Page 722 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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Mr Wood said, and this is an extraordinary charge - I could hardly believe it when I heard him say it - "All you", meaning us, "could see, was a building. All you can see is a building when you look at a school". What an extraordinary thing to say from a party that did just that; that looked just at buildings two years ago during the school closure debate. These were the people who were lying in front of bulldozers and chaining themselves to the doors of schools, and saying, "You shall not touch this building". We proposed putting people into schools where there was a viable future for those school communities. "No," said those people opposite, "we want the building. The building is very important. People have to have a building very near to the place where they live. That is the vitally important thing". So do not talk to me about seeing a building. If anybody here concentrates on the question of infrastructure, of school buildings, above what goes on in those schools buildings, it is those people opposite.
Mr Wood yesterday quoted in this house, I understand, some comments from Don Dunstan, and the words, I think, were something like, "A good government has to be about half a step ahead of the people that it leads". I read into that the notion that a government has to do two things: It has to lead, but it cannot lead too quickly and too far ahead of what people actually want. That is the basic idea that I read into that statement. Perhaps Mr Wood can put a different complexion on that at a later time.
Mr Wood: Yes, but you can take quick steps too.
MR HUMPHRIES: "You can take a quick step too", he says. The point is that you cannot lose touch with the people you are supposed to be leading. That is the basic message. Madam Speaker, what has this Government done in this case? Is this not a case of not leading at all? Is this not a case of saying, "We do not particularly want to make a decision. We would rather not lead. We will let the community make the decision for us"? Those are not my words; those are the words of parents at that school. I want to quote what one parent said on WIN television a few weeks ago when this school closure issue was coming to a head. That parent was not named but she said:
The parents wanted the Minister to make the decision, but the Minister didn't want to make the decision, because if the Minister made the decision, he has broken his election promise. I think what he's done is make the parents the scapegoat for the closure. He has got out of it very nicely because the parents, in the end, were forced to make the decision. The parents at Griffith Primary School were done like a dinner.
They were the words of a parent at that school; "The parents at Griffith Primary School were done like a dinner", and, Madam Speaker, indeed they were. Those parents were left in the lurch by this Government. This Government was expected to exercise some leadership. It was expected to say, in the interests of this community, "This school should not stay open", but it did not. It sat back and said, "Oh, we cannot make a decision; we will break our promise. We will sit on our hands and hope that the school bleeds to death before we have to do anything about it". I hope that Mr Wood does not have a dog, because if it gets run over on the road he will probably leave it there until it bleeds to death rather than put it down. That is what he has done with Griffith Primary School.
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