Page 4142 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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MR HUMPHRIES (11.31): Madam Speaker, I want to record my less than impressed response to some of the things that have been said about the Government's education strategy in the last few - - -
Mr Berry: I would not talk about education if I were you, Mr Humphries. I would sit down and be very quiet.
MR HUMPHRIES: I speak about education with great pride because I attempted to put in place an education program which acknowledged the really important elements of education in this Territory and emphasised the need for us as a community to preserve what is truly important about education, and that of course is the quality of our classroom teaching. The government of which I was a member acknowledged that fact. Unfortunately, this Government does not. That is a matter which is fundamental and crucial to any reasonable educational strategy.
Madam Speaker, I recall in the 1990 Estimates Committee being asked about the impact of school closures and being asked particularly about children having to cross major roads. I remember Mr Wood being one of the major inquisitors on that occasion. He was very keen to know what consequences the Government's decisions would have on children who would have to cross major roads to reach their new schools. That is a debate we will not go back over right now, but let it be said that I was in the position of having to acknowledge that certainly some children would have to cross major roads they had not had to cross before and that certainly this, in theory, posed a threat to some children's well-being. Mr Wood made much of that fact. He raised it in press releases and so on, and he made a great deal of it.
My colleagues and I on the Estimates Committee raised questions of the now Minister for Education, the same Mr Bill Wood, about the impact of his decision to reduce by 80 the number of people employed in our education system, who I assume would be primarily teachers, although the Minister was reluctant to admit that they would be teachers. In fact, he even put forward the rather extraordinary argument that it was entirely possible for the figure of about $1.8m - I could be wrong about that figure - to be achieved in cuts to salaries paid in schools without necessarily any teacher positions disappearing in the process. That is what the Hansard of the Estimates Committee clearly shows. Mr Wood said that he did not necessarily concede that any teachers would be included in that salary cut to schools. It was put to him that the resourcing available in schools for such things as support staff, perhaps teachers aides, administrative staff in the front office and so on was the sort of thing he was talking about, but that there certainly would not be 80 positions surplus in this system at the present time, and at the end of the day you would have to look to teacher numbers. Mr Wood would not concede that.
I contrast the Minister's lack of forthrightness on that question with my forthrightness in 1990. If the Government cannot make these decisions on an up-front basis, it should at least have the good grace to admit and to concede fully what the consequences of those decisions are going to be. The Estimates Committee report had a great deal to say about the way in which the Government was approaching the question of up-front and honest budgeting and budget implications when it presented its budget and when it talked about it subsequently in the Estimates Committee.
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