Page 2930 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 October 1992
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What we are trying to be convinced of here is that the only thing that came into this Government's mind was the way to prudently reopen two schools - that politics did not have anything to do with it. What rubbish! Let us see what Mr Wood said to Ms Follett. I quote from a letter that Mr Wood wrote to Ms Follett:
Another consideration is that we would be reopening the schools during the lead up to an election should it be held in March of next year.
Politics had nothing to do with it according to this lot on the other side. The option that Mr Wood had in front of him was this: That in the opinion of the Education Department - not just Dr Willmot, by the way - it may cost $890,000 to reopen those two schools if they were reopened in July. That is the important date. The Minister was told, "If you open them in July, Mr Minister, it is going to cost you, we believe, $890,000; but if you wait until next year" - next year, closer to the election - "it is going to cost you only $530,000".
Of course the Government, the people on the other side of the house, did not have a political thought in their mind at this stage! But they said, "Listen, $530,000 seems a good figure. It is about the same amount of money that we are pulling out of the private sector. We can balance one against the other". They are trying to tell us that they did not think that way. No, the paragons of virtue and of economic rationalism said, "Oh no, listen, hold on a tick. Let us have a look at these figures provided to us by all these bureaucrats". All of a sudden, the bureaucrats do not know what they are talking about. "We have been in government for five-and-a-half days and we know all about budgets and all about how things are done". What humbug!
Mrs Grassby: No, we had been in government before that.
MR DE DOMENICO: Mrs Grassby says, "No, we had been in there before". You had made a muck-up of that. You were not even there. Madam Speaker, that is what this debate is all about.
Let us have a look at another aspect of it. They are trying to say, "We did not remove the $200,000 completely". I want to know why the $200,000 was hidden away but included in the education budget? If you were not going to expend it, why did you put it in your budget? We have not had an answer to that yet. The answer is: Because you had to try to hide it somehow because you had gone public and said that it was going to cost $500,000, or perhaps $600,000 after Mr Wood interjected, and no more. You thought, "That is the belief that the community has and we had better do it quickly on 15 July 1991 because if we wait until February or March next year it is too close to an election". That is what Mr Wood said.
Mr Wood's letter went further. It said:
There are also additional costs above those included in the initial briefing.
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