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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (25 February) . . Page.. 354 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

He was outstandingly successful. It was no simple task. It was not just a matter of maintaining or adding courses and students. He took three separate and somewhat self-indulgent TAFE institutions and moulded them into one tight and directed Institute of Technology. He saw student numbers reduced from 31,000 -including about 6,000 in hobby classes - to about 19,000; but those students were better directed, with many of the hobby-type courses gone or turned into a profit-making provision. Some 200,000 students went through TAFE in his time as director.

Norm Fisher reduced the number of campuses from 14 to six - plus, now, the innovative flexible learning centre at Tuggeranong. He gave both a strong vocational and an academic approach to his institute, not through a name change but through a concentration on excellence. These were considerable changes - a necessary revolution in just a few years. That marks him as a visionary. But he was an outstanding administrator. Note this: All these changes were accomplished in general peace and goodwill, when there could have been tumult as a result of such changes. There were no student protests. Staff, of course, were concerned, but were involved and supportive. Budgets were reduced in the TAFE system, as elsewhere in the ACT; but the change was successful and properly, but quietly, negotiated. Let me give just one example of how Norm operated. He once brought me a letter to a colleague, and I said to him, "Norm, I think this is going to be very difficult. Do you know what sort of response there will be? Can this be successful?". He said, "Minister, I know what the answer is already". Norm would work through things and he would set the path well ahead so that he knew what outcomes he could achieve.

Norman Fisher was a leader in the ACT, and one when we needed people of his quality. Part of that leadership for the ACT was his leadership of vocational education nationally. He was at the forefront of the most significant changes in vocational education in a generation. His advice was important for his colleagues in the States and was respected by them. He was a most significant figure at the national level. He provided leadership in such matters as curriculum, statistical collection, building control and marketing. He leaves Australia and the ACT with his monuments - a highly relevant Canberra Institute of Technology and strong and valid policies in vocational education. He leaves, too, many good memories. One of the reasons he could achieve so much was his own unfailing cheerfulness and good spirits, which, with his optimism, his energy and his ability, made him such a great and effective citizen of the ACT and Australia, and a good friend. I, too, with my colleagues, extend condolences to Maureen and her family.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, I rise to farewell Norm Fisher in another way. It was not so long ago that we gathered, on a number of occasions, with his friends and his work colleagues to farewell Norm. We believed that he would put the same sort of energy into his retirement as he had put into his work. In those enthusiastic times, I chatted to him about the sorts of things he might be doing. In his normal style, Norm Fisher was wearing what I think of as a naughty grin, as he did - we can all picture it - when he had some great idea brewing, and you knew that he was going to put his energy and enthusiasm into it.

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