Page 1253 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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While we all would like to think the AIHS could offer job training to our local youth, I remind members that having the majority of students at the school from overseas would not harm Canberra's growing international reputation as a centre of educational excellence. However, wherever they come from, the importance of finding sufficient students to fill the school at the rate of 40 new students per semester, that is, 120 per year, to a maximum of 360 students, cannot be overemphasised. The establishment costs of setting up the hotel school - some $11m - are provided by ACT Treasury by way of a loan. While such a sensible approach to prudent financial management is strongly supported by the Liberal Party, it is ironic that a Labor government so generous with grants - not loans but grants - to its mates, particularly around election time, should finally recognise the economic imperative on this occasion, not only advancing the funds as a loan but, in a decision that can be compared in scale, I would suggest, only to Paul's conversion to Christianity, also demanding - - -
Mr Humphries: Is that Paul Keating?
MR CORNWELL: No; I fear that Christianity as we know it would fail if it were Paul Keating. I was thinking of St Paul, someone to whom Mr Keating, despite his efforts, will never aspire. This Labor Government is not only providing a loan for the setting up of the hotel school; it is also demanding interest upon the loan. Whoever worked out this sensible arrangement over there on the Government benches should really come over and sit on this side of the chamber - but, I suggest, not just at the moment.
I qualify my invitation, Mr Wood, because, although the loan repayments start in 1998 and principal and interest must be fully repaid by 2006, the Government's meritorious move into the real world of investment has been spoilt by its regrettable adherence to bad old Labor habits in the establishment of the hotel school itself. I refer, of course, to its failure to totally grasp the investment opportunity by setting up the hotel school as a TOC, or Territory owned corporation. By failing to do so, the Government has made the school's financial viability that much more difficult and its ability to meet the 2006 repayment deadline that much more uncertain.
Despite the Government's proud claim that the school is to be a non-profit public education institution, operating as a separate entity from CIT on a full cost-recovery basis, the Government has hamstrung the school, even before the first student steps behind the reception desk, by tying it into the public service network and denying it the flexibility that as a TOC it could practise. No wonder the school will have, at least initially, a modest 20 staff and its administrative functions will be contracted to CIT; the school already recognises the dangers it faces in public service cost burdens and is seeking even now, at this early stage, to minimise them.
Nevertheless, despite that important, and I hope ultimately not destructive, exercise in timidity, after such a promising start with interest bearing loans, the Opposition will support the legislation. We will do so, however, mindful of our obligations to the people of the ACT for responsible financial management of the Territory's funds and, further, Mr Minister, to the sentiments of the 1993 Estimates Committee recommendation at paragraph 3.208 - - -
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