Page 201 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 April 1992
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Mr Wood: You are not asking about a vision for education; you are asking about a vision for cuts. That is what your vision is.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, I am not asking for a vision for cuts. I want to correct the Minister's misapprehension about this, Madam Speaker. I accept that the Government does not wish to make cuts in the area of education, but it has to face a problem of making cuts across the board because this Territory is not going to have as much money next financial year as it has this financial year. You have to cut or you have to make up money from somewhere else.
Is the Minister going to sustain the levels of education spending? We do not know. How is he going to fund his new initiatives? We do not know. How is he going to face the fact that in several parts of Canberra there are seriously declining levels of enrolment and that under normal circumstances, under either an Alliance government or a former Federal Labor government, you would have seen small schools closing or some other fairly drastic means of reducing the cost of education in this Territory?
Nothing like that has been provided. We have no idea from this statement what is happening in education. All we know is that the Labor Government has given the warm, fuzzy assurance that it will not be closing any schools and it will not have any per capita funding, and that is about it. I sincerely hope, Madam Speaker, that we see a little more substance come forward from the Minister in the next few weeks.
I think I should reserve my principal comments on health until we come to debate the ministerial statement on World Health Day. It will provide significant entertainment to the house when that occurs. The fact of life is, however, that much of what credit is claimed for in this statement is the achievement, basically, of the Alliance Government, particularly the very cornerstone, the principal feature of our hospital system at the present time, the hospital redevelopment project.
Madam Speaker, I want to make one last comment on this statement. I almost choked on the third last paragraph of the Chief Minister's statement. She says:
Madam Speaker, making the Government's legislative program available is basic to our commitment to open and accountable government.
Those of you who were not in the previous Assembly might not be aware of the fight that we had to get a legislative program out of the first minority Follett Labor Government and the difficulty we had in getting any indication of what exactly was happening in the way of legislation from this Government. It was late in the term of that first Government that, after repeated questions in this place, repeated pressure, and I think possibly even an MPI, we finally got a legislative program. Now we hear that a program such as that is "basic to our commitment to open and accountable government". How times change.
Mr Moore: Paul Whalan is not there any more.
MR HUMPHRIES: That could account for a great deal, Mr Moore. Madam Speaker, I really think that we need more than this at this stage. We need something which is going to be capable of inspiring the people of the ACT, at least in the belief, whether well founded or not, that they have here a Government
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