Page 3629 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 October 1990
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is incumbent upon this Government to ensure that the argument is kept as clear as possible and the issues are not muddied, and that is a very difficult job in the present circumstances where those opposite have no hesitation in distorting and misrepresenting the facts in such a way as to alarm those people in the community who might be affected by these changes.
Mr Wood: They are the ones ringing me up.
MR HUMPHRIES: They also ring me, Mr Wood, and I am not insensible to what they say. The fact is, Mr Speaker, that I believe it is inappropriate for this matter to be raised in this chamber at this particular point in time while the sort of process that those opposite have called for for some time - that is, some assessment of the social impact of these school closures - is, in fact, under way.
At the present point in time the Government has a highly qualified, very dynamic and capable person working on the very issues that the Opposition is raising here in this Assembly today. It disturbs me greatly that those people opposite are prepared to raise these issues now, to air these issues now, in this place rather than wait until they can be ventilated in the appropriate forum, before Mr Hudson. This leads me to one conclusion, namely, that the Opposition in particular, and others in general, are setting themselves up to knock back the inquiry report. They are setting themselves up to reject whatever it is Mr Hudson, the umpire, says because they do not believe it is going to come down their way. They do not want to be caught with that evidence pointing against their point of view and in favour of the Government's point of view.
Those opposite know that there is a chance of that, at least a chance of that, and they are going to find themselves embarrassed. They would rather be able to say that in some way the inquiry was biased, or the inquirer has some reason not to hand down a proper, qualified report, or he has not taken enough evidence, or he has not taken a long enough time or whatever, so that they can reject the inquiry's report. That is shameful in my view. They should stand back, wait until that evidence is before us and then decide whether it is worth accepting or not. I think it is a discredit to them that they are prepared to do that.
There are some other things which have been said by Mr Wood, which are sheer nonsense and which ought to be knocked on the head instantly. The suggestion that the Government is changing Canberra fundamentally is just sheer rhetoric. It is simply not doing that. I think the problem that the Opposition members have fallen into is their failure to define properly what they mean when they raise this matter of public importance by saying that the absence or the closure of neighbourhood schools will impose some heavy social costs on local communities.
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