Page 2926 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 October 1992
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That $193,000 which the department said would be entailed in reopening those schools is today being borne by the rest of the public education system. It is not coming from a designated budget any more; it is coming from the general education budget, the budget put aside to host all schools in the Territory. I think the Minister told us that $56,000 had been dedicated already to maintenance works at Cook and Lyons primary schools. That money has come, as I understand it, not from an earmarked budget for school reopening but rather from the general maintenance budget to be shared among all ACT schools. In telling the Assembly that the cost would be limited to only $500,000 plus another $100,000, the Ministers - both Mr Wood and Ms Follett were culpable in this - misled the Assembly and are deserving of censure.
Madam Speaker, let us assume that the department made an ambit claim; that it told the Ministers that it wanted a certain amount of money in the expectation that it would get less. The Government did not take that ambit claim very seriously. It is rather interesting, I might say in a slight diversion, that the ambit claim that 22 to 24, or whatever it was, public schools in the ACT should close - an ambit claim to which the Chief Minister has referred already in debate today - was taken extremely seriously by the Australian Labor Party, and it still is today.
Mr Connolly: It is still your agenda.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is still our agenda, says Mr Connolly. That ambit claim is very important, but apparently the ambit claim being advanced by the Minister's department in June of last year was not important at all. Madam Speaker, it was not an ambit claim. It was an accurate statement by professional officers of the Department of Education as to what it would cost to reopen Cook and Lyons primary schools. There is a slur being cast on not just one individual but officers of the Department of Education by the way in which this matter has been handled, particularly by the Minister but also by the other members of the Government. You are saying that the public servants were giving you false figures. (Extension of time granted) Madam Speaker, there is clearly a slur there. You are clearly saying to these officers that they had put forward false figures to the Government and that they should be censured or should be reprimanded for having done so.
Have the maintenance figures which the Government has relied upon in the Assembly today as the basis for its claim that there has not been $193,000 spent on those schools since reopening been substantiated? Has that figure been fiddled with? I would argue that it has. I would say that what the Government has done here is deliberately depress those maintenance figures, deliberately push maintenance for Cook and Lyons primary schools right down the agenda so that the money is not being spent on those schools, because it knows that if the money were spent it would justify what the officers told the Government back in June last year about the need for that money to be spent quickly on those schools as part of their reopening. Madam Speaker, if those schools had not been reopened the money would not have needed to be spent. What more convincing argument can you see that those schools ought to have been included in the budget designated for their reopening? Therefore, it seems to me that the case against both those Ministers is made out very convincingly. They have misled the Assembly and they should take the consequences of that.
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