Page 3565 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 12 October 1994
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I think it is time Mr Wood read a little more about urban infill and its impact on populations, particularly school-age populations. If he looks back over the last little while, since the development of Kingston, he will realise that what has happened there is that in the 1950s and 1960s, if my memory serves me, there were 3.84 people per square kilometre, but the figure is now down to about 1.8 in that area where we are redeveloping.
More importantly, what happens with urban infill is that, wherever it occurs - whether it is in the ACT or even in Sydney, where we have had massive increases in urban redevelopment - we do not get an increase in the number of people in the area. We certainly do not get an increase in families. That is one of the problems that Mr Wood should have faced. I hope that it will be faced by Mr Lansdown in his inquiry. I hope that he will raise those issues with Mr Wood and, in his report, explain to Mr Wood just how wrong he is in thinking that urban infill is, in some way, going to improve enrolments in schools. If that were the case, we would not have seen the closing down of the Griffith school. I would argue that the redevelopment of Kingston has contributed significantly to that school having to close.
When people make decisions about which school they are going to send their children to, they make them on many grounds; but certainly the planning of Canberra and access to schools is one of the most important issues. If your local primary school or local high school does provide for you an appropriate facility, obviously that is the facility you are going to use. When we get glossy marketing suggesting that there are good reasons to go elsewhere, of course people are going to be lured away from those schools. When that is facilitated as well by bus services that support the movement of children around the ACT, of course we are going to see more and more of that sort of movement, which is likely to leave some schools with marginalised populations. So, for some ideas, Mr Wood could look at those bus subsidies that we currently have. It is not a new idea. Ms Szuty has mentioned that to him again and again; but, of course, that is not convenient for him or he just does not want to make any hard decisions because he is bereft of decision making ability.
The other possibility he has is to look at a policy of controlled perimeters for enrolment, allowing exemptions - because we want to find a balance between choice and access - on such grounds as incompatibility with a teacher or a school or, more importantly, where a school does not offer a specific curriculum which a student is very keen on. For example, it might be a special music curriculum that is not offered in one high school but is offered in another. Exemptions could be allowed there. That, in turn, would encourage people to use their local primary school and high school. So, there are ideas around which the Minister could adopt. I offer those ideas to him.
I have one other little piece of news for a Minister who, just a minute ago, said to us that the whole notion of glossy marketing was something that we all should be particularly careful of. It already goes on. There is certainly glossy marketing of colleges in the ACT. As far as I am concerned, it is a great waste of money and resources, particularly teaching resources, to put them into that sort of process, when the process that we should be
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