Page 4156 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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Mr Kaine: It was 13,000.
MR HUMPHRIES: I beg your pardon. Mr Kaine corrects me. That is the right figure. There were 13,000 empty places in our ACT school system - places which were being heated, lit, cleaned, maintained and otherwise preserved at a cost to the ACT education system. My department said to me, "Minister, if you want to make a reasonable saving, you cannot go beyond cutting out those empty places which our school system is maintaining". In case anyone imagines that the Liberal Party jumped into office and started ideologically slashing and burning because that was what we wanted to do, let me make it quite clear that that advice came to me unsolicited from my Education Department.
The strongest supporters for these changes, these school closures, that the government of which I was a part embarked upon were the education advisers and bureaucrats, who took the program on with great enthusiasm.
Mr Kaine: And the Teachers Federation.
MR HUMPHRIES: And the second group was the Teachers Federation, and particularly teachers in small schools, because those were the teachers that had to bear the brunt of the policy of previous governments to leave those tiny schools open. Madam Speaker, 13,000 empty places equate to between 15 and 25 schools. That is where the figure of 15 to 25 schools came from. What my Government said in about May 1990 was that that was the equivalent amount of surplus space which we were carrying and for which we would find we were paying for years to come if we did not do something about it. I never at any stage promised to close 25 schools.
Mr Lamont: Yes, you did.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Lamont, I will happily give you another Havana cigar and even a box of French chocolates if you can show me in Hansard, on the television or in the newspapers that I said that I was going to close 25 schools. You show me where I said that I was going to close 25 schools and the box of chocolates is yours. Madam Speaker, that is not what was said. What the Alliance Government did finally was to implement a program of school closures less ambitious than that implemented by the Labor Party in 1987 and 1988. In fact, if you add in the school closure of 1993, Griffith Primary School, you can see that the program implemented by Labor was more ambitious, by about 50 per cent, than that implemented by the Alliance Government. Madam Speaker, the old web of deception is being cast by the Labor Party, and the spinners include Mr Lamont, Ms Follett, Mr Berry and, of course, the Minister for Education, Mr Wood. Madam Speaker, our record by the time we finished in office would be much better than that of this Government if these cuts today go ahead - and the word is "if".
Madam Speaker, the claim has been put by this Government that in closing schools you have to lose teaching positions; that our plan must have entailed the loss of teaching positions. That is what they say opposite. I have already put in this Assembly the clear argument that our plan was to close schools and transfer teaching positions with the pupils who moved to other schools. We were not changing the ratios whereby people who moved to particular schools were able to
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