Page 3470 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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any other group in the ACT. Let us not just rezone it for school purposes.
Mr Duby: You are in trouble, Bill.
MR WOOD: Well, you get up and demonstrate it. Let us release that land for free auction. Do not confine it for school purposes, as it is rezoned, or whatever those procedures are. Actually, those procedures are of no great significance. The point of significance is the fact that a school is getting a free gift of land.
But let us maximise the benefit from that. The Chief Minister is on the record - and I have criticised him for it - as saying, too often, "Let us realise on the capital assets of the ACT". And for him that means, predominantly, school sites. Well, let him be true to his word and let him realise on the capital assets of the Territory. Part of those capital assets is this block of land. Let him realise on it. Let him approve a rezoning that allows this block to go up for auction for approved purposes, and let it be auctioned off. I think a number of effective uses for it could be found - uses that could bring up to half a million dollars into Mr Kaine's hard pressed Treasury.
Let that happen. Let the school acquire it, by all means. I am not proposing that the school should not have that land, but let them bid for it in competition with everybody else. Then, you would have a sum of money of the order I have suggested and you would be able to use that sum of money for whatever purpose you desire. Of course, I would suggest that you could use it to keep your schools open - to keep Weetangera school open. That sum of money would keep Weetangera going for upwards of 10 years, I would think, once those one-off costs are disposed of - and I am being generous to the Government in those funding arrangements that I consider apply. Keep the schools open. That is what that money could be used for, not to make things easier for a very well resourced private school.
Let me also make it clear, lest I be accused of all sorts of things, that that school has a right to exist. I support the existence of that school and the continued growth of that school. I have no argument about that. My own daughter went to the Girls Grammar School - the secondary part of that school - so I have no worries about that school continuing to exist. I give it support, and the Labor Party has over the many years.
I might mention as an aside that the reason it is now thriving is the funding policies laid down by Whitlam many years ago. So let us not have subsequent argument from that side of the house that I have some vendetta against the Girls Grammar School, because it is simply not the case. But that is a well resourced school. You would all know that. The school has long engaged - at both levels, the junior and the senior - in extensive building programs. Those programs continue; it can resource them. The sum of
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