Page 3115 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 12 September 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Valley. Mr Whalan tabled all of those changes. Mr Whalan was going to sell school sites. Why is it wrong for this Government to do the same thing, Mr Connolly?
Mr Connolly: Because you are closing them, that is why.
MR HUMPHRIES: I would like to have the answer to that in this debate. The fact of life is that the only way Mr Wood's statement that the Government has no savings to make out of this process can be sustained, is if you refuse to offset the capital gains which will be made by the sale of school sites. Only if you refuse to offset against that figure the money that the Government is spending on capital refurbishment and changes within the education system to accommodate the new arrangements can you make the claim Mr Wood has made, that there are no savings in this financial year.
I think it is entirely realistic to look towards the saving of at least one school in this financial year, if not two. If one sells, let us say, two primary school sites in the course of this financial year, and plans are well-advanced to do that, and one adds in the $1m recurrent savings to be made in this financial year, one offsets the total outlays, the total one-off outlays - all of which will be incurred in this financial year, incidentally - one will find a net gain in this financial year. Of course, as the Chief Minister pointed out yesterday, the savings are very substantial, as the second, third, fourth and subsequent years of this program go on. I cannot look just at, in isolation, one year's budget. There are other budgets and future savings to be made. This is only the beginning.
I oppose the motion that Mr Stevenson has put forward today for a number of reasons. First of all, I think that we have in the shape of this motion a very short inquiry period being proposed, particularly if one bears in mind that one is seeking, presumably in this process, public consultation and public submissions.
It is a little over two months before this report is due, on a matter of enormous complexity, in which time it is suggested that a very large number of complex issues should be canvassed. Allow in that time public calling for submissions, presumably; public preparation of submissions; the submission of those submissions; the reading of those submissions; the examination of witnesses on those submissions; the obtaining of other information of a statistical kind from the school system and elsewhere; the production of other witnesses of a technical nature who might be required, and then the preparation of a report - all within a little over two months. I find it very hard to imagine how that can be done.
Mr Stevenson: You need to extend the time of the moratorium. I will agree to an amendment. I will vote for an amendment.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .