Page 3844 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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I have not heard anybody in this Assembly say that we needed to spend more money in any area. So, cuts were inevitable because of the circumstances. The question was: How were those cuts going to be made? Nothing is more certain than that, whatever government was in power, they were going to be made.
I have been down this path in the Estimates Committee and elsewhere, and it has been clearly established in print and acknowledged that the forward estimates of the former Government indicated a loss in a full year of $1.95m from the non-government schools sector. There is no question about that. Mr Humphries has acknowledged it, although the two members of the Liberal Party sitting opposite would prefer to claim that it would not have worked out quite like that in the end; but that was clearly their plan. They were going to take $1.95m off the cost of the whole of the non-government sector.
The ALP came in and considered that it was unjust. We considered that it was too much to take off the non-government sector, that it was too severe an impost altogether, and we looked at what could be done. The Humphries model proposed a most severe impact on schools that could least afford it.
Mr Humphries: That is rubbish!
MR WOOD: It is not, Mr Humphries. You were going to impose the most difficult circumstances on low category schools - schools down to category 10. They were going to face an enormous increase in fees to cover your proposals and, might I say, the proposals also of the Residents Rally which was part of your Government.
Mr Humphries: Scaremongering; that is what it is called.
MR WOOD: It is there in black and white, Mr Humphries. You will stand up in a moment, I expect, and try to obfuscate and move around it; it is, nevertheless, what happened. Not surprisingly, the ALP reviewed this matter. We reviewed it at the request of all the non-government schools. We were not able to meet the requests of all the groups. Because we are the Labor Party, because we have an interest in schools that are neediest, you would not be surprised that we acted to restore funding to schools that needed it.
We returned that amount of money to the non-government schools sector and confirmed that the money that came in a separate parcel from the Federal Government for award restructuring would also be matched on a 1:2 basis, the same formula. To my knowledge, at this stage only one other State has done that, although some may follow. That is also of very significant assistance to schools in the non-government sector. You would not be surprised that
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