Page 3476 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 19 September 1990
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situation of this Territory. Mr Kaine blew that this morning on the Pru Goward show where he commented on the fact that we are going to save some $2m to $3m in his figures on school funding out of a budget of $1.4 billion, which makes the point that we have made all along - that there are other ways of saving public revenue rather than closing schools. If the best you can do, causing all this disruption, is to save $2m out of $1.4 billion, it is just not worth the effort.
But that is your argument and you have stuck to it. You have stuck to that argument out in the community. You have tried to convince people that we have to close down public schools and that we have to sell off those sites. There was some earlier prevarication on this. We had to drag it out of you, kicking and screaming, that the objective of all this is a real estate development; that the objective of this whole proposal is to flog off the schools and build townhouses. We had to drag it out of you, but now it is clear - you are going to close the schools and you are going to sell the sites and build townhouses. Well, fair enough; that is your policy. You say to the community, "Look, we have no option. We have to do this and you have to cop it. The budget does not tolerate any other alternative; we have to close down schools, because every dollar counts. We have to sell off this land; we have to raise as much money as we can through selling off school sites". That is your argument.
As I say, in my view, that argument is rejected by the community, but you think you are making some headway out there. Fair enough, I will not take you away from your own delusions. But then, at that point, what do we have with this site at Deakin? We have a piece of prime land given away to this school. The community is outraged.
We have had some fairly, in my view, half-hearted attempts at justifying this. We have heard from the Chief Minister, "There is no alternative to giving this site to the school because there is no parking". I put it to the Assembly that, when we are talking about an empty block of land, parking is hardly an issue. You can develop any block of land and provide adequate parking by providing parking on site. That is hardly a defence.
The other defence that we have heard is that the policy plan for this block of land specified diplomatic use - so there was never any alternative; it was either to be an embassy or to go to this school and now, as the embassies do not want it, it has to go to the school. I have to tell the Assembly - it is rather unfortunate that Mr Kaine is not here; but no doubt he can have a look in Hansard or someone will tell him, and I hope he will respond to this tomorrow - this very block of land has had a policy plan covering it for commercial and business uses in the past. This block of land has not always been zoned for diplomatic or community use. This block of land has had a planning approval, or has been covered by a policy plan, for commercial and business purposes.
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