Page 4196 - Week 13 - Thursday, 14 December 2006
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No-one likes closing schools. It would be lovely if we could keep that system. We cannot, unfortunately. We are standing on our own two feet now and, unfortunately, just as in the rest of Australia—just as in those Labor states that recognise the same problem—some rationalisation has to take place, and. Mr Humphries is doing all he can to ensure that that is as painless as possible and that the excellence of the education system remains.
That is the speech that Mr Stefaniak gave in exactly this situation when he was in government and when a Liberal minister for education was faced with the issues with which this government and with which Mr Barr are now faced. Which position of Mr Stefaniak and the Liberal Party do you think is the true position, the real position, the position that they actually know is the right position? Which is the position? The Humphries-Stefaniak position or this mock horror and nonsense, this political posturing and stunt making? What is the real Liberal Party position? Is it the position of Mr Humphries and Mr Stefaniak or this nonsense? What is the real Liberal Party position?
What did Mr Humphries think in his postscript to that particular episode in history? What advice did Mr Humphries have for his colleagues today as a minister for education that was in the same position as Mr Barr? The then ACT Minister for Education, Mr Humphries, said, “There are regrets about the decision to close a handful of Canberra school, but the decision was the right one. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating when the new schools are operating next year. I am confident people will see it as a positive development.”
Mr Humphries, in an article in the Canberra Times by Karen Hobson in December 1990, “advised future governments to have full and adequate consultation but, having made a decision, they ought to stick to it, and firmly, and not meander”. What did Mr Humphries say in this historic anecdote, an interesting retrospective of the decision and issues then and the decision and issues now? It is quite interesting to read. Members should read it in terms of the lessons and the positions. Mr Humphries said, “Groups like the ACT Council of Parents and Citizens Association set themselves up to reject the findings at the outset, with armour ready to fire the final report down the minute it came down.”
He said that promises to reopen schools were grossly hypocritical, that he remained utterly convinced that the schools needed to close and that 10 per cent of the city’s public schools had been closed in recent years, which was acknowledgment that the system had significant problems with overprovision of student places and still did. Mr Humphries said that the difficulty with the position he arrived at where the schools were not closed was that the problem had simply been put off until another day.
Those were the words, that was the thinking and those were the conclusions of the Liberal Party at the time, of the now leader of the Liberal Party and the then Liberal Minister for Education, as they faced in microcosm a problem which Mr Humphries admits was, at the end of the day, put off until another day for another government. That time has arrived and it has been this government and this day. This government will do what previous governments, including Mr Stefaniak’s, failed to do. It is not just in his heart and it is not what we know or think he thinks. We know what
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