Page 4522 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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ensure that we read them very perspicaciously - says $3m in a full year and $1m this year. So, we are out by a factor of six. We are out by half a million dollars on $3m, one-sixth of $1m. On the Government's own view, the very basis of this estimate must be incorrect. They have acknowledged that. They have acknowledged that there will be a shortfall. They do not know what it will be. Why should we expect a Government producing an appropriation Bill to know what that will be? They are the Government after all.
The important point to arise from the Hudson finding that the savings from the seven-school option will be $2.5m, instead of the $3m, was his subsequent finding that the four-school model could produce a saving of $2.4m through looking at savings in other areas. It is this option E that we are all calling on the Government to devote some resources to. It would seem to follow from Hudson's process that there may well be significant savings that can be made in the system. We are all concerned to make savings in Government expenditure wherever possible.
There may well be significant savings to be made which will allow the schools to remain open, which will allow Lyons and the other schools to continue to provide the sound educational service that they do, and still make a saving to the overall budget. Unless those questions can be answered, the Opposition can have no confidence in voting for this appropriation. It is flawed on its own analysis because it is based on savings that will not be made. It is flawed in its methodology because we think savings can be made without cuts to service.
MR WOOD (4.25): I want to add my voice again and make it quite clear that the Opposition does not support this part of the Appropriation Bill. Our position is quite consistent. We have long thought about it, and we have long opposed the closure of any schools. We will not be supporting this.
I want to make some comment about the Hudson report. I had proposed to do so. It may be that the Minister has answered my comments because in question time in response to a question from Mr Moore he said more about the Hudson report than he said all week. The Hudson report took a lot of the Government's time and a lot of the Government's money, and the Government, during the time of Mr Hudson's deliberations, was placing great store on the outcomes of that report. Consequently, I would have thought that the Minister would have made some fairly detailed statement about the Government response to that report. Yet it was only in the answer to Mr Moore's question that we heard any real elaboration of the Government view of that report. Indeed, an answer to a question in two or three minutes is not much, in any case.
Other than that, the only comment that I have seen is the Alliance Government's statement on 20 November when it announced that a further three schools would not be closed.
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