Page 3113 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 12 September 1990
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Mr Humphries: What about capital gains?
MR WOOD: Okay, I will come back to that. I am pleased that that is your answer, but there it is. In this budget there is a net loss of $2m, so I can see that no argument can be sustained to say that we cannot take this course of a moratorium because of the budget. Indeed, we will be saving the budget this year $2m if schools do not close. Mr Humphries said, "What about the one-off costs?". Now, I am not sure how much your budget says you are going to recoup from that this year. Your earlier Treasury paper said that it would be nothing in this financial year. Your paper this time is a little bit less clear. I am trying not to be too partisan in this speech, but I think you ought to understand by now that you are not going to sell any school site.
Mr Humphries: Prejudging the issue, are we?
MR WOOD: Yes, I had wished not to be partisan; but, if you think that you can balance your books by saying that you have got $8m in capital income from school sites, I think you quietly realise that that is not the case; it will not happen. Indeed, if sales were able to proceed, you would also acknowledge, as that Treasury paper did, that you are not going to get any income in this financial year. Things simply cannot be done at that rate of speed. But that is an argument in anticipation of what might be said.
I believe that it is appropriate, it is very sensible and it will be a sound judgment for this Assembly to make to refer this to the Social Policy Committee. It will get an honest, an accurate and a very objective report.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (11.37): The complexion of this debate has changed quite dramatically in the last 24 hours, of course. There have been many calls in that preceding five- or six-week period for the Government to produce its figures on cost savings arising out of school closures. That information, of course, was always promised in the budget and was in fact tabled yesterday as part of the budget papers, in the document Statement on ACT Schools Re-shaping Program 1990-91, and it does change the complexion of the debate because it certainly puts on the table evidence of the Government's assertion that it can save money from the closure of schools, which evidence was claimed previously not to be available.
And I want to make it clear that we are talking about previous claims that the evidence was not available or could not be produced, not just that it was not going to be produced at that point in time when it was sought. It certainly puts paid to some of the claims made by Mr Wood in earlier debates in this place and outside this place over the last few weeks.
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