Page 3972 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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MR BERRY: As the Chief Minister interjects, there is none. Mrs Carnell's proposed amendment should fail, as most of her attempts in this Assembly should fail, on a lack of substance. It is an inane proposal if ever I saw one. Mr Stevenson's attempted amendment should fail also. I think we could describe Mr Stevenson's as opportunistic, just to get on the band wagon, to make sure that all the seats are full. We have a full brace - - -
Mr Humphries: Would you rather no confidence?
MR BERRY: It would not matter; it would be a badge of honour from you lot. Madam Speaker, this amalgam of nonsense should fail on all counts.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (5.16): Madam Speaker, I want to respond briefly to Mr Stevenson's amendment. It allows me to talk again to those issues that were raised by Mr Kaine and others. I advise Mr Kaine that salaries account for 82 per cent of all our expenditure.
Mr Kaine: They have gone up a lot, have they not?
MR WOOD: In a sense the Auditor-General indicated that we had a very high average salary level. He lumped them all together and made that conclusion, but it is very difficult to look - - -
Mr Kaine: That is what I was saying. You are going to have to manage that.
MR WOOD: We can manage. It is very difficult to look at education expenditure by this time without looking at salaries. Let me relate it to school closures because they are the two means, I suppose, by which the alternative governments in this Territory have looked at education funding. Let me take the matters I raised when Mr Humphries was Education Minister. I do not think there is any dispute about these costs. They are roughly the same as those raised by the Auditor-General. You will save $500,000 if you close a high school, and about $250,000 if you close a primary school.
Mr Kaine: That is right. You got the same figures we got.
MR WOOD: Yes, and I had those - - -
Mr Humphries: You disputed those figures.
MR WOOD: No, I never did. I used those figures persistently in the time of that debate about school closures. To take those figures, if we close two high schools, that is $1m; if we close four primary schools, that is $1m. Our savings this year have to be of the order of $4m - $4.26m. Three-quarters of a million dollars was a trade-off for the salary increase. Say about $4m. That is four high schools and eight primary schools. I am not making comment, other than to compare the different ways of doing this. So Mr Humphries has said that in terms of one year's budget it is four high schools and eight primary schools, or some other configuration of schools. That is just to put things into perspective, for one year alone, and you would have to do that persistently.
Mr Cornwell made some comment about what the Chief Minister and I have said about schools. Our election commitment - - -
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