Page 1264 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 11 May 1993
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In the four years since 11 May 1989 I consider that the Assembly has achieved a great deal and that there are many things that we can all be proud of in contributing to the well-being of the community that we serve. There are two particular issues that stand out still in my mind. They are the occupational health and safety legislation, the first legislation passed through this Assembly - a very long overdue piece of legislation to protect the health and safety of the workers in this Territory - and, of course, the anti-discrimination legislation which was passed some time later. It was, again, Labor legislation and, again, legislation which was very much overdue. When it was passed it was in fact groundbreaking in its scope, and I believe that it has been very well implemented as well. I think the Assembly also has a good record on a number of other matters; for example, the working of the committees in which all members, I think with the exception of Mr Stevenson, take part. We have also consistently sought to place this Territory on a sound footing financially. We have made very good progress indeed on that score.
However, there is one matter of enormous heartache, enormous concern, in our community, and it is also a matter on which the Opposition still seek to pursue their own ideological agenda, which has nothing to do with the well-being of the community. I speak of our neighbourhood schools and the Opposition agenda to close some of those schools. Madam Speaker, in my very first speech to this Assembly I did commit the Labor Government to the retention of our schools, and I have since reaffirmed that position many times. It is clearly a position that the community agrees with; yet the Liberals, still to this day, persist with an agenda that is aimed at closing numbers of Canberra schools. Mr Cornwell, who was, let us face it, a staff member throughout the first term of the Assembly, simply cannot be unaware of the anguish that was caused by Mr Humphries's attack on ACT government schools; yet it is still Mr Cornwell who openly canvasses the closure of schools. He will name them for you on the radio and, as well, he has taken to visiting ACT schools - I presume, the ones that are on his hit list.
Mr Cornwell clearly is trying to reduce the confidence of parents in the future of those schools, to the point where they may consider moving their children to another school. We know the effect that these kinds of whispering campaigns have. Mr Cornwell is adding to that kind of campaign. He is trying still to close schools from a position of opposition and largely by stealth. Madam Speaker, I would like to call upon Mr Cornwell to stop sowing these seeds of doubt and uncertainty in the community over the future of their schools; to stop frightening the parents, the teachers and the children involved in their schools; and to take school closures, once and for all, off the agenda. I would call on Mr Cornwell, as the education spokesman for the Liberals, to give a commitment that it is the quality of education, the educational future of the children of this Territory, that would guide him in his approach to this part of his shadow portfolio.
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