Page 1978 - Week 07 - Thursday, 31 May 1990
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appropriate that everything that is done in this sort of area is totally above-board.
Education Policy
MR CONNOLLY (4.49): Mr Speaker, in this evening's adjournment debate I would like to return to the theme that the Opposition has been continually stressing throughout this week, and that is the threat to the ACT education system. Despite the best efforts of this Opposition throughout question time every day this week, we are still unable to provide to the people of this Territory clear answers as to what is the fate of the education system. We seek facts and figures but they are not forthcoming. "Don't know, can't tell you" seems to be the standard response.
But this afternoon we did seem to get some degree of certainty. We had a clear reaffirmation by Mr Collaery of the Residents Rally policy, which is that the Rally remains committed to the idea of neighbourhood schools. Mr Collaery today strongly reaffirmed this as the policy of himself and of the Government. The response from the Education Minister, Mr Humphries, eagerly endorsed by Mr Collaery, was that it is a question of definition.
Mr Collaery's definition of neighbourhood schools today, he tells us, may differ somewhat from the definition of neighbourhood schools when the Rally policy was written. Today, the definition of neighbourhood schools would seem to mean those schools left in the neighbourhood after the Alliance Government has closed all other schools. This is an appalling attempt to rationalise a commitment to neighbourhood schools in 1989 to a commitment to school closures in 1990.
Despite this contradiction on the question of what is a neighbourhood school, the one other factor that we seem to have got out this week is a clear assertion that schools will be sold. Not only have we had the Priorities Review Board document which clearly calls for school closure, and yet another nail in the coffin this afternoon with the committee of inquiry into assets which again recommends school closures on the spurious grounds of oversupply of school facilities, but the cat was really let out of the bag by Mr Jensen. Despite the attempt to persuade the Canberra community that schools which are closed will be diverted to other uses, to community uses, and the attempt by Dr Kinloch, as reported on the media this morning to suggest that perhaps no schools will close at all, Mr Jensen really let the cat out of the bag by saying, "We won't flood the market". We were asking, "When will schools be sold; will there be a fire sale?". "No", said Mr Jensen, "we won't flood the market", clearly indicating that there is a vast supply of government property from the education system which will be sold, albeit perhaps not
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