Page 1015 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
FORWARD ESTIMATES 1991-92 TO 1993-94
Ministerial Statement and Paper
Debate resumed from 13 December, on motion by Mr Kaine:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (8.14): When the Chief Minister presented this report he said, "The report is not a policy statement but a factual one", and we would normally see that as an uncontroversial statement. However, the passage of time since this report was presented in December last, along with more recent statements by the Chief Minister, have brought into question its factual nature. Leaving aside the clearly subjective policy nature of the Treasurer's statements accompanying the report, the decisions and admissions of this Government since the budget was brought down last year must bring into question the continued accuracy of the estimates.
The debacle of the Government's handling of its school closure program is a clear example. The Minister for Education has now admitted that the school closure program is costing the Government substantially more than they estimated, and in fact their estimate was always disputed by the schools community and, indeed, by the Labor Party.
We have also had the debacle of the Government's direct attack upon the community in its attempt to close Lyons school. This attack included the Government calling in the police to arrest parents trying to defend their school. So desperate was this Government that, after several attempts to get workers to scab on their colleagues, they were forced to pay some workers cash bonuses in order to encourage them to cross the picket.
We had the fast-tracking of the South Curtin refurbishment because of the Government's inability to deal appropriately with the community. How much this has cost the ACT taxpayer we may never know. We have seen the blow-out in costs associated with moving staff from Lyons Primary School, and now there is the amazing fiasco of the Government's performance in the Cook Primary School dispute. They tried to rush through the move of the Belconnen regional office of the education department from Cook to Maribyrnong. Again, because of the failure to communicate with the community, this move ended in a shambles. The move of Cook students to Macquarie has given ACT residents the clearest indication yet of the Minister's inability to keep his promise that no child would suffer because of his school closure program.
On the education front, we must also remember that the budget had not even been passed when the Government accepted that its estimates were incorrect. I ask: Has this been taken into account in the forward estimates? In looking at the forward estimates, we ought also to look at
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .