Page 2519 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
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responsible decisions on the future of their education. In closing, I reiterate that I will not be supporting this motion.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.30), in reply: I was just waiting. I did not want to close the debate and cut off Ms MacDonald’s opportunity to speak in this debate, but she has obviously failed to rise to the occasion. As I said at the outset of this debate, this motion is a challenge to those five Labor members who voted for the exact words on 29 July. Let me remind members of those words:
That the ACT Government extend the consultation and decision period on school closures until the end of March 2007, and further that no school closures occur before December 2007.
This is not some cunning plot by the Liberal Party and the Greens. That was actually a motion of the Labor Party. This is what the Labor Party wanted. When you put it together, as I said before, the seven opposition members and the crossbench member all want it and there were five members opposite who were prepared to go to the Lakeside on 29 July and vote for it. The test today is whether we will get 13 people to vote for this motion. This is the Labor Party’s doing. This is the Labor Party’s motion and it is crunch time for the five people who voted for this motion on 29 July to put their hand up and vote for it again.
Mr Corbell has proved himself to be an utter mountebank in this debate by coming in here today and speaking contrapuntal to the way that he voted when the motion was debated in the state conference. We know that he is a mountebank because he said, “Look, I really didn’t mean it when I voted over there,” which was like saying, “It wasn’t me. It was 36 faceless men and they made me do it, but I had my fingers crossed.” Mr Corbell comes in here and, running a line that I have heard Mr Barr run, says, “This is the minimum for consultation, I cannot do anything less than this and I know that there are people who are asking for an answer now.”
The reason that people are looking for an answer now is that if they have to wait until December they will not be able to put their children’s lives in order. That is why they are asking for an answer now. The alternative, because you cannot give an answer now as there is a statutory minimum requirement, is to kick the consultation out to a better time, one in which all the planning can be done in a coordinated way and we are not rushing it over the Christmas period and messing it up, as we certainly will. That is why people are asking for a change in the consultation period.
Mr Corbell and Mr Barr have asked what the Liberal opposition would do. The Liberal opposition have made their position very clear. Mr Speaker, I would like to table documents showing the position taken by the Liberal opposition which have had considerable currency. I refer to a joint press release put out by Mr Stefaniak, the Leader of the Opposition, and me on 13 June and a letter written to people on 19 June pointing out our position on this subject. This letter was circulated at public consultation meetings and has gone out to countless people across the ACT. I seek leave to table those documents for the information of the Assembly.
Leave granted.
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