Page 4013 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 24 October 1990
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they can govern this Territory as an alternative. They are factionalised, barely riding in the same lift, and certainly they are not a group that we could trust. It is only two years since they closed six schools, arbitrarily and summarily, yet we hear these pious incantations from Mr Bill Wood - whom I respect personally, I hasten to say - about school closures being a dreadful thing.
Mr Berry: Poor Bill!
MR COLLAERY: Mr Berry uses that firemen's union language. He says that we committed an atrocity on the schools system. Get the word "atrocity"! Has he gone out and helped us see through these issues with the community? I have not seen him at Burnie Court, Lyons, working out how many youngsters are there with the single mothers who might want their children to have schooling there. We have not seen the Labor members on the ground; we have seen them only where there is a camera, where there is a gathering, and they push themselves to the front for that. As a community-based political leader, I am disgusted with their performance on this. It has been designed, almost from the start, to knock over the Residents Rally, very cynically. They are in for a heck of a shock, I can assure them.
Finally, to put the required issue - I am speaking now as Attorney-General and Minister responsible for the court system - this motion requires this Assembly to direct an opinion to the community. The legislature is one of the three arms of constitutional government. The motion is that, in the opinion of the Assembly, Weetangera school should remain open. We all know that a vote on this issue will pre-empt the matter that is before the Supreme Court of the ACT now.
Mr Connolly: The decision to close them pre-empts the action.
MR COLLAERY: I will come to that. As other members are well aware, the Government is engaged in very sensitive and important negotiations with the Commonwealth and the Supreme Court judges about the conditions under which the Supreme Court would transfer and become part of our constitutional structure. Issues that are for the court's consideration - that is publicly known, and I will not go further into those negotiations - there not being a vice-regal representative or administrator in the traditional sense, are the extent to which this Assembly can retain, firstly - I use the word advisedly - the confidence of the judiciary and attend to some urgent concerns that the judges have widely - - -
Mr Wood: What are you rabbiting on about?
MR COLLAERY: I am not rabbiting on. I seek an extension of time, Mr Speaker.
Leave not granted.
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