Page 1553 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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MR CORNWELL: You may query that; you can take that up with Mr Humphries at some other time. I was interested in your reference to Kingston schools, Mr Moore. I am not aware of any school in Kingston. Ainslie, Campbell, Lyneham, North Ainslie and Majura are all showing increased vacancies. I am not convinced that the urban renewal that Mr Moore speaks of is taking place.
Mr Berry: You are a real killjoy, aren't you?
MR CORNWELL: I am sorry, but we all accept that there is a movement back into the centre of the city. But the rate of that move back is really not sufficient to save the existing schools in those areas. I think even Mr Moore would agree with me. It may be all very well to say that Ainslie have closed their books for out-of-area children; I would suggest, however, that most of the other schools in the North Canberra area would be only too pleased to receive out-of-area children.
Mr Moore: Yes, they are 15 to 20 years behind.
MR CORNWELL: Exactly. If we are going to wait 15 or 20 years for this urban renewal that you are speaking of, we will be waiting a very long time. My concern is that we have heard no real plans for any of this urban renewal from either Mr Lamont or Mr Wood. There is obviously going to be a great deal of talk about it. There are also going to be a whole heap of plans, like Chinatown, the redevelopment of the old hotel site at Dickson and the announcement about North Canberra itself. But I doubt very much that, at the end of these three years of your Government, we are going to have much more than just talk.
MR DE DOMENICO (11.48): Madam Speaker, I am delighted to rise and to agree with Mr Lamont. The notice paper states that the issue we are debating is:
... the importance of urban renewal for ensuring the future economic and environmental viability of public services in the Territory.
That is a wonderful motherhood statement with which I think we all should agree; that has been said for a long time. I agree with a lot of what Mr Lamont said, part of which seems to have come from a wonderful publication that I can recommend to all, called Towards a Sustainable Canberra. Also, a lot of what he said came from last week's edition of the Advance Bank's Trends magazine, which I recommend to you all to read.
It was also gratifying to hear that Mr Wood was working very hard to make sure that his Federal colleagues would come up with $13.7m of Federal funds. All I can say to that is that it is about time, because we seem to have got very, very little from our Federal colleagues on the hill, and $13.7m would be very, very helpful in the economic situation that we have now. It is also pleasing to note that an $11m allocation is also available through some of our public utilities.
Mr Wood also suggested that what were "pink bits" on the map before the election were no longer "pink bits" during the election campaign, but now they are back on as "pink bits", or perhaps another colour. He also talked about half and half, and he talked about another revision that is coming out very shortly. That is also very gratifying. One hopes that people can keep up with those sorts of things. He also suggested that by clicking our fingers we cannot fix all our problems overnight; I agree with that as well. But these issues that we are talking about have been around for a long time. Mr Kaine quite correctly said that we have been talking about the Kingston foreshores for a very, very long time.
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