Page 4174 - Week 14 - Thursday, 25 October 1990
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It may have been because of the terms of reference that it was given, and it might not be quite the precise terms, but it considered only the impact on children.
I believe that it would have been better if it had considered school closures in terms of the impact on the whole community, the suburb, the people who live in the suburb, and how a school closure would affect that whole suburb. If that more comprehensive examination had been undertaken, I believe that the firm recommendations throughout would have been for no closure. Perhaps it was not asked to consider anything more than the impact on children.
I will not relate again today the disruption to a suburb that is caused by the closure of a school; I have been down that path before. But I want to make one point. The Government has placed great store in the fact that there are allegedly 13,000 surplus spaces in our schools. There has been a great deal of argument surrounding the point that there is unused capacity in our schools and that this is uneconomic. Yet if you close a school the same argument can apply; there will be a great deal of unused suburban infrastructure that the Government does not seem to want to take account of. What about all the bike paths, the carefully designed roads, and the child-care centres that may no longer be used? So much infrastructure there also will be inefficiently used. It seems illogical to use the argument against unused capacity, on the one hand, and not think about it, on the other, when it suits you.
Canberra is a very well planned city. The people want it that way. A very important aspect of this business of school closures is to destroy some of that urban amenity. That should not occur. Not only are the needs of our children to be considered, but also the needs of the wider community, along with those of the children, are most important.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (4.42): Mr Deputy Speaker, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed with Mr Wood's presentation. His matter of public importance reads:
The sound planning principles behind the ACT urban infrastructure should not be disregarded.
But Mr Wood has mentioned nothing but schools. I can only assume that, in his view, urban infrastructure relates to schools only. I had hoped that he would deal with the broader aspects of the problem which are of concern to many people. They are certainly of concern to the people on this side of the house.
But I am very happy to be able to respond on behalf of the Government to the issues raised by Mr Wood and to deal also with the broader issues of urban infrastructure and planning. I think we can be quite proud of the Alliance Government's record on this matter. Frankly, I think that
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