Page 4257 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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I refer to your letter ... As Joint Party Room submissions are confidential to the Party Room I am not able to accede to your request.
If you were a member of the Joint Party Room, involved in the decision making process, I would be sending you such material as a matter of course.
No, I am not a member of the joint party room; however, I think it is appropriate that the people of Canberra have access to that information. If we had access to that information once again we would, I am sure, be able to demonstrate the lack of credibility of the information that was presented to you. That lack of credibility goes through to the Hudson report - not because of Mr Hudson, whose credibility I do not question, but because he got his information from the same place everybody else got their information, namely, from a department which now lacks credibility. Mr Humphries, tell us now, if you wish - through the Deputy Speaker - that he had the information that I requested made available to him.
Mr Humphries: Yes, the information he requested was made available to him.
MR MOORE: Mr Humphries interjects that he had available to him the information that he requested. I can remember sitting through the Estimates Committee for three-quarters of an hour to get a single response on something that we wanted. He can have available to him what he requests - - -
Mr Humphries: He must have asked easier questions than you did.
MR MOORE: Yes, because we may not have known the exact question to ask. What that indicates is that you are not content that the decision you made is aboveboard, that everything you have done about school closures is appropriate. Instead, we have the opposite situation, and that is why there is a great lack of credibility on this decision, on your ministry, on your Government, and also, unfortunately, on the department of education.
I must say that I welcome the reprieve for Higgins, Rivett and Weetangera primary schools, and now, clearly, the fight must go on for the other schools and we must illustrate the same inadequacies that you have demonstrated on Cook Primary, Hackett, Holder, Lyons and so on. We must explore the alternatives, because a series of options was presented by Mr Hudson. It was not just a case of saying, "Okay, Alliance, the thing to do is leave Higgins, Rivett and Weetangera open and close the others; that will be okay". On the contrary, he provided a series of options to you, and, knowing what you know about being given
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