Page 5086 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 12 December 1990
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International Union for the Conservation of Natural Resources
MR CONNOLLY: My question is addressed to the Minister for Urban Services. Minister, at the General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Natural Resources which you recently attended at considerable expense in Perth, the question of the admission of businesses and State or Territory governments to the IUCNR was, I understand, debated. Could the Minister inform the Assembly of the outcome of the conference on that matter?
MR DUBY: I thank Mr Connolly for the question. A number of issues were raised at the IUCNR conference in Perth. One of the issues that got particular interest was, of course, the application by the forest industry of Tasmania to become a full member of the IUCNR, an organisation which of course has a large number of members - I do not know the exact number, but I believe that it is well into the high 70s or 80s, if not higher - and that particular matter was debated and their application was rejected.
School Closures - Pupil-Free Days
MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, I direct a question to the Minister for Education. On the basis that students and parents should not be further disadvantaged as a result of any closure of Cook school and other schools, why could you not agree to provide qualified teaching relief staff during the three pupil-free days?
MR HUMPHRIES: The answer to Mr Wood's question is that providing such resources would have been counterproductive in a number of ways. First of all, it would have been expensive, and Mr Wood, among others, is very keen to impress on the Government the need to justify the money that is being spent on the reshaping project.
Mr Wood: What, with millions of dollars of reshaping funds?
MR HUMPHRIES: My advice is that it would have cost something in excess of $20,000 to provide relief teachers at the schools concerned. We are talking about not just closing schools but also receiving schools. It would have cost $20,000 in total to have provided relief teachers on those days at those schools. That alone made it very difficult to accept that proposition. The second problem of course is that, with children still present in classrooms, it is very difficult for teachers to actively be packing up and otherwise rearranging things in those classrooms, and I would not like to be those teachers expected to carry out that very difficult job in a short period of time and having to work with and around students.
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