Page 2139 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 15 August 2006
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any consideration. But we all know that if schools do close, and we have not made that decision yet, my expectation is—
Mrs Dunne: But you just said significant numbers will close. You just said it.
MR STANHOPE: I said it was my expectation. I did not say they would. We are consulting on a proposal. I expect significant numbers of schools to close through that process. No decisions have yet been made. If any school does close, the school and the land on which it is housed will be subjected to a planning study. Those planning studies will inevitably identify higher purposes and uses consistent with the community’s expectations.
One would imagine that one of those uses would be the provision of aged care accommodation. There is an enormous interest in people, as they age within a suburb or within a community, being able to live within that community in their senior years. It is an expectation and a hope that we all have that when we do get to a point where we take the decision that we need to live in supported accommodation or a retirement complex, we will not have to move to the boondocks, that we can in fact stay in reasonable proximity to where we live. I would imagine that, if any schools do close, the planning studies that will be pursued will identify uses such as aged care accommodation, affordable housing, perhaps other forms of supported accommodation and certainly a whole range of community uses.
One of the interesting aspects of this process of consultation and conversation that the government is having with the community is the significant number of community organisations that are staking a claim. Even some organisations that have publicly opposed school closures are saying to us, “If they do, will you give us accommodation in one of the closed schools?” There is a whole debate and a whole conversation going on out there and as you would expect there has been significant interest expressed by a range of community organisations staking a claim and making expressions of interest that, in the event that schools close, they would very much like the opportunity to be the beneficiary of some support or accommodation within a closed school building.
Mr Barr has said that none of the decisions that the government has taken were based upon a consideration of a sale of premises. Mr Barr, in answering a range of rigorous, complex, different-headed and nuanced questions, has expanded on that, and if you want Mr Barr’s explanation, ask him. But in the context of my position and my understanding of Mr Barr’s position, without an understanding of the detail of his language, there is no difference between Mr Barr and me on this issue, and there never has been.
The Liberal Party wishes to set the hares running and to advance conspiracy theories. They are determined to move the debate away from anything they have said or done in government. Their high aspiration in government was to be a government that would take decisions in the interests of public education and the community, decisions taken in the first instance by Mr Kaine and Mr Humphries. But they folded, wobbled, fell over at the first hurdle. They said the community, “Look, this really is just too hard. Fair cop. We don’t have the bottle.”
Read Mr Humphries’s despairing press statements of the time. He said, “I have no support. My ministerial colleagues would not support me. The community is saying
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