Page 3827 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 October 1990
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MR SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Kaine: But you are not honest, and you know it.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Chief Minister, please!
MR HUMPHRIES: I was in the chamber yesterday - - -
Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, I raise a point of order. I heard that statement very clearly. He said that the Leader of the Opposition was not honest, and that must be withdrawn.
MR SPEAKER: Please withdraw that, Chief Minister.
Mr Kaine: I withdraw, Mr Speaker, but it is - I will say no more.
MR SPEAKER: Thank you.
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, it certainly seems to me that Ms Follett was not accurately stating what it was the Chief Minister said yesterday, and certainly was not indicating any advice that I have seen. There is certainly the possibility that in the future the Higgins Primary School might be used again as a primary school or a school of some sort. There is no question that that is a possibility. That is why the Government has retained the use of that building for community purposes for the duration of any period during which it is not required as a primary school.
If Ms Follett seeks to rise in this place and say that the ITPA's advice is that we might need a school in the future, she also ought to be sensible to the advice we received at other periods from the same body which suggests that we do have a surplus of school accommodation in the ACT and that we need to do something about it. The fact of life is that this community does not require as many primary schools as it currently has in the Belconnen region and there is a very steep gap - an increasingly steep gap - between the number of school places in the Belconnen region and the number of students to fill those school places.
It is irresponsible for governments to maintain empty school places for the sake of saying that we have a school in a particular place. That is all the argument is. It is not even based on a neighbourhood school argument any more; it is just for the sake of saying that if a school has been there it should stay there. For that reason there is absolutely no reason to suggest that we ought to indefinitely retain that school on that site, although the option of restoring it to a school in the future is one that we ought to retain.
In terms of the cost, obviously if the building is to be used for community purposes and those community purposes happen to be of a particular nature it would seem to me logical that the community uses to which it is put ought to be the criterion which dictates the amount of money that is
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