Page 1299 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 16 April 1991
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discussed at length with me the legal ramifications of a whole range of Acts and how they applied to schools. I appreciate that help from him. He made a significant contribution to putting that challenge together. While I am on that particular issue, Mr Speaker, I have an absolute commitment to do what I can to reopen these particular schools. Like Mr Connolly and Mr Wood who spoke earlier, I will take whatever action is necessary to delay the process of the variation to the Territory Plan in order to ensure that there is a chance that these schools still stand when a new government can reopen them. It is not just a matter of working in the Assembly for that delay; the variation process also has to be considered.
I think it is appropriate at this stage to point out the role that the unions have played in supporting the parents and their schools. There was a time, of course, when it would not have been necessary because our school system was a system of the parents, not the bureaucratic system that we have now under the leadership of Mr Humphries. I think it would be reasonable for parents to assume that the level of support that they have had from the unions will continue. That support, although a last ditch procedure, will be there to help to protect those schools. The schools have my assurance and that of the Labor Party that those schools will be reopened. That is a genuine assurance. That does not mean that the school will suddenly be a K to 6 school. Because of the damage that this Alliance Government has done to the schools already, it could well start, for example, on a K to 3 basis. That is something that is quite critical to the way people feel about their neighbourhood schools.
One of the things about the Alliance Government is that they have never really understood why the neighbourhood schools are so important and why they are important in strategic planning terms. That is something they have missed out on, and something that I believe they will never understand. Their attention was drawn time and again to a very definitive document on the nature of ageing populations and the closure of schools, a document prepared by the OECD. There is no point in my running through the issues in there again; I have done so before in this Assembly. That document sets out clearly the possible alternatives to school closures, and those alternatives are the most critical things in terms of what is best for the community. What is best for the community has hardly been the highest consideration as far as the Alliance Government has been concerned in this area.
In considering a variation to the Territory Plan, I think it is appropriate to draw some words from David Hall, the director of the Town and Country Planning Association in London and a consultant for the National Capital Planning Authority, who wrote a report entitled "The Future Planning and Development of Canberra - An Evaluation of Current
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