Page 1626 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 19 May 1993
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Mr Cornwell: To provide a quality education. You are off the track again.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order, please!
MS ELLIS: As I said when I was being interrupted, Madam Speaker, his philosophy is simply wrong. We need to expand our use of those current facilities to ensure that the maximum dollar value is gained and the social benefit is gained at a maximum level. Luckily for Mr Cornwell and his colleagues, as he knows, the Standing Committee on Social Policy has been given a reference by this Assembly and is currently inquiring into the community and cultural use of schools. Mr Cornwell, as a member of that committee, may gain some education out of this process. Perhaps at the end of that process he will wonder why he thought of bringing up this issue today in the way that he has.
Mr Cornwell: I will be quoting your speech back to you in that committee.
MS ELLIS: That is fine. Madam Speaker, this inquiry will look at a variety of potential and current uses of school facilities and will bring the community together in a comprehensive examination of the community and cultural use of those schools for the benefit of that community. I would expect a considerable input from adult education interest groups and community education bodies who may currently be suffering a shortage of appropriate facilities. The use of school facilities both by the school community and by the community in general has a direct and indirect educative and value added role. With the Social Policy Committee's inquiry into the use of schools, hopefully the concept of value adding in this way will become more beneficial to the community as a whole.
Let us for a moment talk about value adding. I am sure that the Liberals are familiar with the term, but I am using it in a slightly more beneficial way to the community than those opposite may have considered in this debate. What do I mean when I use this term? I mean that by increasing the use and the variety of use of those facilities you automatically and immediately increase their value. This could include the use of schools for a range of community uses which are already in place out there in community, such as scouts and guides, recreation classes, adult education, TAFE outreach and church groups. Madam Speaker, the list is endless and the potential limitless. The concept of value adding benefits the community substantially and reinforces the need for these facilities. This is what I personally call rationalising school facilities. Basically, Madam Speaker, it is a matter of swings and roundabouts. Mr Cornwell needs to realise that in education facilities in the ACT, that is, bricks and mortar, there is potentially a lot more than meets the eye that can be of enormous benefit to our community. Mr Cornwell's unfortunate narrow and blinkered method of examining this whole issue is unimaginative and, frankly, disappointing. A person of his supposed experience would have, I would assume, a much broader vision of the world.
Madam Speaker, recently the Office of Sport and Recreation commissioned a report on the recreation needs of residents in the Tuggeranong valley. The report's author, Ron Jackson, recently told the Tuggeranong Community Council that his report was centred around using the local school in the area as a recreation focal point. The results of the study showed that the people most in need of recreation - young married women, with children, not in paid employment and without transport - easily accepted and enjoyed recreation
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