Page 730 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 24 March 1993
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MR CORNWELL (11.39), in reply: I am delighted that the Chief Minister did join in this debate because I would remind her that she was the one who made what I regard as the cynical and politically expedient promise before the February 1992 election that no government school would be closed in Labor's first three-year term of office. This was repeated by the Minister for Education, Mr Wood, as recently as 13 February 1993 in the Canberra Times. I quote:
The Griffith campus of the Narrabundah-Griffith Primary School will remain open for at least the term of the current ACT Labor Government ...
Mr Kaine: Maybe that is prophetic.
MR CORNWELL: Perhaps it is prophetic, indeed, Mr Kaine. Perhaps the Labor Government has not much longer to run, because Griffith Primary School certainly has not - it has gone already. It is very interesting that this comment was made. Then the Government decided that the most effective way that they could retain the promise but still see the closure of this school was to allow it to bleed to death. In the words of the president of the Council of P and C Associations, Pam Cahir, the school "has suffered death by a thousand cuts". Pam Cahir also described the action of the Government in allowing the school to run down and subsequently to close because it had only 34 pupils as reprehensible. She also said that this Government, in relation to Griffith Primary - and she is the president of the Council of P and C Associations - was morally bankrupt.
Ms Follett: She also took her children out of the school, long before.
MR CORNWELL: Thank you. I acknowledge that interjection from the Chief Minister, that Pam Cahir took her children out of the school before it closed. What business that is of the Chief Minister's I know not. I certainly do not believe that it is any business of mine. We on this side of the house do believe in freedom of choice, Chief Minister. It appears that the Labor Party does not, and presumably is prepared to attack the president of the Council of P and C Associations here in the ACT. But it is on the record and we will leave it at that.
May I say that Mr Moore's suggestion that somehow Mr Humphries was responsible for the closure of Griffith Primary due to the twinning is absolute nonsense. We also know that Melba and Spence primary schools twinned, and they are still operating very effectively as a twinned school. I therefore do not accept Mr Moore's argument that somehow, because of Mr Humphries's activities, the Griffith school closed. The responsibility lies squarely with this Government and I would have to support Pam Cahir's comments. I believe that their actions over Griffith have been quite reprehensible. They have allowed the school to run down, they have allowed it to bleed to death, and then they attempt to justify it by saying that it was the parents who closed the school.
Interestingly enough, this problem of small schools does not even have the support of the Australian Teachers Union. I will quote from the Canberra Times of 13 January. Rosemary Richards, the president of the ACT Teachers Union, is quoted as saying:
There isn't any doubt ... we can't keep building new schools in new suburbs if we can't make adjustments when schools get very small.
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