Page 3833 - Week 12 - Thursday, 23 November 2006
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library. They also know they have been dudded because there simply was no attempt to consult with them. There was no attempt to take the community through with them. There was no attempt to perhaps tell the community exactly what they have in mind for the particular site where that government building sits.
These are issues which the community should have input to. These are decision-making processes which the community has a right to have input to. That did not occur in this case. It is a sham of a decision. That is why the government’s decision to close this library must be referred to a committee for further inquiry. That is why the government must delay the decision they have now taken. They must put that decision on hold pending the planning and environment committee inquiry into the circumstances leading up to the decision taken by the government about this particular library. That is what must occur.
In addition to that, the government would do well to go back to the community, regardless of the outcome of that committee inquiry, and start the consultation process all over again. Perhaps there are other ways of tackling whatever problem the government seems to have here.
Mr Speaker, the opposition will put it to you that the decision by the government was simply that they had to find a library to close. When you look at the services agreement and the various scoping studies you can only come to that sort of conclusion. There is no justification in the studies in the Lunn report, for a start, and any other document that has been written about this, which would show you a logicality as to why this decision needed to be taken. It simply does not make sense. There are a number of issues I would like to point out in respect of that.
Take the services agreement tabled here on Tuesday for example. In that particular services agreement there is neither mention of what consultation actually took place nor when. We have already talked about that. In fact, the only time the word “consultation” appears in this document is in the project planning and inception section. This task took only 0.5 of a day of the six weeks allocated to complete consultation on the report. We believe that consultation did not even occur. I do not know where the 0.5 comes from. Was that the time spent on Saturday afternoon telling the community that the library was going to close? Is that what it was?
Further, it seems that the library staff were kept well in the dark also. Some staff were not informed of the decision to close the library, their place of employment, until they were alerted by a disgruntled library user. That is a shame. That is a very poor way for any employer to treat their staff.
The problem with this decision is that a bad decision like this is very difficult to reverse without significant expenditure being brought to bear. We, the opposition, have made a pledge that if we become the government and that building is still intact—there is a big question mark over that—we will re-establish that library service in that building. Minister, if your government bulldozes that building and sells that land, then we will do everything in our power to re-establish a library service in the Griffith area.
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