Page 1757 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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There is no doubting that I was up front from the start in stating that that is what we were intending to do—that we had too many schools, declining student enrolments, a declining school-age population and different demographic trends affecting different parts of the city. For example, there was a need for additional education provision in Gungahlin—a clear need. Through the appropriations in the last two budgets, the government has made money available for a new primary school at Harrison and a new secondary college in the Gungahlin town centre.
We also had to have a reasonable assessment of educational needs elsewhere in the city. Mrs Dunne has talked at length about Flynn. Yes, that community made very strong representations in relation to the ongoing viability of that school. But there is the issue of the context of a system-wide approach to education and what other education facilities were available. There was Mount Rogers community school 1,100 metres on one side of Flynn and Charnwood primary school—the now Charnwood-Dunlop primary school—about 1,800 metres from the Flynn school on the other side, not to mention Fraser just over two kilometres to the north and Latham about 2½ kilometres to the south. There was considerable education provision in north-west Belconnen.
There were similar issues in the suburb of Kambah. There, we had four schools, three with a student population of less than 200—some just over 100—and one with just over 200. That was in addition to a Catholic primary school located adjacent. So there were five primary schools in an area that lost 1,000 people between 2001 and 2006 and that has a hugely declining school-age population—and that will continue. It was not viable to continue to run that number of schools in the area. The government took the decision to reinvest in infrastructure to provide a high-quality, world-class P-10 school on the site of the old Kambah high school and maintain another primary school in the northern half of that suburb.
We did that through consultation, through engagement with the community, through an open and accountable process. In relation to Kambah, that involved at least three visits to Kambah high school—meetings with the P&C, the board representatives and the SRC—all of those organisations. It involved talking through the issues and the challenges that we faced in education provision, not only in the suburb of Kambah itself but across the entire system.
This is classic opposition stuff. Yes, you will pick a couple of areas of discontent. Yes, I acknowledge that the people of Flynn who were represented through that school community have the full right to pursue the legal action that they have. That is fine. But I have an obligation to the taxpayers of the territory to ensure that they meet the appropriate standards in providing security for costs in this legal challenge. I am not going to comment any further on it other than to say that it is the right of the Flynn P&C to pursue it but it is also the right of the government to vigorously defend its decision-making processes and to defend taxpayers’ interests, because every dollar that we spend subsidising legal action is one dollar less to go into education.
Mr Mulcahy: Is that why you went to the High Court over the WorkChoices stuff?
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