Page 1455 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
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MR COLLAERY: Mr Wood is talking about a mandate at an election. The fact was that the Australian Labor Party issued a policy that talked about anticipated school closures. He has used sophistry to dodge the issue. If, in the light of the fact that they were thrown out of office and they issued something saying that they did not do it, and the Residents Rally, in like manner - - -
Mr Wood: It gets a bit tedious after all this time that you want to continue on in that vein.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, I have only a few moments.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Wood, please! You were heard in silence.
MR COLLAERY: If the Residents Rally, in like manner, issued exactly the same policy as Labor, do you say that the public were not aware of the fact that our demography and the nature of our community was such that we had this ever present fear of school closures? Of course; because it was just around the corner. When we sat down with Michael Moore and others to talk about our Rally policy, we discussed school closures. It was mentioned on the hustings. None of us have kept tape recordings, I imagine; but, if they exist, you would find that the subject of school closures was often mentioned. All of us in the Rally very guardedly said - the same as the Labor Party has said - that there would be full consultation and no school would be closed unless the school community agreed and so forth. Is that not right?
Mr Wood: That is not the case.
MR COLLAERY: Yes, we did. Mr Wood, it ill-behoves you, given your essential integrity, to try to dodge that issue. The reason why you are opposed to school closures at the moment is that you are in Opposition. That is the fact of the matter.
The second issue is that, when the Follett-Whalan Government was in power, I recall a senior adviser to Rosemary Follett, Martin Attridge, coming down to the Rally office with these draft proposals. I hold them up for the house. They are headed: Page, Fisher, Phillip. They are in much the same form as the green proposals before us today in relation to Curtin, Hackett, Holder, Lyons and Cook.
Mr Attridge came down to us and talked to us and assured us that not too much green space would go. I invite members to have a look at Rosemary Follett's green proposals, because they are not much different from ours. That is one of the most conclusive rebuttals of Mr Wood's arguments that he has advanced today that one could ever imagine. Mr Wood smiles. Of course, he smiles wryly. I accept that he
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