Page 2922 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
encourage our kids to be active and healthy. It is a school which has seen the Labor government shut up shop there. There are no shops there. It is a school which has lost and will lose all its facilities as a result of this, except the oval. I assume you are not digging that up and putting units on it.
Giralang Primary School, an excellent school, has got heritage value as well. It is slated for closure. How illogical! If you close that, which it seems you are hell-bent on doing, you go to McKellar. There has never been a school there. We have got two schools in one suburb. There is going to be no school in the next two suburbs.
We come to Evatt. We have got two schools there. Then we come to Melba. Spence, as I said in my history lesson to you, already has been amalgamated into Melba, but Melba is for the chop. So is Flynn, an excellent school. You are causing immense angst there. I was talking to some parents only the other day. They came to that suburb because of the quality of that school. They are scratching their heads now as to what on earth to do in relation to their kids. I was speaking to about four or five parents in the street. Again, Melba and Spence, no school. We come to Charnwood. Good, the school stays there. Dunlop does not have a school.
Where is the logic in ensuring that, even in that snapshot example of north Canberra, you have a couple of schools in one suburb, then you go to the next two suburbs and there are no schools? There are a couple of schools in the next suburb. In the next two suburbs, there are no schools at all. There is no logic in that, unless it is their great real estate value. Knowing those sites fairly well, I think that is probably the case.
We then come to some of the other schools you are closing. The ACT is basically a big city. But let us not forget our rural heritage. There are two wonderful small villages in the ACT. Hall is quite a big village, which has had a primary school since 1911 and which has quite a thriving little shopping community. Yes, students from across the border come there and are going to keep coming to ACT schools because the New South Wales government is not going to build another school in the region for them. I can give you the drum there. So they are going to keep coming into the ACT education system.
They are having trouble getting into schools. Guess why. Some of the schools that are not slated for closure simply do not have the accommodation. A lot of these kids are going to be put up in demountables, which defies logic. If you have to put up demountables, why are you closing these other schools in the first place? Hall has been going since 1911. The school at Tharwa takes in the biggest rural area of the ACT. Yes, it is a small school, but it is a small school that has been going since 1899. It is part of our heritage.
Go back to Hall. Those parents are prepared to pay more than they do at present if their school stays. The government said, “We are going to have to spend money on your school. We are going to have to spend $149,000.” That was the figure. The Hall parents said, “We will give you $49,000 of that $149,000.” Why on earth do you not take up those offers from people who are prepared to put their money where their mouth is to keep their community school? No, it looks like it is slated for closure, like everything else.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .