Page 4191 - Week 13 - Thursday, 14 December 2006
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unique places in the ACT, the other one being Tharwa. Whereas Tharwa has about 20 houses at most, Hall has about 90 or so and services quite a wide community.
A lot of the children at the school there are members of families who have been sending their children there for generations. I know of parents who went there as kids and who are sending their kids there even from parts of Gungahlin. That school is a real focus of the community. Not only will you wreck the school there, but also you stand to wreck the community there in terms of the local shops, which do so well when parents drop in there after dropping their kids at school and maybe drop in there again when they pick the kids up from school. So it has much greater ramifications than merely closing the school in many instances, plus you have had no sense of heritage or history in closing those two schools.
They do provide a service at a very minimal cost. Remember, there are not huge cost savings in closing schools. On your own figures, I think we are talking about the loss of 22 or 23 staff positions, about $2.2 million or $2.3 million a year. You are not talking big bickies. It is not like other areas where you can make significant savings simply by closing schools. One thing I found out as minister, especially with primary schools, is that there is not a hell of lot of money in savings there, so it is not as if this is going to save you a lot of money.
It is very nice to knock down a building and build a new one, but again I hark back to concerns that were expressed at Ginninderra district high school last year before it closed. The fact is that not everyone necessarily wants a bigger school; indeed, many people do not. The thing you have not addressed is the drift of one per cent a year to the private sector. Judging by some of the calls today, I think the Catholic system is going to do very well out of this. That is going to continue and you have not really addressed that at all.
Some of these superschools are not necessarily going to be filled. I think there are some real concerns there. Real concerns have been expressed over the last 12 months in terms of Ginninderra district. How is it going to be filled? How is Kambah going to be filled now? Surely, minister, there is some way other than simply knocking down a building and replacing it with something for $54 million. I think a lot of the parents and kids would rather you took some other course there.
Mrs Dunne touched on the way schools would bind together to help you save money. In Hall’s case, and I will finish on that, $149,000 was listed as being needed. The community said that they would pay $49,000. (Time expired.)
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (3.52): I have looked at Mrs Dunne’s motion and there is not a point there that I do not agree with, so I am going to have to join in this censure.
Mr Stanhope: Shame!
DR FOSKEY: It is a pity, really. We were just compiling points in my office as to why it is impossible to have confidence in this minister. I have also got to say here that the protocol is that we censure a minister, but I am acknowledging that Mr Barr is just the face of this action. He is the minister whose responsibility it is to do the work,
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