Page 719 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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We have looked after them to the best of our ability in the new circumstances in which they find themselves. I believe that, in what was a more than difficult circumstance, an impossible circumstance, for the school, we have dealt in the way that this motion calls for.
I said earlier in my speech that the motion reads quite adequately. I could improve it, I could refine it a little; but in fact I am not going to support it. The Government is not going to support it, because of the spurious intention behind it. It is not a genuine motion. It is simply a vehicle to allow the continuing tirade of the Liberals against the government school system. That is all it is. It never ceases. Mr Humphries lost the battle to close up to 25 schools; but he and his colleagues, with Mr Cornwell now carrying the banner at the front of this small army, are continuing to carry on the fight, the war. You have not given up the war, the attack on the government school system and the attack on the students in that system. It is for that reason that we oppose this motion.
MS SZUTY (11.01): Madam Speaker, I wish to commence my comments on this motion by referring to the ALP policy statement for the 1992 ACT Legislative Assembly election, issued on 29 January 1992 and entitled "Labor's Priorities for the Next Three Years". I quote from the first dot point:
Labor will guarantee that no further schools will be closed in the next three years.
That is the very statement that Mr Cornwell has referred to in this chamber. Madam Speaker, it is my genuine belief that this commitment, given in good faith by the Labor Party at the time, has been valued extremely highly by members of the Canberra community who lived and worked through the Alliance Government's attempts to close 25 Canberra schools. Indeed, the Canberra community witnessed the stand taken by the Cook and Lyons primary schools communities to protect their schools and to build their school communities further.
Members will be familiar with the role that I played during the school closure debate in protecting Fraser Primary School and protecting government schools in Belconnen; in developing with Graeme Evans a paper called "There Are Alternatives to School Closures"; and in serving as a member of the Belconnen Region High Schools Task Force, chaired by Associate Professor Terry Birtles. The Michael Moore Independent Group, in its electoral platform for the 1992 Legislative Assembly election, confirmed our commitment to government schools and stated that "neighbourhood schools be protected and recognised as an integral part of local communities".
However, Madam Speaker, there is no doubt that the question that no-one in the Canberra community has come to terms with yet is: What number of students constitutes a viable school community? It is an issue, Madam Speaker, that we do need to come to terms with as a community, to address and to debate, because I believe that it will remain an issue for years to come. We need to wrestle with the philosophical question of what number of students constitutes a viable school community, and to develop strategies which can assess the enrolment levels of schools on a continuing basis and in a sensitive fashion. I believe that the answer to this question will better assist us in handling situations such as the decline in the Griffith Primary School population which occurred markedly over a two-year period.
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