Page 4072 - Week 15 - Thursday, 17 December 1992
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fit into those schools those students who choose to go there, and I hope that it is the majority of them. In any case, as is the plan these days with any school where there is an overflow, we can put in demountables. That is an appropriate way of proceeding. So, those schools will benefit from new students and they will be well able to accommodate them.
I make one little criticism of Ms Szuty, because she went on to say that teenagers face a lack of social and recreational opportunity in Belconnen. I know that teenagers everywhere will say, "There's nothin' to do". But on this occasion I would rather that Ms Szuty had identified something. She criticised a report, presumably because it is inadequate; but I did not hear any evidence to back her assertion. I know that my colleague David Lamont is pursuing the question of cinemas in Belconnen. Of course, I am more interested in the facilities that governments have to provide.
Facilities that this Government and successive governments in the ACT over a long period have provided in excess of those provided to any other community anywhere in Australia are equestrian facilities. Of the 250 submissions made during this process, about half concerned horses. I think the greatest ado was about horses. It is like that boundary I was talking about before. We simply cannot say that because there are equestrian facilities in an area we cannot extend residential development into that area. If that had been the case, Canberra would be confined within about a three-mile radius of this building. We recognise and applaud the recreational value of horses. We give them every support. But I think ultimately we have to decide that people have a priority over horses.
We have long been looking for alternative places where horses can be agisted and people can have their recreation with horses. This has been a process over 50 years. Every time there has been some expansion of the urban area we have had to undergo this process of finding more space for horses. I suppose that as we reach the boundary of the Capital Territory it becomes a little more difficult. Horses, hard hoofed and fairly large and moveable as they are, have an impact on the ground. All of us who are concerned with environmental matters want to be sure that the horses do not damage areas that we would rather see preserved and protected. We look after the equestrian facilities in the ACT. That is why those concerned with horses can say that we have the best facilities. That has not happened accidentally. It has been a process of government decision making.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 77.
Motion (by Mr Lamont) agreed to, with the concurrence of an absolute majority:
That so much of the standing and temporary orders be suspended as would prevent the debate being completed and the question being put on Assembly business notice No. 1 relating to a disallowance motion.
MR WOOD: Because of what governments have done - the Federal administration over the years and self-government since 1989 - and what the people themselves have done, we have outstanding equestrian facilities, and that will continue; but the equestrian people must realise that the horses cannot form a barrier beyond which nothing can move.
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