Page 4379 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 21 November 1990
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Mr Connolly: He is just out behind - - -
MR HUMPHRIES: They are all in the toilet, I understand. I beg your pardon. It must be a very crowded toilet. Mr Wood says that the schools will fight on. That, of course, is their prerogative. I do not think they will get much assistance from most other schools in the Territory because the reality is that most people who have been subject to some consideration are now no longer under consideration. They are very pleased that they are no longer facing the axe and now that they are saved I think that most schools will not be taking part in wider campaigns.
Mr Connolly: They will stick together.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Connolly says that they will stick together. I noticed an article in today's paper saying that one of the schools intended to have a public meeting tonight at which the motion will be put that they resolve to proceed with the implementation of the Government's plan to close their particular school.
It is actually also interesting - I should put this on the record, Mr Speaker - that that school is not mentioned in the motions that the Assembly is considering today. Apparently we are of the opinion, in the Labor Party's words, that X school should remain open to continue to provide high quality education but apparently the Holder Primary School is not a school providing high quality education, in the view of the Opposition, or a school that it believes ought to have some different view taken about it than the view the Government has taken about that school. Now there are anxious looks across the chamber. Obviously they have just discovered that they have forgotten all about Holder Primary School. I think we should reflect on the Freudian slips that might have occurred there.
Mr Speaker, I think that those opposite should be aware that it is not in the interests, necessarily, of every school in this debate - that is, any of the schools that they have referred to in these motions, or Holder Primary School, which they have not referred to in their motions - that it continue. It is important for those schools to have some idea of the future that they face, and for that reason I believe it is important that this debate be settled quickly. Those opposite would not accept that. Those opposite see it as being in their political interests to fight these decisions right down the line until every last school child in question is traumatised. That would be their choice - to traumatise those children. They cannot put to one side lightly, Mr Speaker, the effect that these ongoing debates have on children.
Of course, they can throw the argument back and say that to avoid that trauma we should not consider rationalising resources in the school system. That argument might carry some water if it were not for the fact that the ALP
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