Page 109 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 8 April 1992
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will the ACT Government set the example in relation to purchasing its own requirements from local businesses in Canberra and the region where these requirements in goods and services are available and competitive?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, Mr De Domenico has raised a very interesting point. It is certainly a point that was addressed at least in part during the Labor election campaign. There are difficulties, though, I believe, in constraining trade between States. Nevertheless, I believe that there is a great deal that can be done in ensuring that the ACT product matches the ACT and other known demands. It was with that in mind that I put forward, during the election campaign, the idea of a supply and tender agency. That is an idea that the Government will be pursuing very actively. It seems to me that where an ACT business can supply goods, particularly if they are goods required in the ACT, then the matching of those goods would be very much to the advantage of our own local industry without being in breach of those constraint of trade arrangements. It is certainly a matter which the Government will be giving close attention to.
Griffith-Narrabundah Primary School
MS SZUTY: My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Mr Wood. Would the Minister confirm his commitment to the continued viability of the Griffith-Narrabundah Primary School joint campus, and in so doing would the Minister please comment on the ongoing maintenance of both sites and an apparent oversight regarding the separate listing of a telephone number for the Narrabundah campus which was not included in the most recent edition of the Canberra telephone book and which is not accessible using the telephone information service?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, I am very happy in this Assembly, as I have done outside the Assembly, to reaffirm most emphatically that neither campus will close. I believe that they are functioning well. Some people in that area have pointed out difficulties to me and I have been looking at those, while I am not necessarily conceding that they are quite the difficulties that they indicate.
Maintenance on the school, I have been informed, has been carried on consistent with the cyclical maintenance that occurs around all our schools; that is, there has been no neglect of either one of those campuses. Nevertheless, I have instigated certain action to see that maintenance continues to be carried out. In some specific instances, some work has rapidly been done and other work will follow.
I do not know about the telephone number. It is up to the Education Department, I should imagine, to put that in the telephone book. I do not really know the procedures. It is unfortunate if one campus has dropped out of the book. The other thing to be said in respect of Griffith-Narrabundah is that it was a pilot program. I think Mr Humphries would agree with that. The program was to be reviewed. In view of the comments that have been made around the campuses, I have hastened that review, which will give us a very careful look at what is happening.
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