Page 3999 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 5 December 2007
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MRS DUNNE: Okay, Mr Speaker. In that case, on the basis of your ruling, I withdraw. But in moving my amendment to Mr Barr’s amendment I draw the Assembly’s attention to the Stanhope government’s misleading of the community about its position in relation to school closures prior to the 2004 election. The position that was taken by the Stanhope government as expounded by Ms Gallagher, the then minister, and Ms Gallagher’s adviser over a number of occasions in the run-up to the ACT election is very important.
To put this in context, and to put forward and strengthen the position put forward by the opposition as a consistent one, we have never shied away from the notion that from time to time we will have to look at school closures. Mr Pratt made that position before the 2004 election and what happened was that members and staff of the Stanhope government came down on him like a ton of bricks: “How dare you talk about it. How dare you talk about these things.” Mr Pratt took the figures that were available at the time both to him and to the minister for education—the same figures that the now minister for education averted to today—and came to the conclusion that maybe in the future there would have to be some changes to the structure of schools. But we talked about how it would have to be done in a careful and consultative way.
Everything that we have done since then in relation to consultation over school closures has been consistent. At no stage have we said there should be no school closures. What we have said is that it has to be done in a way that does not bulldoze the community—not like the so-called school renewal process. It has to be open, it has to be all the information on the table, which has never been the case, and you have to put the problem to the community and have the community be part of the solution. That was never the case with Towards 2020.
Before this minister came along, his predecessor had consistently and regularly ruled out the possibility of closing schools not just between 2004 and 2008 but at any time in her political lifetime. I do not think Ms Gallagher is a figment of our imagination here as the Deputy Chief Minister, but before the last election her spokesman said, “There will be no school closures not only in this term 2004-08”—the time that we are currently in—“but at any time during Ms Gallagher’s tenure as a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly.” There can be nothing more definitive than that.
What the Liberal opposition has consistently said here in this place and in the community is that the Stanhope government before the last election did all that it could to dissemble on its position on school closures. Even as recently as May 2005 the minister was saying there would not be any school closures. But by July 2005 this was the same minister announcing the closure of Ginninderra district high school, Higgins primary school and Holt primary school. They put around the sophistry about this by saying, “But we are closing it so we can build a better school.” In fact the community did not want a better school; they wanted the school that they had.
As recently as last weekend I came across a parent whom I first met during the debate about the closure of Ginninderra district high school; I think she was the first parent and her daughter was the first student to approach me after the school closure was announced. I asked this woman, “How is your daughter going?” She said, “Look it is really very sad. She went from doing very well in this school, from getting really good
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