Page 2510 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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Minister has just admitted, was not a fait accompli. The Labor Government came in and they opened Cook Primary School and Lyons Primary School - not at the wish of the Belconnen area, not at the wish of the Woden area, but at the wish of those individual school communities.
If you apply the same logic to Holder High School, you would take the intake area of Holder High School and give that priority. A high school is different from a primary school. A primary school is part of the neighbourhood plan. I agree that it is not appropriate to accept just that argument for Holder High School. But it is important to weight the opinion of those around Holder High School much more heavily than the opinion of the whole community. The reality is that people at Waramanga, who have a high school close to them, are not going to be interested in whether Holder High School opens or closes, except in some way that they may perceive it benefits them.
Whatever the case is, it is also important to look at what those schools offered and what people believe they offered. One of the great joys of being at that meeting was to listen to people singing the praises of their schools - the amalgamated Stromlo High School and the Holder High School. The sad part was the divisiveness that was brought about by that Minister and the support given to him by all members of the Alliance Government.
Mr Duby: And the Weston Creek community.
MR MOORE: The interjection said, "And the Weston Creek community". Mr Duby's understanding of the Weston Creek community and the understanding of the Minister, as he put it, of the Weston Creek community has been questioned by the results of that meeting of 29 July, which was attended by so many people from the community.
Mr Humphries: What about the poll of the people in the school?
MR MOORE: I accept what Mr Humphries is saying about the fact that the amalgamated Stromlo High School P and C approached them and were looking for a solution. Had he had exactly the same approach from Macquarie school, which had taken in Cook, he would have got the same results, and similarly with Curtin. We know that. We know that some of the Holder people were involved. They had accepted, and they realised that they could not do anything, because you had made them powerless. Suddenly, they felt empowered; that is the difference.
Mr Wood has a responsibility now to find out just what the community is thinking. Because that meeting indicated such a divided response, he needs to go out and talk further to people in the Holder High School intake area and get their opinion. Whatever the result, the decision - and this is
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