Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .
Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 2191 ..
MR HARGREAVES (continuing):
that the warning signs were ignored. Mr Speaker, there are warnings signs here. We are talking about a $27 million scheme, not a $100,000 program. I would like to say that, as with Bruce Stadium, we have a process that has been ill thought out. Indubitably, it will escalate in cost. All of that was known before the government embarked upon this scheme. It is irresponsible to embark upon it without a proper evaluation and proper consultation with the community.
Mr Speaker, earlier in this series of sitting days Mr Stefaniak tried to deflect attention from it as an education issue by talking about its being a public transport issue. You could argue the toss on whether that is so, but the fact is that what we have here is an alternative. The Liberal government is saying that it will spend $27 million on the public transport system and Labor is saying that it will spend the same amount of money on the education system, so we have a conflict over a very large amount of money.
Labor is not saying that we should yank it out of the budget; it is saying, "Let's wait until after the election." If the Liberals are re-elected to office, they can do what they like. They will have a mandate to do spend the $27 million however they like. The principles that Mr Rugendyke keeps quoting can then come into play. What we are saying, Mr Speaker, is that the implementation of it should be delayed until after the election. That would serve two purposes. Firstly, it would allow members of the community to decide for themselves in choosing which party to elect to government. Secondly, it would allow more time for the community to be better informed on it and more involved in the consultation process and for the poor bureaucrats who have to implement the scheme to work out just how they are going to do it, because it has bugs in it.
Back in the late 1980s when I was on the Erindale College board, I had an incident brought to my attention about a student trying to kill herself. Part of the reason she was nearly successful was that the school counselling services at her college had not picked it up. All the signs were there, but the counsellor was too snowed under to be able to do anything about it. It was not at Erindale College that this incident occurred; it was at Lake Ginninderra College. I spoke to the counsellor about what happened. The counsellor said, "Look, I am sorry, we missed it. We just do not have the resources."
I went to see the Minister for Education at the time, Mr Bill Wood MLA, and asked him to increase the number of counsellors in the schools. We did not have the money. We have now got $27 million to spend and the number of school counsellors is still not enough to look after the students. Members have to ask themselves whether they want to put $400 in the pockets of some people or want to start putting some resources into the schools-perhaps, in the words once of Mr Smyth, to save one life. I say that we should put it into the schools and talk about having some more counsellors. Let us go down the suicide prevention track with a little bit more conviction than we are displaying at the moment.
Mr Moore: You know that we did put money into that area.
MR HARGREAVES
: I acknowledge the interjection from Mr Moore that the government has put more money in there, and I am very grateful to the government for doing that. I just think that if there is an opportunity to put a stack more in there, that is where we ought to put it. If it is a matter of choice between allowing a child to get on a bus for free and having resources to identify warning signs in children and advise the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .