Page 721 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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MR HUMPHRIES (11.07): Madam Speaker, it is extraordinary to see what lengths the Government has gone to in this debate to avoid responsibility for what is a very sorry state of affairs. I have to say that I do not think there is any way you could describe this Government as being not directly responsible for the state of affairs which has resulted at Griffith Primary School. Every step in this process is attributable to this Government's own actions. This Government argued against the closure of that school in the first place. The Government of which I was a member argued in favour of that closure and I think that, frankly, circumstances since that time have vindicated the wisdom of the position that we took.
Mr Wood: You started the rot.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is what you claim. The fact of life is that you opposed the closure of that school. You have been the Minister responsible for that school for almost two years since the Alliance Government left office. You had the chance, if you wanted to, Minister Wood - through you, Madam Speaker - to ensure the recovery of that school, to ensure the viability of that school, if that is what you really wanted; but you did not.
The reason you did not is that you know, and the Government of this Territory knows, as well as I do and as well as those on this side of the chamber do, that small schools in this Territory face enormous problems which can be met, can be overcome, only by ploughing into them resources which simply are not available. The Government knows that and it has acknowledged that fact by the reality of not having ploughed additional resources into small schools in this Territory. Griffith Primary School closed not because any government, either a former government or the present Government, decided to white-ant it, but because it was simply too small to remain viable.
Mr Wood: You gave it the kiss of death.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is the basic problem. This Government could have done something about that. Mr Wood says that I gave it the kiss of death. It has been two years since that kiss of death was administered, if there was such a kiss of death.
Mr Berry: And it worked.
MR HUMPHRIES: You cannot keep blaming us for everything that goes wrong in the school system.
Mr Berry: Why not?
MR HUMPHRIES: You might try, but you cannot. You have had plenty of opportunity to rebuild Griffith Primary School if that is what you wanted, but you knew that the only way of doing that was by putting in resources that you just did not have, and you declined to do that. I say, therefore, Madam Speaker, that this Government bears every ounce of responsibility for this decision to close that school.
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