Page 3837 - Week 12 - Thursday, 23 November 2006
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It would be remiss of me not to explain one or two things. Let me return to consultation. There was an enormous amount of consultation around the original decision when the Liberal Party wanted to close the library. The point was made at the rally that I attended on Saturday that it was the Liberal Party that originally wanted to close the library. But there was an enormous amount of consultation around at the same time.
There was also a fair amount of consultation when the neighbourhood action plan was developed. It said that a replacement library could be built on a site identified. There was a lot of consultation around that. I did meet Mrs Fanning and her representatives. I did receive quite a lot of emails. Except for those of the last few days, I have responded to all of them. I have given the government’s reasons. So to suggest that we have not engaged with people is not quite right.
Of course, we received quite a number of letters from people. I would like to share a couple of them with the chamber. All of them—all of the letters in a great big box in my office—were not unsolicited reactions from people; they were not letters from people who spontaneously wrote to us. I do not denigrate these at all, but I put them into two categories: those that are spontaneous representations and those that are solicited representations. The ones I am indicating are all solicited ones. Let us just examine a couple of them. I said at the rally that I respect people’s right to make their representations in any way they like. These particular ones were placed in shops around the Griffith shops. I am fine with that. But when the letters came in, we had a look at them.
DR FOSKEY: I am glad you did.
MR HARGREAVES: The tone of Dr Foskey’s interjection that she is glad we did almost suggests that we would not. That is a suggestion and imputation that I find abhorrently objectionable, Mr Speaker—objectionable.
When we did look through the letters, there was a complaint about catchment areas. The catchment area is different in one context from that in another, but I take the point that people are saying that the suburbs of Yarralumla and Forrest should be in the catchment area of the Griffith library. Firstly, the Griffith library is not a group centre area anyway, but I would argue that there are places in Yarralumla—where Dr Foskey used to live is one of them—that are closer to the Phillip library than to the Griffith library. So let us get a bit real.
Secondly, I am holding a preprinted letter addressed to “John Hargreaves, the minister”. It says, “I am a user of the Griffith library. It is my wish that the Griffith library remain open because …” Then there is space for someone to write their stuff and provide a signature and their address.
The letter I hold in my hand now is from a person from Austria who says, “Every time that I visit Australia I stay with my mother in Canberra—and come to Griffith library frequently.” There is a whole heap of others here—from Bungendore, Glenfield, Collector, Cook, Fadden, O’Connor, Campbell, Wanniassa, Theodore et cetera.
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