Page 3849 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 October 1991
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made those commitments, but we are going to pull the rug out from underneath you. Forget the promises we made; you are going to go to the wolves right now". That is disgraceful, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker; it is absolutely disgraceful.
This Government deserves to be condemned for its lack of consultation with the school communities concerned. We heard that this Government consults. We were told that it talks to people about what it is going to do. We were told that it had consulted the non-government sector about these cuts. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, that is baloney! This Government discussed, in the vaguest and most general terms, the issues facing it in terms of having to reduce expenditure overall, and perhaps in relation to non-government education as well.
Then, after the budget, it said, "We have made up our minds. We will not be swayed on this matter; discussion with us is pointless. We will see you as a matter of form, to hear your objections as a matter of formality; but think again if you imagine that we are going to change our minds". When was the consultation? The decision was announced, and the door was closed immediately after that. Where was the consultation? There was none, of course. Do not give us this baloney about being a government that is open and consultative. That little lie went out the window long, long ago.
Let us also address this point that the Ministers are repeatedly relying upon across the board, to do with the challenge that the Territory is now facing. We heard Mr Wood restate the statement made by Ms Follett in her budget speech, that no State or Territory has faced a collapse in Commonwealth funding as severe as the one that the ACT has faced. That is quite true; we have faced a very severe problem in the ACT. The Minister for police said at a meeting last week, I think, that everybody has to take their share of cuts; we have to spread this load across the board; we have to deal with these matters equitably across the board. There is a great point in those statements.
I want to know, though, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, why those comments were not being made last year when the Alliance was dealing with the same problem. Why were we not given the credit for having faced those problems in the same way? Why were our attempts to find some way out of the Territory's fiscal nightmare not acknowledged or supported by the former Opposition which is now in government? Of course, they were not interested in those arguments then; they were attacking them. The arguments were irrelevant then to that Opposition. They are using them now out of convenience, because they are in government; that is the simple fact of the matter.
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