Page 4097 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
as a P to 6, and Narrabundah remains a P to 2. I must say the Narrabundah proposal was an extremely innovative one that could have put Canberra at the absolute cutting edge of indigenous education in any city in this country. I will be very interested to see your response to that submission, Mr Barr.
We see that Mount Neighbour is closing. There are school communities that did not put up a big fight. For some of them it was because they saw it as inevitable; some might have even thought it was a good idea; and some did not have people who were prepared to go those hard yards—and they were really hard yards. I saw a lot of people that were totally exhausted and burnt out at the end of the process. They racked their brains and came up with some good ideas.
Village Creek is going to go; Isabella Plains becomes a P to 2; and Macarthur preschool, which is a well-used preschool and the only community facility in that community, is going to close at the end of next year. It is the same with Village Creek, which is to close at the end of 2010. There is still time to save those schools.
Turning to Rivett preschool and primary school, maybe the death knell was put on that school with earlier decisions that were made. It is really ideally placed in that community. We now see people with very hard choices to make about which school they go to.
Opposition members interjecting—
DR FOSKEY: You have to be a parent of one of those children to speak on this, I think, Mr Corbell and others.
Turning to Weston Creek primary school, Weston Creek is ending up being fairly poorly served. As for Cook primary school, it is another small school but it is pretty much full. It has a very active parent community. I would be very interested to see the reasons why it was decided to close that school.
I am glad Giralang stayed open. Those parents mounted an excellent campaign. Still, against the remaining opening of Giralang, the closure of Cook looks very anomalous. Southern Cross will become a P to 2 from 2009.
I think there is promise and hope in the Melba-Copland dual campus idea. I am very glad Melba is not closing. That is one of the schools that I think play a really important role. There are some very great success stories from that school. Again, I believe that one would benefit from developing technical education on that campus, with particular thought for the needs of students in that area. It is very sad that Flynn primary school is closing in a couple of weeks. It is a beautiful school and it also has a very strong community. I know they will be very upset.
I still think that if the government had accepted the idea that was put up over and over again by many parts of the community and by the Greens to put off these closures until the end of next year and do a really good process, we would have come up with something people would have been happier to own.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .