Page 89 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Of course, we know that it was a candidate for closure; it was certainly looked at and came very close to being closed. She continued:
In short, we have no plans to close any schools.
This is the bit that the government is hitching its wagon to:
… if it were to occur, and how it could occur with community support.
In her answer she talked about future assemblies having a conversation. At absolutely no stage was this said: “What we said in the paper two weeks ago was wrong. We may close schools in the next term. We will close schools in the next term.” It does not say that. We have a statement by a minister through a spokesman that there will be no school closures in the next term of government. We then have a minister saying, “Well, there may be a conversation in the future and we will bring the community on board.” That is not a clarification. They did not make it clear. Therefore, they went to the election with a promise not to close schools in the next term and maybe to have a discussion about some school closures in the future. That is not what happened, and that is very clear from reading the Hansard. That statement is not repudiated by any reading of the Hansard. So we see that decision-making process. Clearly, they either had the plans and did not share them or they did not have the plans and then suddenly woke up one day and realised they had to close schools. Either way, that is absolutely poor decision making.
Another example discussed today was hospital pay parking. What a debacle that was! We can focus on all the niceties but in the end what we had was hospital pay parking on a Sunday afternoon and evening at Canberra Hospital. There was nowhere else in Canberra that you had to pay for parking at that time. Did the government really think they would have to have community consultation or feedback to tell them that was a dumb idea? Quite clearly, any reasonable observer—and Mr Corbell was the reasonable observer at the time, before the fact—would say: “This is a dumb idea. It’s oppressive. It shouldn’t be done. If you’re going to go down the path of hospital pay parking, consider it and actually take a reasonable approach.” That was never done. It was a total debacle which was, of course, finally acknowledged by this government, having lost half a million dollars. There is another example of decision making.
Mr Hargreaves talked about the Civic to Belconnen busway, which he now defends. Let us look at that process. Back in 2004, Simon Corbell said: “We’re going to have this you-beaut busway. It’s going to be built. Hopefully, some time from about 2006 we’ll start building it. This is the way of the future. We’ve got it. It’s there in the sustainable transport plan as one of our key short-term priorities.” So one of the key short-term priorities is this busway, which they are now saying will not happen in John Hargreaves’s lifetime.
There was the exchange between Minister Quinlan and Minister Hargreaves, who said, “Not in my lifetime,” and eventually we get to this point and hear that it was all about reserving some land for 30, 40 or 50 years time. We know that is not true. We know from Simon Corbell’s statements that that is not true. We know they changed course but they allowed Simon Corbell to go and spend $3½ million anyway, because it was
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .