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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (18 April) . . Page.. 1074 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Why are we still looking for money? We have been through that debate. You say that you increased it. The rest of us say that that is not true. That is where it is at. We realise that you have some fancy financial accounting tricks to make it look that way, and we accept that; but do not try to continue the pretence. That is the first point.

The second point is that, if you go to schools and suggest that this Assembly thinks that we should take money from schools that have raised contributions in an effective way and put it across to other schools, then you would certainly be misrepresenting the general view.

The next point that I would like to pick up is the one from Mr Humphries, who raised the issue of needing to come back with a revised response. It was a pretty precious legalistic point that he was running. If you want to stick with the precious legalistic point, a revised response, technically, probably means that you need to change three or four words. I would suggest very strongly that you, Minister Stefaniak, not take that approach; but, technically, that would meet the requirements of the motion.

What, in fact, Mr Humphries did for us, though, was raise a series of options that we had. They were similar sorts of options to the ones that I raised in my opening speech. I believe that what we are doing is going very easy on this Minister. Instead of taking one of the options that Mr Humphries raised, of taking the Minister out, what we are doing is saying, "Minister, this is not good enough. Go back; look at some of the options; and we will give you another chance". I am an old teacher; I cannot help myself. We are giving you another chance, Bill, to let you get it right. It is an unprecedented move, but it is also an unprecedented response. That is why we think it is appropriate that you go back, look at it again and see whether you can do better.

Question put:

That the motion (Mr Moore's) be agreed to.

The Assembly voted -

AYES, 9	 	NOES, 6

Ms Follett	Mrs Carnell
Ms Horodny	Mr Cornwell
Ms McRae	Mr De Domenico
Mr Moore	Mr Hird
Mr Osborne	Mr Humphries
Ms Reilly	Mr Stefaniak
Ms Tucker
Mr Whitecross
Mr Wood

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