Page 3541 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 2005
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Again, he verballed Mr Pratt. Let us finish the quotation. Mr Pratt went to the last election saying exactly what I have been saying: there are problems about declining enrolments and falling school numbers; and somewhere along the line this community needs to have a conversation about how to approach this. The Canberra Times, just after the bit that the Chief Minister quoted, reported:
Mr Pratt said mergers or closures had to be decided on a case-by-case basis, and the process had to be open and transparent, to alleviate any concern in the community.
That is about trust. The trust that was portrayed by this government in that particular debate, back in August last year, was for a spokesman on behalf of the minister to stand up and say, “Don’t you worry; trust us; we won’t close any schools in the next term of a Stanhope government.” This is what trust is about. I have spoken about trust in this place on a number of occasions and it seems to be a notion completely alien to this government.
Mr Stanhope: Read the Canberra Times of 12 August 2004.
MRS DUNNE: I just did, Mr Stanhope; you were not here to listen to it.
Mr Stanhope: I was listening. Just read it.
MRS DUNNE: The Chief Minister has nothing new to say. What he did, in his speech, was spend a considerable amount of his time saying again what he said on Tuesday, “We are spending $43 million—$43 million on this, $43 million on that, $43 million on something else.” It is the cargo-cult approach. This minister has nothing to add, has nothing to say, except to regurgitate what the department has written for him.
Dr Foskey is quite right. The point that she made is quite right. If you are so secure, Chief Minister, in the belief that this is the best way forward, you have nothing to fear from scrutiny of this Assembly and the people of the ACT. Dr Foskey hit the nail on the head. They are concerned; they are running scared on this issue; and they do not want the people of the ACT to have these things.
I know that, when members of parliament go and stand outside shopping centres and talk to people, only friends come up to talk to you. Most people come up to you and say, “You’re doing a good job.” Very few people come up to you and bag you out and say you are doing the wrong thing, because, generally speaking, Australians are polite people. People who agree with Mary Porter go to Mary Porter. When Bill Stefaniak and I are out there, people who agree with us come out and talk to us. It is not a very good barometer of an issue for you to stand there and wait for people to come and tell you that you are doing a good job.
I have stood outside the Kippax shops on a couple of occasions with parents from Ginninderra district high school, collecting signatures on petitions. I have tabled 600-odd so far. There is another lot coming. The really interesting thing is that I have never found an issue where it was as easy to collect signatures; people were queuing up to sign the petition. Often it is very hard. Mr Stefaniak and I, on regular occasions, take petitions. People go, “No, I am not interested; no, I do not want to sign that.” But it was very rare
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