SCHOOL AMALGAMATIONS

The Hon. G.M. GUNN (Stuart) (15:16): In last week's edition of TheIndependent Weekly, a newspaper which has a limited circulation in this state, there was an article written by one Hendrik Gout in which he made a number of comments on a number of political issues, and he referred to me. He said this:

Stuart has been held since time began by Liberal MP Graham Gunn. No MP in Australia has sat in any parliament as long as Gunn has in Stuart, although sadly—

Listen to this for a compliment—

that will forever be his chief distinction.

What I would say to Mr Gout is I suggest that he reads this morning's Hansard. I am very happy to have my record in this place and my ability to represent the people of my electorate put against him or his other journalists any time they want to. I am quite happy to accept any constructive criticism, but I gave an undertaking to the people of my electorate that my prime role would be to represent them, and I have done it through thick and thin. I am not going to be put off in the last few months by ill-informed journalists like Mr Gout. I would suggest that I have been far more successful in getting elected than the people in the political party that he worked for. They are going into oblivion, we are on the up.

I will follow on from what the member for Giles had to say in relation to the education facilities in Port Augusta. I strongly believe that we have to provide the best education facilities in these large regional centres because, unless we do, the next generation of young people are not going to be able to avail themselves of the very important education skills that they are going to need.

If you are going to change the system, you have to take the community with you. To take the community with you, it has to be informed and it has to be informed across the total community, not just a select few. I personally do not have any problems with what they propose for the high school at Port Augusta, as long as it is spelt out clearly and the community is happy and understands it, and that it is not used as an excuse to withdraw services or cut back because, in my view, there is going to be a need for greater services.

I understand that one of the reasons is the junior campus. There are lots of problems with those buildings. They are those dreadful DEMACs, I think they call them. They are dreadful buildings. I think the quicker we get rid of them the better. One of the good things that Dean Brown did when he became minister for public works many years ago is he closed that factory down. That was a good thing because they were very poor sorts of buildings. I remember when they built one at Coober Pedy and Andamooka the great trouble they had with the whiz-bang air-conditioning systems they had, which really did not work. But that is another story.

I think it is terribly important that the education department officials make sure that a proper information forum is available for the community so that they clearly understand what is proposed, what the time factors are and, of course, what they are going to do with the old buildings.

When the member for Giles was speaking, the old Stuart high school came into my mind and what they were going to do it, and I remember going there. It was a challenging enterprise: I think it was the one they built and, when they first opened it, no students turned up.

I have seen some interesting things happen with schools. At Mount Wedge, they went along and insulated the school two years after it had been closed, and at Cook they put fans in the building about three feet from the floor. Someone had written on a bit of paper that they had to be installed. The ground floor of the two storey school at Cook is pretty low, and the idea was for the students to get out of the heat. However, Sir Humphrey said that the fans had to be fitted in. The principal had great trouble getting the people back on the train to get rid of them. I say to Mr Gout: take a constructive look at people's activities and come up with some realistic comments.

Time expired.