Page 3341 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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We now have an inquiry into the Government's incompetence, because that is what it is. The Government has not been able to convince anybody, not even its own backbench, and in some cases not its frontbench, that the figures that it has provided are accurate and can be relied upon. So now, both as a measure of its incompetence, as a confession of its incompetence, and also as a sop to the Residents Rally, it has reluctantly agreed to hold its incompetence up to display.
Mr Humphries: Will you accept the verdict when it comes down?
MR WOOD: That is what it has agreed to. Well, I heard you on radio today and you were all over the place on that.
Mr Humphries: Will you accept the verdict?
MR WOOD: Well, first of all I would not agree that this gentleman is necessarily an umpire, but we will debate that. We will give you the opportunity to debate that at another time. But now we have the situation where the figures are going to be evaluated, and I can only applaud that. Hear what I am saying; I can only applaud that. It may well be that, if five weeks is not too short, we will see some more accurate figures - figures that the Government has never been able to provide to the satisfaction of the community. Not only that, but figures had to be dragged out of the Government.
When you started this exercise six or seven months ago you did not think at any stage it was necessary to provide any figures at all about school closures. You came in with a view, a philosophical view, that schools ought to be closed. That was the view that you had, and you said, "We will close them". Bit by bit you have been convinced and have said, "Well, perhaps we do have to justify this; perhaps we do need to do a little planning"; and reluctantly and painfully you have been drawn down the path of preparing some figures and retrospectively doing the planning to try to justify what you are doing. It has been a miserable exercise throughout. The paucity of the Government's thinking has been demonstrated over and over again and, finally, we now have an inquiry, first as a sop to the Rally and secondly as an acknowledgment that you have not been able to get it right. I will be making my own submission to that inquiry. I know a great number of people will be.
We preferred that it have a wider range of people on it, but that is not to be. We will see how the inquiry develops. Perhaps to conclude my portion of this debate it would be fair to say that the Hudson inquiry into school closures will become part 3 of the Treasurer's budget. I believe that is how it will be described and it may well be
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