Page 1292 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 16 April 1991
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schools, getting in and bulldozing those schools and putting up townhouses, so that when the next election comes along the Labor Party will have difficulty in saying that it can reopen Cook and Lyons schools because they will have put a bulldozer through them. They are not game to have this issue debated and decided by the community.
Mr Wood made the most fundamental point towards the close of his remarks earlier this afternoon. He made the assertion, which we repeatedly make, that this Government has no mandate to close the schools and has no mandate to sell these sites.
Mr Humphries: Did you in 1988?
MR CONNOLLY: It is abundantly clear that this is the most divisive issue in the ACT community. It is abundantly clear that it will be a feature at the next election; so these school sites ought to remain until after the next election.
Mr Humphries is very fond of debating what happened in 1988. This morning he was very fond of debating what may or may not have happened in Western Australia four or five years ago between Western Australian politicians and Western Australian business people. I have yet to hear him on what is happening between Tasmanian Liberal politicians and Tasmanian Labor politicians in bribery and corruption allegations down there. He is very keen to talk about anything other than the issue before this community, and that is these school sites.
But there is a difference, an interesting difference, which would fit into his argument about the school sites. He says, "Well, this is the same process as happened in 1988 and the same result should flow". Well, interestingly, of course, in the case of the 1988 school closures which, as we keep saying, Labor locally opposed but the Federal Labor Government proceeded with, the school sites remained as school sites and able to be reopened during an intervening election period. Had a candidate stood for any of the seats in Canberra with a promise to reopen the schools and won, those schools perhaps may have been reopened. But there was no party with a promise and commitment to reopen those 1988 schools.
Mr Humphries: No, not the Labor Party either.
MR CONNOLLY: No, not the Labor Party. There never has been a promise to reopen those 1988 schools. But the 1990 school closure is very different. It happened after self-government. It happened after the 1988 closures which, of course, were, at the time, sold to the Canberra community on the basis of a rationalisation of schools to allow a self-governing ACT to continue with an education system into the next decade.
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