Page 1797 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 1 May 1991
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MR MOORE (10.53), in reply: I do not intend to be quite so churlish as Mr Berry with Dr Kinloch; but I do remind Dr Kinloch that he certainly did vote to close four schools - the school sites that we are dealing with at the moment in addition to the North Curtin site.
I had expected to see some reasonable defence of the position that the Government has taken on this particular issue; instead we had the Chief Minister saying last Wednesday week that the Government rejects my proposition in its entirety. There was no attempt at all by the Government to consider the needs of the community. There is an absolutely appalling situation in that the Government has stayed steadfast in their stance on this.
Mr Connolly has made it quite clear that an attempt to respond to these variations is something that is difficult to do in three weeks. Dr Kinloch, now unmanacled and no longer bound by the Alliance, has made it quite clear that he too realises that a three-week period is absolutely impossible. I would ask Dr Kinloch to urge any other colleague in the Alliance to realise that an extension of time is the appropriate stance to take. Dr Kinloch has suggested that 30 June would be an appropriate time. I accept that there is some pressure on the Alliance Government in this matter as far as the budget and other issues are concerned. Whilst I think that Dr Kinloch's suggestion of 30 June is eminently sensible, the ideal time for this would have been three months, not three weeks. Having accepted that, I would say that, even if you were to compromise and give the community another three-week period, that would be reasonable.
I have on my desk here some of the documents that those residents associations need to make themselves familiar with if they are going to write a decent submission on this, and they are very concerned to write a decent submission. They are very concerned to write a decent submission because they recognise that you are ripping the heart out of their community. There is a tremendous amount of material, 16 centimetres high, that it would be perfectly reasonable to expect people to come to grips with in order to prepare an appropriate response. There are some things I left out of this pile that I have thought of since I came down to the chamber. It is entirely inappropriate and unfair to expect people to respond in three weeks.
I particularly draw Mr Jensen's attention to this because I know that for a long time he has had concerns for the community in this way. He knows that what the Government is doing is unreasonable, even if everything was going according to the way things should be done. We have had three major articles in the Canberra Times in the last week pointing to problems and mistakes, and an admission of a mistake in one of the variations that have been provided to the community. I have a letter from the Cook Community
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