Page 3414 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 13 October 1993
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Mr Cornwell: They were figures you provided to me, Minister.
MR WOOD: Yes, I know. They are my figures. They are the department's figures. There is a good question arising from this. Where does all the money go? You can show me areas of education where the States appear to have more resources. For every one area you show me, I can show you 10 where we do better than the States. It is not difficult to pick out one, two or three areas in which it appears that we lag behind the States, but where do you think the extra 13.5 per cent gets spent, for heaven's sake? It is certainly not wasted. Nobody would claim that it is. For every area in which we may be behind the States, there are many more in which we are ahead of the States.
When Mr Humphries gets up he might clear up the confusion amongst the Liberals about where they would make their savings. Mr Kaine has said, "We have to cut education". I do not think the Liberals deny that. Mr Cornwell says, "Teachers before bricks and mortar". He would close schools. But Mrs Carnell, in an early radio interview, said, "Oh, no, we will not close schools". She was asked, "Would you go down the close the schools path?". She said no. On the voucher system she gave a flat no. I do not know where the Liberals would go to make the savings that they claim are necessary. Mrs Carnell said something about less face to face teaching time. That is not a path I would be willing to go down. It is an important time for teachers. I do not think we are at the stage where we have to think about that. Mr Humphries, maybe you will give us a clear indication of where you would make your savings.
MR STEVENSON (12.22): The question we must ask and answer is: Do Canberrans support a cut of 80 teachers? I think the answer clearly must be no. I will be brief. I know that there are other people who wish to speak and that we have only a few minutes left. Mr Wood said that it is inevitable that schools will close. I would ask why. It is also inevitable, I would suggest, that there will be more young people in the ACT.
Mr Wood: Populations move.
MR STEVENSON: That is reallocation. There is a big difference between suggesting that schools will close and saying that schools will be relocated and will perhaps increase. Mr Wood also mentioned consultation. I asked where it had been. He said that he was fairly open. Fair enough. He said that nothing really happened when he was fairly open about the fact that the education budget would be cut. If you say something and the people do not get the message, you say it again. A former Labor leader claimed a mandate for a particular policy because of something he said in reply to an interjection during an election campaign. In other words, he claimed, "Everybody would have known because I said something". If nobody did anything in response to consultation before you made the decision and took the action, why did you not do it a little bit better?
It is important to make the statement that is being made by a number of the Liberal people that this motion will have no effect. Why? Because the ALP take no notice of what this Assembly says. Unless we start passing no-confidence motions, they never will. When we in the majority are ignored by this minority administration, that is the way for this Assembly to have an effect. We must say that we will not stand for it. They will ignore this motion. They will walk out of this Assembly and go off to wherever they are going and not think twice about it.
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