Page 4250 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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that the Hudson report has an implied criticism of the lack of planning in that it recommends that a task force should be set up to look at a way of handling schools as enrolments decline. I can remember papers the Schools Authority, as it then was, put out in 1983 to deal with the way to handle schools as enrolments decline. A great deal of pain and effort went into them. I do not know why they were never attended to as part of this proposal.
It is no wonder that the planning has been in such a mess. The Minister has simply not been able to handle it. We hear reports that it will soon be taken away from him. Well, I should hope so. The education of our children will be better for that. I am sorry to have to say that. We see today how this matter has now climaxed - or almost climaxed, because I do not think it is the end of the story by a long way - with the regrettable decision to close five schools - four primary schools and one high school. The decision today was not taken on educational grounds. It was not based on sound planning. I do not think, today, it was even based on economic grounds, because nowhere are the savings going to match what was earlier claimed.
The decision today was based purely on political motives, as I outlined - that dry liberalism of the Minister. Further than that, it was based on pure political expediency, because today we saw the Residents Rally join forces with the Liberal Party to close five schools in the ACT. The decision has been based purely on the survival of the Government - on political expedience. Survival of the Government is what it is about. You decided that it was better to stay where you are than to keep all those schools open. For the Residents Rally power is much more important than schools. Five schools have been sacrificed for that political power. All this year, we have lost great opportunities. I think we have gone backwards in what happens in our schools. Opportunities for progress have not been taken. There are so many areas that we would be better debating in this Assembly. It is true that we have a good system, but there is much to be done to make it a better system, and that is what we should have been talking about; that is what we should have been planning for during this year.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (3.53): Mr Speaker, the Opposition has again taken the opportunity to raise this issue and to try to air once more, almost in a fairly tired fashion I would have thought, the same old arguments that its members have run out dozens of times before in this place. I suppose they feel an obligation to do so to those people who bang on their door and seek their support, but they do it more out of duty than anything else. I sense - if perhaps others in this place do not - a certain tiredness in the approach taken by the Opposition.
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