Page 429 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 1993
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Never mind that there are only 57 pupils. Never mind that in the Tuggeranong Valley, to the concern of parents and the P and C council, the new primary schools of Gordon and Conder are being built to accommodate 750 pupils at peak enrolments to save money on building more primary schools. Never mind that the primary schools surrounding Griffith have vacancies to accommodate the 57 pupils. Never mind the $3.4m reduction in the ACT budget for public school expenditure. Never mind that the ACT branch of the Australian Teachers Union has moderated its stand on school closures and expressed concern about the numbers at Griffith campus. Never mind that according to the president of the P and C council, Pam Cahir, the school "has suffered death by a thousand cuts".
In spite of all these sensible arguments in favour of closure, however reluctant, the Government remained obdurate, totally inflexible to any suggestions. And why? Because Labor gave a guarantee that in its first three years of office no school would close. So no matter how expensive to the entire government school system, no matter what deprivations would be borne by other schools in the system to prop up Griffith, no matter what the educational cost to the pupils of Griffith if the school did not receive extra resources - no matter what these costs might have been - the Government was prepared to sacrifice primary school children simply to be seen to be keeping an ill-conceived, politically expedient promise made in the heat of an election campaign.
A misplaced sense of commitment, stubborn pride and an inflexible determination to have its own way blinded this Labor Government to doing what it really should do in the interests of educational fairness and equity to everyone in the government school system. You would not have been weak if you had closed the school. You would simply have been admitting that you were wrong. Indeed, I do not think you had any choice but to reverse your previous decision. If you had not closed the school it would have taken resources from other schools, as I have already conceded.
If you had de-twinned in an attempt to preserve the campus, it would have still cost your Government more resources, because I understood that the existing resources were shared with Narrabundah on a pro rata basis. I also hazard a suggestion that, rather than see enrolments increase, we would more likely have seen the numbers decrease at Griffith as more parents realised the futility of trying to keep the school open. Of course that is exactly what happened. From the time Griffith's problems became public the numbers fell from 57 to 49 to 34, and I submit that that is exactly what the Government wanted.
There is an old adage in education that parents close schools, governments do not. That is what the Government played upon in the hope that they would be able to wriggle out of breaking their promise, so that it appeared that the parents closed Griffith. No wonder Pam Cahir, president of the P and C association and no great friend of the conservatives, on the radio this morning called the action reprehensible. You have been caught out with a stupid ill-considered promise to gain votes, and now you have to renege upon that promise.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! It being 12.30 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 77 as amended by temporary order.
Sitting suspended from 12.30 to 2.30 pm
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