Page 2504 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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A rather interesting thing then happened in the early part of this year. The leaders of the Stromlo High School community approached me as Minister for Education and said, "We believe that it would be in the best interests of the school community - and we speak for our school community in this matter - if that consolidation onto one campus occurred sooner rather than later. In fact, our school community" - and they said that very clearly - "would like that to occur at the end of the 1991 year". That is, from the beginning of 1992 there would be one consolidated campus on the site of the present Waramanga campus of that school. That is what they said to me, without any shadow of ambiguity or doubt. What they said to me also was that they would like that to happen in such a way that the infrastructure would be created to facilitate that occurring.
Now, why did they ask for that to happen? The reason is quite clear. They saw the way ahead. They saw that with the two-campus school there would be continuing uncertainty and problems which would be overcome only by having one campus at the first possible opportunity.
Mr Berry: A possible change of government in 1992.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry indicates that he thinks the leaders of the Stromlo High School are puppets of the Alliance Government or the Liberal Party. That is rubbish. Those people came to us because they wanted their school consolidated for reasons to do with education at that school. I suggest that, before you mouth off about what their motives were, you go and talk to those people, as you obviously have not done up until now.
Those genuinely elected people from the community wanted that amalgamation to happen soon. They saw what would happen if they did not have that amalgamation. They saw the dislocation to the school community. They saw the difficulty in students having to travel between the two campuses to undertake courses that might be available at only one of the two campuses. They saw the difficulties for teachers. Mr Wood said that the Labor Government's job on taking office was to clear up the Alliance Government's mess. The fact is that the community of Stromlo High wanted the Alliance's mess - as Mr Wood put it - to be accelerated, not to be delayed. That was the clear view of the school community.
We had to face the question of what the costs would be, and in question time yesterday Mr Wood or someone else on that side made some remarks about the costs of undertaking that amalgamation early. I shall quote from a paper I am going to table in a moment - it was a briefing paper to me as Minister; it is not dated, but I believe that it was in May this year - which indicated what those costs would be. We were clearly looking at some $1.5m in refurbishment work
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