Page 4222 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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Your petitioners therefore request the Assembly to: ensure that the ACT Government does not close the Melba Health Centre.
By Mr Berry (from 1,236 citizens).
Petitions received.
PAPERS
MR CONNOLLY, by leave: Mr Speaker, I table petitioning letters from 128 citizens of Canberra drawing to the attention of the Assembly their concern that gaming machines are not available in licensed taverns.
QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
School Closures - Task Force
MS FOLLETT: My question is to Mr Humphries, the Minister for Education. Mr Humphries, given that you intend to set up a task force to look at restructuring the ACT school system, I ask you: Do you admit now that the process that you have used this year was fundamentally flawed? Secondly, will you withdraw your proposal to close any ACT school until that task force has reported?
MR HUMPHRIES: The answer to the latter part of Ms Follett,s question is no. Ms Follett seeks to rely in part on the recommendation of the Hudson inquiry when she says that the establishment of a task force is some legitimate response to the present situation and yet she ignores the Hudson report when it comes to the question of whether those four schools indicated by the Government to close should close.
I intend to proceed, as the Government has decided, on the basis of the Hudson report. That report indicates that the Government is entitled to proceed and to make savings from the closure of four primary schools and at the same time to establish a task force to examine the issues of establishing long-term strategies for finding savings in the school system.
That strategy is referred to by Mr Hudson as a small schools policy. That is not the term that I would use at this stage, given that there are many factors, some of which are more or less acceptable to the community and to the Government, in the suggestions made by Mr Hudson. But certainly the idea of a task force to explore future savings strategies is an excellent one and one which the Government has today endorsed.
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