Page 3947 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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I would like to correct one other falsity that Mr Wood managed to get across about when I was teaching and had driver education. At no stage did I ever have a class of two or three people. I readjusted my time and put in extra time on many occasions, as do many teachers, to ensure that the classes of 20 were balanced against the occasions when I took three or four students out in the car for a very brief time. That was balanced against the time that they spent in the classroom. Madam Speaker, it is clear that this Minister still has no idea of the impact of the cut that he is making. He has no idea of the impact on our schools. He has attempted to bluff his way through. With an attitude like that he does not deserve to be a Minister.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.34): Madam Speaker, a no-confidence motion is a very serious matter indeed. It is a matter not to be taken up lightly to satisfy someone's ego or difficult circumstances. It is to be taken up in the most pressing of circumstances only. Mr Moore has not demonstrated that. Madam Speaker, this motion is a fraud, as are those who are proposing it. Claims of no confidence are nonsense. This is in fact a confidence trick. That is the way the word "confidence" should be used. This is a malicious, ineffective and puerile attempt by Mr Moore to be seen to be playing a role where he has no entitlement. It is actually a measure of Mr Moore's own ineffectiveness. It is a response to the occasion when he was caught out on ABC radio and was clearly shown to be ineffective.
This motion is not based on any concern for teachers; it is not based on any interest in education. Mr Moore wants to create a perception in the community, specifically the teaching community, that he has an interest in education. He simply wants to win votes. Let me expose him, because he is quite wrong. I will give Mr Moore credit, as I have before in this place. It is easy to understand his priorities. We all know them because he never stops talking about them. He pushes them hard and he pushes them effectively.
His priorities are drugs, prostitution, euthanasia, planning and the environment. They are the ones I know about. On some of those, such as planning and the environment, he makes me well aware of his interest. I am never in any doubt about that. His whole range of work in those other areas demonstrates where his interest is. We know his priorities just as well as he does, and those priorities do not include education. He has not shown that in this Assembly. I do not believe that he showed it in the last Assembly until it was time to climb on a certain band wagon about school closures. I do not believe that he has shown it in this Assembly. Go back into the debates and the questions in this Assembly. It is perfectly obvious that education is not one of Mr Moore's priorities.
Even in budget week - and this is the prime example - the week the budget came down, Mr Moore had the opportunity, I think, for only one question. Did he ask it of me? No. He asked it of Mr Connolly. It was some strange convoluted question going back to something late last year of absolutely no relevance to anything - except Mr Moore's ego, I think. He did not ask me a question. He was so outraged about education cuts that he could not ask me a question on the one day when he should have. In all the last six months there has been no MPI on education raised by Mr Moore, and he has had ample opportunity. Day after day has gone by when there has been no MPI. There have been no speeches, and there has been ample opportunity for debate.
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