Page 2500 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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Ms Maher: The community wants the amalgamation.
MR WOOD: I am quite interested to hear the interjections, but I will make this point. We are going back to listen to the community.
Mr Duby: Is that a promise?
MR WOOD: Yes, indeed. This meeting a year ago started the process of saying, "Hang on, we are not convinced about what you are doing". From that time, or before, I have been attending to the debate and I have heard those who now support the amalgamation. Let me make it clear that I acknowledge that in that community there is a significant measure of support for amalgamation. There is no question about that. The question is: How significant, how large, is that measure of support?
Mr Humphries: Very large in the school community.
MR WOOD: I tell you that you do not know; nobody knows just how that measure of support meets up with what the whole community believes, and we have to find that out. I have been to each of the campuses; I have moved around. I heard a variety of views. Let me say that the majority view expressed on the campus, with lots of reservations and qualifications, was, "We are going down this path; let us carry on".
Mr Humphries: "And we want to do so from the beginning of 1992".
MR WOOD: I have been listening to other people who say, "Let us reopen Holder" or "Let us see what we want in this area". We went to the meeting the other night that some of you attended. Are you trying to tell me that there is not a significant measure of support there to reopen Holder High School? There certainly is.
Ms Maher: Not from the school community. They came from all over the place. They came from Cook.
MR WOOD: There is support from a significant number of the people in that community, and I would argue at this stage that, as I interpret what is happening, it is at least as significant as, if not more significant than, the calls you hear. You do not hear other calls. You are not going anywhere near deeply enough into Weston Creek to know what they are saying.
Mr Kaine: When did you do that?
MR WOOD: I have been doing that constantly for a year now. I have been attending very carefully to what is being said. There is simply no way you can sustain the statement in this motion that the majority of parents in the community want the amalgamation to proceed. You cannot say that,
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