Page 4880 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.24): Mr Humphries has had some inkling of what may happen and the Government can state that it will agree to an inquiry. We do not have any anxiety about that; we do so quite willingly.
Mr Humphries: You did not a few weeks ago.
MR WOOD: You did not ask me a few weeks ago.
Mr Humphries: I asked the Chief Minister a few weeks ago.
MR WOOD: That is a very interesting question, Mr Humphries. Eight weeks ago you had a conversation with the Chief Minister. Her response, as she recalls it, was, "Okay, present your proposal. We will wait and see your proposal". That was eight weeks ago. We have never had a proposal from you. We are not rushing to an inquiry, because we are confident about our processes. The Opposition believed that an inquiry would have some benefit. We indicated then that we would wait and see, and we can announce today that we will run the inquiry. It is a great piece of nonsense on the part of Mr Humphries to propose, as a matter of public importance, the need for an urgent inquiry into the funding of non-government education.
Mr Humphries: You just agreed to it. Is there not a need there? Why have you agreed if there is no need?
MR WOOD: Let me pick out the written words for emphasis. The MPI refers to an urgent inquiry. The budget was brought down 10 weeks ago today. Mr Humphries comes back today and says, "Let us have an urgent inquiry". There is absolutely no urgency on his part about an inquiry. In fact, he has had to be pushed and prodded and poked by other people to raise this matter here. There is no urgency, on the part of the Rally or the Independents in this Assembly, for an inquiry.
Let me repeat: The Government is confident about its processes and procedures in drawing up the budget. We do not feel that we have an urgent need, or any need, to run an inquiry. I was not going to say of my own accord "Yes, we will have an inquiry", because we are confident about what we have done. We want to be open about what we want to do. If you want to raise it, we will respond. This is an open government. This is a government that is prepared to allow the community to comment on what happens. We are quite prepared to run an inquiry procedure because we are confident that at the end of it there will be justification for what we have done, and maybe some good information will come out of it.
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