we would have confidence in some independent inquiry.
I believe, based on the record of the Social Policy Committee, this Assembly can have confidence in any report we bring down. I can assure the Assembly, and you know the members of that committee, that any inquiry would be honest; it would be open, of course; it would be rigorous. But, most importantly, it would be objective. Let me dwell on that word for a moment. I have made some comments in this chamber before about the ability of members on committee work, and elsewhere, to be objective. I have certainly taken a partisan stance in the debate on education, as I did initially in the debate on fluoride, as Mr Stevenson will remember. But in the long inquiry into fluoride, I believe I have been able to move away from that stance and take an objective view. I believe that all members of the Social Policy Committee have that ability to step aside, to forget what has gone on before, and look at matters as they now come to the committee. So there need be no concern in this parliament about the objective nature of an inquiry by the Social Policy Committee.
So the offer is there, the opportunity is there for all members of this chamber to support that referral. I regret that Dr Kinloch is not available this week, but I believe that the views of the Residents Rally will be such that we can claim two other votes from the Rally for this motion. That should see it successfully passed.
Finally, I want to make one comment in anticipation of any debate that may follow, and that concerns any claim that might say, "We cannot approve this because it is written into the budget and we cannot change the budget. It has gone too far down the track and there is the budget with all these costings about schools, all this is wrapped into the budget and therefore it is quite immutable". The budget papers clearly show that there is a loss this year of $2m as a result of school closures. Mr Humphries, you can shake your head, but one table on one page of supplementary paper No. 3 tells us that the savings are, in round figures, $1m. Over the page, as you well know, there are those one-off costs of, in round figures, $3m.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .