Page 3472 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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of charge to private schools. Since 1987, three have been given land free of charge. Those schools were the Roman Catholic primary school at Calwell, the Steiner School at Weston and the Roman Catholic High School at Isabella Plains - and that one was quite recent and quite within the memory of Mr Wood, but I did not hear him out on the streets saying then that that land should not be made available free.
Mrs Grassby: Who wants Isabella Plains? It is not worth anything.
MR KAINE: Oh, I see. So it is not the school; it is the location that is important. Now we are getting down to the principle of the thing. All schools can be given free land, except a school in Deakin. This is the nub of Mr Wood's opposition. Members may well recall that when the land was given to the Catholic high school at Isabella Plains Mrs Kelly, the member for Canberra, was out in the lead advocating it. But now we take a different view. Mr Speaker, you know that I am a mild mannered chap, but I find this sort of double standard absolutely breathtaking.
Let me examine in some detail the position taken by the ALP in this matter. First, they appear to wish to review the policy of providing free land to private schools. If that is what they really mean, after decades of making land available free to private schools - if they really want this Government now to review that policy - all they have to do is put a motion. They are quite busy putting motions on the private members' business list. Let us have a motion from you, Mr Wood, that the Government policy on making free land available to private schools shall cease forthwith - and see how far you get. See what that does to your popularity out in the electorate. It is an absolute double standard.
I would like to ask Mr Wood, if that is his stand, whether he is prepared to apply that policy retrospectively, and tell the parents of the children at the three schools that I have referred to that they now have to pay more in fees to cover the cost of the land that the schools are built on. If this policy that you are advocating is a good one, why start now?
The Opposition may not be aware that the Government currently has before it an application to provide to the Marist Brothers school at Pearce some free land for a sports oval - a very similar arrangement to that which was sought by the Girls Grammar School. Is Mr Wood going to go and talk to the Catholic Education Office and say, "You cannot have it because we do not agree"? Or is Pearce different too? Is there some quantum difference between Deakin and Pearce? And, if there is, where do you draw the line? Where would you agree that we should give land to private schools, and what is your definition of where we should not?
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