Page 1286 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 16 April 1991
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MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Wood! I would like to inform the members of the presence in the gallery of children and their supervisors from the Chernobyl region who are visiting Australia. They have been sponsored on their visit to Australia by the Chernobyl Disaster Relief Fund. On behalf of all members, I bid them a warm welcome.
MR WOOD: If the Government is intent on keeping schools with larger numbers it should have considered the option of keeping a school in its sight and using it for other purposes, eventually to be returned to education as that inevitable regeneration of population transpires. The Government has declined to do that.
The planning documents that arrived on my table today leave open the options of what may occur in these suburbs - whether there will be residential development, medium density housing, possible community use or, in one case, offices. I have no doubt that the Government will seek to maximise its income and will therefore be tempted to allow maximum density of living because that will maximise its profits. Maximising profits and making money is all that this Government is about. I think it is unfortunate that the documents are not more precise about the use that each site will be put to. That lack of precision is unfortunate. The documents refer, in each case, to trees; and these are important. Let me quote something from the document concerning Hackett school. It is a quite significant term, I am afraid, for the suburb. It says:
A plantation of mature pines and eucalypts on the southern side of the school site forms a distinct edge to the site ...
In fact, that is an understatement. It is a magnificent stand of trees. Not long ago I stood there, in front of some TV cameras, projecting into the future exactly what was going to happen; that they could go.
Mr Collaery: Where are the trees?
MR WOOD: At Hackett.
Mr Collaery: They are specifically preserved in the instrument. Read it.
MR WOOD: Well, you had better point it out. I thank you for that, because it does not seem to me to be clearly expressed.
The point I want to raise, as I conclude this speech, is the one indicated by Mr Humphries, by way of interjection, and comment in the paper today and by the Chief Minister in answer to a question earlier. They ask why we did not reopen schools that were closed earlier. Well, I will tell you why we did not. The circumstances are very different. Mr Kaine said that the ALP did nothing about those closed schools. Well, that is about right. We did not do
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