Page 4144 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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I repeat my assertion. I am not, as I think Mr Lamont suggested, ashamed to raise that point in that way. If we wanted to save money in education and come back to a State level of spending in a way which did not impact on the quality of education, then we would have to look seriously at the number of schools in the Territory and the way in which they are distributed. Indeed, Mr Wood knows that that is a fundamental question we cannot avoid, because Mr Wood himself has said, in the course of the last few weeks, in the Estimates Committee and outside it - I heard him on television saying the same thing - that the next election would have to be fought with that issue again on the table, having been put there not just by parties on this side of the chamber.
Mr Wood: And we will tell you, as we did last time, what our policy will be.
MR HUMPHRIES: That was your policy last time. It was off the agenda last time, as far as you were concerned. It is not the position that has obtained throughout the term of this Assembly because, as we know, one school has been closed, and perhaps others could follow. But at the next election it will be impossible to avoid that question.
I think it would be better and fairer for the citizens of this Territory if we were to raise that question now and put it on the table now, so that we can deal with it now and people can have a sense of the context of the debate, rather than wait for the election to come around and then say, "We are putting this issue back on the agenda, but we do not know what is going to happen with it. We will have to think about it after the election". That is a dishonest approach. It is an approach that we really cannot afford to put forward because it is going to earn contempt from those people in the Territory who expect politicians to be leading the debate and setting the parameters of the debate, explaining what it is that we are talking about, what we have to talk about, in the context of the administration of public assets. Madam Speaker, I think that the Government would do well to adopt a more open approach in education. I hope that the budget will be passed on the understanding that it begins to develop more fully the issues in education which have to be addressed.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (11.42): Madam Speaker, I will address this matter very briefly. I would like to say at the start that Mr Humphries has always been extremely open in his approach to education and to making savings in education. Mr Humphries's approach has been - and it is a matter of historical record - to close schools. There is no question whatsoever about that. His opening bid during his period in government was in fact to close 25 of Canberra's schools. Madam Speaker, if you close 25 of Canberra's schools you are closing down something like a quarter, 25 per cent, of this community's educational resources. I would like members to search their hearts and compare that honestly with what the budget we are faced with today puts before us - that is, a reduction of around 2 per cent. This is a pretty clear choice. If you go down the Liberals' path, it is 25 per cent of the community's resources; if you look at what is before you, it is around 2 per cent.
Madam Speaker, what the Government's schooling program is being asked to do is to achieve savings of $3.5m in an appropriation, as we see before us today, of $203,569,100. That is hardly an unachievable objective, in my view. As we have managed reducing budgets over several years now, I can tell you that this is a long way from being the hardest task faced by a program within the
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