Page 2637 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 8 August 1990
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School Closures
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (5.16): It is all very well for Mr Berry to rise in this place and be very solemn about the terrible shame that we will have to carry on into future years for our decision to close schools in 1990. He says that we will be remembered by the people for the decision that we made and implies that we will be appropriately treated at the next election. I wonder whether he thinks that the people of the ACT remembered what the previous Federal Labor Government did in respect of schools when they voted at the election in March this year. Obviously people did not seem to remember all that much. Although there was a swing against the ALP at that time, the members of the Government that engineered those cuts to government schools were returned. Although Mr Berry chooses not to listen to this because it is apparently unpalatable, he ought to know that people did forget what that Government had done. In fact, he helped them forget because he was out there, I am sure, on 26 March, whatever the date was, handing out how to vote cards for the same Australian Labor Party that closed five schools in 1988 and one school in 1987.
Mr Berry: No, a different one.
MR HUMPHRIES: Apparently it is different. Mr Berry seems to measure the depth of public opinion by the size of the demonstration held outside this chamber today. I would make two comments on that. One is that it seems to me from recollection that the rally that was held outside the chamber today was considerably smaller than the rally held outside this place in respect of the cuts that the Follett Government tried to impose on education last year.
Ms Follett: No, not so. It is wishful thinking, Gary.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, we will have a look at the television file footage and see which was the larger.
Ms Follett: I counted them.
MR HUMPHRIES: She knew them all.
Mr Berry: Well, she is close to the community; that is why she knows them.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, she was not close last year when she tried to look at funding, Mr Berry. The second point is that if you want to measure the depth of community feeling by the size of the demonstration, how do you measure the demonstration this morning by the augmented Royal Canberra Hospital committee which held a demonstration outside this chamber in respect to the closure of Royal Canberra Hospital? In case you had not noticed, there was a demonstration out there this morning. There were five people present.
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