Page 2815 - Week 09 - Thursday, 27 September 2007
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This is the cynical approach that has been inculcated by the Stanhope government in relation to communities when they are thinking about what to do with empty school sites. This has been engendered over the past 15 or so months through the whole process of Towards 2020 and now through this venture. These school sites belong to the communities; they belong to the taxpayers and the residents of the ACT. They do not belong to John Hargreaves or Andrew Barr or Jon Stanhope or all of those people collectively. This is a very clear message that the people that I spoke to on Tuesday night wanted to get across. You can see why people are concerned. You had Mr Hargreaves saying, as Dr Foskey rightly pointed out, “We are letting people have access to what used to be their schools, so the residents of Hall can get access to their old school a couple of days a week. We are being so generous as to allow the Tharwa community to use the kitchens of their old school.”
Mr Hargreaves: What happened to Charnwood high school?
Mr Barr: Sold! Christian Life Centre.
MRS DUNNE: This is what has happened. The community wants a say, and the clear message is that they want those schools in the community.
Mr Hargreaves: So Gary Humphries sold it? It wasn’t Brendan?
Mr Barr: It might have been the Leader of the Opposition, actually. It was Bill, wasn’t it?
MRS DUNNE: I note, Mr Speaker, that they think that they can just talk over me because they are discomforted; because they are hearing things that they do not want to hear. But what we actually to have—
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order, members! Mrs Dunne has the floor.
MRS DUNNE: What we actually have to have is a clear and open approach that deals clearly and sensitively with what the people actually want, not what the Stanhope government, through this consultation, want people to say. This is no reflection on the consultant; the consultant essentially buys into a brief and has to deliver the brief. But the consultation has been a sham. Yes, Mr Hargreaves said everyone knew that it was coming because, “I told you back in May,” but actually on 12 September the consultant told the community that this week—24, 25 and 27 September—there would be three district meetings. On 12 September, 12 days before, we did not know where those meetings would be or at what time; we only had dates. The people who were going to the Tuggeranong meeting, which was held on Monday, did not know until two days before when an ad appeared in the Canberra Times. That is when they found out, and two days notice is not good enough.
Mr Hargreaves stood up here the other day and said, “Only 30 people turned up.” Well, other people told me it was close to 50, but, irrespective of whether it was 30 or
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