Page 3116 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 12 September 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES: I will come back to the question of whether you can do it over any longer period as well, Mr Stevenson, if you will just be patient. Mr Wood said that the consultation was inadequate in the previous round. That was three months. This is only a little over two months. The second problem I have - may I have some protection, Mr Speaker?
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Berry, please give the member a chance.
MR HUMPHRIES: The second objection I have to this motion is that it covers a vast range of issues. This is not just an inquiry into school closures; this is an inquiry into the whole of the education system, and it is virtually an audit of education in the ACT. Listen to the terms: staffing levels; work practices; resource utilisation - resource utilisation by itself could consume months and months of detailed inquiry - optimum allocation of responsibilities between local schools and centralised administration. The need for school closures comes in, and any other matters the committee may consider relevant. This is not an inquiry that you can do in eight or 10 weeks.
Mr Speaker, the third problem I have relates to the fact that in the meantime members opposite expect this inquiry to proceed while there is a moratorium on decisions on school closures. Now, this is the problem with extending the inquiry into six months, or whatever it might take - at least six months, in my view. To do so means that you make no school closures at the end of this year, and it means that no decisions can be made until the end of next year. I think that is unrealistic. The Government does not have the luxury of avoiding the implication of the end of special Commonwealth funding for the Territory beyond the end of this financial year. The Commonwealth is not giving us a holiday. There is no holiday in the increase in our commitment to our own budget because of a shortfall in Commonwealth funding as of 30 June 1991, and yet it is suggested that we should put off school closures, put off the decisions on school closures, until the end of the year 1991. That is quite simply wholly unrealistic.
The other implication of that is that the Assembly committee which assumes this responsibility seems to take on the mantle of decision maker, a mantle which is appropriately that of the Government, and I think we have to distinguish very carefully the sort of inquiry that was conducted, for example, into the needs of the ageing that Mr Wood referred to. I will come back to that in a moment. I seek an extension of time, Mr Speaker.
Extension of time not granted.
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