Page 2925 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 October 1992
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Chief Minister - was to scuttle the new Government's plans and to sabotage this process. That was supposedly the position of the department. It goes beyond Dr Willmot, by the way, I am sure. But let us say, for the sake of argument, that it was just Dr Willmot.
What was the position of the Government? The position of the Government was fairly clearly stated in the letter that Mr Wood wrote to Ms Follett, which has already been quoted. Mr Wood said:
Both you and I are on record as having stated that the cost of reopening Cook and Lyons Primary Schools will not be borne by other schools in the public system ...
In other words, he was saying, "We have to keep the costs down. We have to minimise the cost presented to the community as the cost to reopen those schools". That was a priority, a consideration, of this Government. It was saying, "Because of the political flak we are going to cop over this, we cannot afford to spend too much money on this project. We have argued that those schools do not cost very much money. It would therefore be inconsistent with our argument to be caught spending a lot of money on reopening them".
Contrary to what Ms Follett has said, the community at that stage was not behind the Government's decision to reopen those schools. I concede that some in the community might have been opposed to closing the schools in the first place, but there is very strong evidence that in fact the Government was out of kilter - - -
Mr Kaine: Evidence adduced in their own survey of ratepayers.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. It was out of kilter with the community in its decision to reopen those schools. Of course, there were letters to the newspaper with headings such as "Decision Defies All Logic", "Reopening Not Affordable", "Consult Us All, Not Just Locals". Those sorts of views were coming from the community at the time. The ratepayers survey that Ms Follett commissioned shortly after the reopening of those schools also underlined the fact that the community was not happy with the decision being taken by the Follett Government to reopen those schools. It was an unwise decision. As I said, that is not what we are debating today.
The fact of life is that we had two different positions - a position that the Government took and one that the department took. The Government told the department, "We are not prepared to accept your figures. Go away and find others that are more politically acceptable". Off went the department and, obviously under pressure, obviously reluctantly, produced lower figures. They did that by transferring maintenance costs associated with the reopening of those schools out of the reopening budget, the specified earmarked budget, and into the general schools budget. In doing that, Madam Speaker, I would suggest that they did exactly what Ms Follett and Mr Wood told the community would not happen; that is, that the cost of reopening Cook and Lyons primary schools would not be borne by the public education system generally. That is what happened, because that is where the cost went.
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