Page 2361 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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Mr Seselja and I then undertook a proper consultation with the parents at Lyons primary school, and the children at the other primary schools were saved the disruption. I said to my staff and to Mr Seselja’s office, “The day we raised this as an issue and brought it out into the public and embarrassed the minister, we did a damn good day’s work.”
My constituents at Southern Cross primary school and the school community that I am part of at Lyons primary school and the Narrabundah primary school would have been substantially disrupted by an uncaring and unfeeling department and minister who were prepared to do anything they could to get the building works done so that they could open their new flagship schools next year. These flagship schools may be good, but you do not actually establish them at the price of the current occupants.
It is interesting to look at what happened when the parents at Lyons primary school actually got to have a say about this. Lyons primary school is a school with declining enrolments, mainly courtesy of the minister for education. It now has about 60 children. The people who are there are really committed to the school and to the Italian program, and they want it to succeed. As a result of the consultation the school community conducted a paper ballot. They found someone who was expert in running elections and someone to act as returning officer. They put together a ballot and they wrote to every parent or carer at the school. They sent out 117 ballots.
In an extraordinary result, 100 ballots were returned. This was not a compulsory vote, but the parents are so committed to their school that, of 117 ballots sent out, 100 votes were returned. What was the result? There were three options: do nothing until the end of the school year; cower in the corner in the dust while you build around us; move to another school now. The result of the vote was: move to another school now—23 votes; cower in the corner while you build around us—six votes; leave us alone; do what you promised and leave us in peace until the end of the year—71 votes.
Mr Seselja: Like that vote on 666 yesterday.
MRS DUNNE: It was pretty much, yes. More than 70 per cent of the parents who cast a ballot said, “Leave us alone.” It is very interesting to see what the people at Lyons primary school really think about this process. I was at a school meeting recently. We discussed the ballot and, for the most part, the parents are reconciled to the move to Yarralumla. There are a few concerns, but they do see that there are possibilities for them. We had the “what if” discussion, and it ran like this: “what if you had the chance to stay here and keep your school here on site?” Overwhelmingly, there was not a person in the room who said, “No, we would want to move to Yarralumla.”
What they said was: “What we want, and what we have always wanted is a chance to make Lyons primary, the only government bilingual Italian school in this country, to really work. We want the chance to make it work.” We were so close to making it work, and then along came 2020. There were 86 kids enrolled. The enrolments were going up very gradually. In 2006 they had 20 kids in the kindergarten. The school was feeling as though it was on a roll and that within a few years they would see quite
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