Page 3628 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 October 1990
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some roads that are busy two-lane highways, some that are quite substantial four-lane highways. It is as though this Government is fighting all the planning that has occurred over the years. It is as though the Government is forcing its planners the wrong way up a one-way street; it is going against the record, and what is it doing to accommodate this?
It has put a cost on this safety. There is a cost. The Government values the children's lives, their physical safety, because it proposes in the budget to allocate $200,000 for four pedestrian crossings - four crossings. That is what it proposes to do. It proposes also to provide eight bus trips. I understand that is at a cost of about $136,000. So the safety of these children does have a value. It is $336,000. I would not dare put a value on it, but these are all the steps that this Government has taken to provide greater safety for our children. I would like some of those other Government members over there, besides Mr Humphries, to get up and to comment on this lack of concern for safety. There are going to be no underpasses or overpasses; there are going to be no traffic lights but four pedestrian crossings. Already the Minister has heard the voice of the community which finds this totally unacceptable.
As a teacher for many years, Mr Humphries, I had a duty of care for the children in my class and those children that I took on excursions or dealt with in any way. I took that duty of care very responsibly. I think it is true to say that teachers take greater care of children in that way than they probably do of their own.
Mr Humphries, you are Minister in charge of all the schools, in charge of education; your duty of care is greater than that of anyone else. Yet, in these safety aspects you are not carrying out that full duty of care which you should be obliged to carry out. I think it is highly unfortunate that so little attention is paid to these matters. I will not quote the figures that are given there for the money costs of accidents; but they are there and, if you want to add up a balance sheet, you can do it. We cannot place too great an emphasis on the safety of children. The money savings down the track from closing schools are pretty negligible. The value of our children's safety is worth so much more than that and I encourage, Minister, a fairly short response from you so we can have a long response from some of your colleagues on that side of the house.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (3.20): Mr Speaker, I do not know whether I can necessarily oblige Mr Wood. He has always thrown up arguments of this kind. Nothing that is particularly new has been said today and I am not sure that much new can be said by me. Nonetheless, I refuse to let misleading statements of the kind that have been made by members of the Opposition, including Mr Wood, go uncontradicted. It
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