Page 725 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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I suppose, and said, "Okay, we are going to give you special resourcing because you are small". He did not make that decision. I have to say that that was a wise decision not to make. He was not consistent, particularly with his earlier statements, I might say, about wanting to support small schools; but at least it was not unreasonable. Those small schools do not have the students to warrant additional resources. If they are small they face the consequences of that. There are two ways of going in these circumstances - either you increase resources, which we do not have, or you close the school. It really is as simply as that. The third option of letting them plod along as best they can, trying to cope with a lack of resources, really is not good enough.
Madam Speaker, the bottom line is that we are saying to this Labor Government that party promises during an election campaign, particularly ones that were foolishly made and foolishly delivered, should be discarded if that is in the interests of the broader community. You, fortunately, have had the great good fortune not to have formally broken your promise to close no school in the life of this parliament so far. You have had the good fortune to be able to do that.
Mr Connolly: You are saying that Labor sticks to its promises.
MR HUMPHRIES: No, I am not saying that. I am saying that Labor desperately wants to get out of its promise. It had to contrive a way of doing that by effectively letting a school bleed to death so that it did not have to break its promise. You might not have that luxury next time. You might next time be faced with a situation where the only way of dealing with a small school in crisis is to act, and to act decisively. That is the option facing this Government.
Mr Lamont: Like you did, Mr Humphries.
MR HUMPHRIES: Yes, that is right; to act decisively. I wonder whether this Government, when the crunch comes, when it has to make that big decision, will have the courage to make a decision which might go against the promise it made to the electorate some time ago. You have our commitment that, if you close schools that are required to be closed because of circumstances, you will have our support, because we have argued, as we argue in this motion, for flexibility. I hope that those in this Assembly such as Ms Szuty and Mr Moore, who also, I gather, argue for flexibility, will support this motion. The problem is that next time a small school is faced with this dilemma we might find a government once again paralysed in inaction. In those circumstances it is not we in this chamber who are going to suffer; it is the students of that small school and their parents.
MR MOORE (11.22): Madam Speaker, I support this motion on its face value. I realise at the same time the tone that is attempted to be established here, which is to undermine what is being done by the Government and the approach that the Labor Party has taken. Therefore, I think it is appropriate that I carefully explain my position. It is only on its face value that I support this motion, not the attempt of Mr Cornwell to tell the Labor Government that in some way it is not doing what it was supposedly trying to do. The motion is:
That this Assembly urges the ACT Government to deal flexibly with the problem of school closures in the ACT in the interests of educational fairness and equity.
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