Page 4011 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 24 October 1990
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people and functions around as if there is a new, you-beaut theory that solves the particular pressing financial problems of our system in the Territory.
This Alliance Government has been accused of having an ideological mind-set against schools. As former honorary solicitor to the P and C council, I do not believe that the community has accepted it. One issue that is clear to the school communities with which I mix is that, instead of facing up to the fact that we have before us a Territory-wide challenge, the Australian Labor Party decided to offer no comfort and no solutions and not to mediate or facilitate; it has given no suggestions. School groups have had to devise and argue, effectively in many instances, their cases, with very little help, except rhetoric, from the Australian Labor Party. In this Territory the Labor Party has provided rhetoric; it has not provided resources. How many of its members have put money into the school fighting fund? How many of them, personally, have put money where their mouths are? I wonder.
Mr Moore: Have you?
MR COLLAERY: I wonder what it is. You would be surprised at that, Mr Moore. We would like to hear what their level of commitment is, apart from wanting to score some votes on the issue. The motion before the Assembly is:
That it is the opinion of this Assembly that Weetangera Primary School remain open to continue to provide high quality education.
High quality is the great aspect of education in the Territory, and it is an aspiration to which we all agree. The term is very cunningly placed there so that, if we do not support the motion, the press release can go out saying that we do not support high quality education. I think the community is bored with Labor's gamesmanship. It really wants politicians who will get into this Assembly and help solve the problem, not sit away from us and help exacerbate it. It wants people in here offering a solution.
Mr Connolly: You are the problem, Bernard.
Mr Moore: You are the problem.
MR COLLAERY: See? They are becoming vocal again, Mr Speaker. When you start pricking them, out comes a bit of noise. The Government has, for better or worse, taken a number of decisions. They have been submitted to an independent review, not one that the Federal ALP or the local branches and their minions sitting opposite supported. Was an independent review demanded by the local ALP branches when Ros Kelly closed the schools? How can they fault, in many respects, the attempts that this Government has made, for better or worse, to hear the community voice, to provide an independent review and the
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