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SCHOOL PRIDE (also Coorabie School) |
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Mrs PENFOLD: Can the minister advise the house why a School Pride promotional sign recently has been erected at a school that has been closed, under Labor, for the last three years, and will the minister— Members interjecting: The SPEAKER: Order! The house will come to order. The member will resume her seat until the house comes to order. There is no point in asking a question if no-one can hear the answer. Mrs PENFOLD: And will the minister advise the house of the cost to produce and install this sign? On Tuesday last week I visited the Coorabie school site, which is some 160 kilometres west of Ceduna, and was amazed to see that an expensive triangular School Pride sign recently had been erected in the front yard. This school has been closed for three years, and three families, of which I am aware, have been travelling up to 1 000 kilometres a week to take their children to school in Ceduna. Members interjecting: The SPEAKER: Order! The house will come to order first. The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH (Minister for Education and Children's Services): I will take that question seriously—although, out of habit, I would check first, because I know that the previous government closed 64 schools during its term, and the only schools that this government closed have been— The Hon. DEAN BROWN: I have a point of order, Mr Speaker. Members interjecting: The SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat until the house comes to order. The Deputy Leader. The Hon. DEAN BROWN: My point of order is that the minister is clearly debating the answer, and under standing order 98 she is not allowed to do so. The SPEAKER: The minister has only just started to answer the question. The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: As I understand it, the substance of the question was that this government closed a school. The reality is— Members interjecting: The SPEAKER: The minister will resume her seat. The minister can give a commitment to investigate the matter, and we will be happy with that. The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: If, indeed, there is a sign that a school is closed, it is not a school that this government has closed, because it has closed only five schools—at the request of the school councils: they were not forced closures. So the first premise is untrue, because we did not close a school called Coorabie. The schools that have requested to be closed are Alford, OB Flat, Warramboo and Paskeville; and Port Adelaide Primary School amalgamated with Alberton Primary School. However, if a sign has been placed outside a school that the previous government closed during its term in office, we will check it out. Mrs PENFOLD: Mr Speaker, can I ask the minister, then, how a school can be an open school when it has no students in it? Members interjecting: The SPEAKER: Order! The house will come to order. The minister does not have to respond.
The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH (Minister for Education and Children's Services): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement. Leave granted. The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: The member for Flinders wrongly suggested during question time that the Labor government had closed Coorabie school. The school has not been closed; it is an annex of the Penong Primary School. A general school pride sign has been erected on the location to identify it as a Department of Education and Children's Services facility. |
E-mail address: flinders.portlincoln@parliament.sa.gov.au
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