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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 260 ..

estate still has a gate. Ngunnawal children are being asked to walk quite an extra way to access their school; Fraser primary, 20 years after it first started asking for a school crossing, is without one.

I am glad that this debate is taking place today; it is important to look at what is happening around our schools. I hope the review that we receive on 1 July will lead to some action and we will have greater safety around our schools. I hope that the issues that have been bubbling away for quite a time in the suburbs—not just the recent issues in Amaroo and Ngunnawal but at Torrens, Fraser, St Francis Xavier and Canberra high—will be addressed in a timely manner.

MR CORNWELL (6.44): I welcome the bipartisan approach to this issue from the minister, and I naturally support the motion put forward. I do, however, have to agree with Mr Wood that these issues are not easily solved. Mr Wood made the sensible point that many of these schools were built many years ago. They are still in existence, but they were built at a time when people felt that they could safely send their children to school, either by foot or on bicycles. This is no longer the case.

We also have a situation where even vehicles change: we seem to have more four-wheel drives. I occasionally drop my granddaughter off to school, and I must say that some of the problems associated with schools are caused by parents who park anywhere and everywhere and who do not seem capable of putting schoolbags and such like into the vehicle. No, they have to go into the boot, so then you have to stop and everybody gets out and then you go around the back. You can imagine the chaos that is going on early in the morning.

These are issues of the 21st century; that is what it comes down to. Other schools have been designed with not very adequate street access. This is not necessarily a government fault. In some cases, large areas of land were handed over to developers, who took the maximum amount that they could for housing, and the public areas were reduced. In turn, this has had an effect upon areas surrounding schools.

Mr Wood made mention of the traffic management around schools. This is a major problem. You do have to look at the pattern that forms. All schools are different, and we have all mentioned various schools. You should come down one day, Minister, to Sts Peter and Paul in Garran. They have an extremely difficult traffic flow, which they manage remarkably well. I went down at one stage to see if I could do something to assist them and I came away utterly defeated.

Sometimes, of course, you cannot put school crossings into certain areas outside schools if they are on major thoroughfares. The last thing you want is to put in a school crossing where there could be the risk of drivers travelling faster than they should with the inevitable dangers associated with it.

As far as the amendment put forward by Ms Tucker goes, yes, I do not mind that we are looking at a review of childcare centres, older persons facilities and the potential for the introduction of a 40-kilometre limit, which we have not made mandatory. We need to look at the traffic flows, and we need to remember that most of the aged persons facilities that I am aware of have signs warning people about age. In fact, the sign, as I

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