Page 3977 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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MR MOORE (5.32), in reply: I am just checking, Madam Speaker, because I close the debate. Madam Speaker, it seems to me that the Minister failed to respond to the Assembly motion, other than to say, "Well, it does not make any difference", in a fairly offhanded way. That was his initial response. That in itself would be enough to warrant a motion of no confidence in a Minister, a Minister who totally ignores the will of the Assembly, who does not seek to come back to compromise. He does not look for a sign or something. That in itself would be enough. Madam Speaker, I feel quite comfortable with the motion being presented in the way it was, directed at the Minister. As I explained before, in addition to that, evidence as to where the cuts were going to go was never presented. It was still not able to be presented to us today. So the Minister was making cuts, not knowing how they were going to affect individual schools and students. At the same time he told us in the Estimates Committee - Mr Cornwell quoted from the Estimates Committee transcript - that there would not be any problems. To that extent, this Minister deserves to have a motion of no confidence carried.
Mr Wood suggested that I know nothing about education and educational issues. He ought to look to himself in terms of dealing with these particular cuts in education and what they are going to achieve. On the one hand we had the Minister standing here and telling us that education is the very highest priority of this Labor Government. Within half an hour we had the Chief Minister saying, "Education will take exactly the same cuts as everywhere else". She was contradicting the Minister. We had a difference of opinion. Clearly, this Minister has not been able to convince the Chief Minister and Treasurer that education is of a high priority, because she does not believe it. Her actions indicate very clearly that education is a low priority, and certainly lower, for example, than tourism and health, where cuts were not carried, as just two examples.
The Treasurer has pointed out that further cuts are foreshadowed in this area and she said, "I will be sticking to it". That is what she indicated to this Assembly. So we are not talking, in this case, about just cuts of 80 teachers. We are talking about cuts of many more teachers or schools closures. Mr Wood, in his speech to the amendment, said, "We have two choices. Either we cut schools or we cut teachers". That was how he put it, and the Treasurer has said that we are going to have a lot more cuts in education. We have seen those foreshadowed in the budget papers. We can see that those cuts are coming, and they are coming on teachers. This is just the beginning, and it is simply not good enough.
Mr Wood has indicated that, as a rule, he does not stoop to a personal approach, and I accept that that is the case. It is a very rare thing for Mr Wood to do so. But I would respond to a couple of small comments. In fact, Mr Wood, last week I was away at a conference in the United States. Prior to that, talking about being at schools and dealing with schools, I spent two days as a parent driving around with a school on an excursion in Sydney, which I must say I enjoyed greatly. I was very proud to be part of an ACT government school and it was a very rewarding thing. I noticed the amount of time the teachers put in outside their normal work, as you well know, Mr Wood, not only at that excursion but also outside their preparation time, in the evenings and so forth getting things ready, dealing with parents and so forth. You drew attention to my holiday which you said was seven weeks. To start with, a week of that time was spent in Adelaide, where I appeared before a South Australian parliamentary committee, as well as - - -
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