Page 412 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 June 1989
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Mr Speaker, the Rally congratulates the ACT Electricity and Water Authority on the success it has had to date in obtaining and securing a corporate structure after the water functions were imposed upon an efficient electricity authority. The area of great innovation in this Territory, and an area that the Rally supports for proper appropriation in due course, is in the program of post-school education and training. The TAFE relationship with industry is exciting, it is very interesting, it is novel in some respects, but it does mean that further emphasis can be given not only by way of technology parks but towards education in other areas, particularly nurse and paramedical education. Of course, great discrimination in this country always prevents the development of paralegal diploma and qualification and paramedical diploma and qualification.
Many of you will not be aware that nurse trainees go from the TAFE college up the road a kilometre or so to Calvary to complete one of their daily courses, they come back down and they are not even on a set campus. The Chief Minister needs to examine the possibility of acknowledging the nurses for what they are - health professionals - and creating and appropriating funds to ensure that TAFE's exciting programs in terms of technology transfer and clean industry access to this city also extend to the creation of a paramedical school in this Territory and an examination of the appropriateness of ongoing medical postgraduate education in the Territory, so that our children who go out of this city to be educated, particularly in medicine, nursing and related areas, come back to live here to practise their professions. That is not happening at the present time. There must be funds allocated to encourage that.
Mr Speaker, land management is one of the pet subjects of the Rally. I will spare this Assembly from hearing it again, other than to say that it is most apparent that the Territory is very, very vulnerable at the moment to foreign ownership moves. Those of us in law practice know who is besieging our doors at the present time not only from interstate but from out of this country. There are significant purchases already taking place in this town and further purchases are most surely under way.
This town will undersell itself within the next budget period unless we look at the prospects of foreign ownership. A foreign ownership register is needed. It is not a xenophobic reaction by the Rally; it is a necessary requirement at an early stage of this administration, particularly in view of the economic climate.
Mr Speaker, the situation of rural licensees in this Territory is hardly ever alluded to by us city dwellers. There are many rural licensees living on properties from the boundaries of the ACT inwards, and some quite close to the city limits, who live from day to day or week to week
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