Page 209 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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Gumnut Place Child Care Centre in my home suburb of Evatt. It is fortuitous that the Gumnut Place Child Care Centre is so named because it invokes the famous and iconic story of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs.
Indeed, the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney had a recent stage musical production of Ms Gibbs’s story. I think the story-line synopsis reflects in many ways the situation that has developed at the Gumnut Place Child Care Centre. Let me quote from the synopsis of the Belvoir Street Theatre musical production featuring Snugglepot and Cuddlepie:
It’s a baffling country for a young gumnut. The stinky old Banksia Men want the bush for themselves, gumnuts are being thrown overboard, Mrs Snake’s up to less good than usual, those weird human beings are lurking in the shadows, and who is this marvellous Ragged Blossom, newly floated down from the treetops? With so much to find out and so few answers, there’s really only one thing to do: take a trip to the city and see what the whole shebang’s about.
Mr Hanson: Which one’s Mrs Snake?
MRS DUNNE: I am not going there at all.
It would not take much imagination to match Snugglepot or Cuddlepie, the characters in this production, with those involved in the whole shebang over Gumnut Place Child Care Centre in my home suburb of Evatt. Like the staged musical, there is much to find out but there are few answers for the people at Gumnut in Evatt. And like the staged musical, the gumnuts of Evatt have to come to the city, to this Legislative Assembly and to Ms Burch, to try to find out what the answers are.
The reason for my motion today is to try to get answers from a minister and the government that does not like to give answers. It does things without telling people, let alone asking them. It does not care and takes the view that knowledge, and in this case unshared knowledge, is power. It is to try to get answers from a Stanhope government that works for Labor and not for the people of the ACT. The Gumnut parents have come to the city, to this Legislative Assembly, to get answers to why they are to be evicted from their premises of 17 years. They have come to the city because they cannot get answers through correspondence.
Minister Burch on 25 November last wrote to the chairperson of the Gumnut Place Child Care Centre. The letter was full of platitudes about how the minister appreciates the concern of the Gumnut parents about their future accommodation but it does not provide any answers. Indeed, the letter epitomises the insults that come from this government when it finishes with this sentence:
I wish you every success in finding alternative accommodation for Gumnuts.
Ms Burch: Are you going to table that letter? It is another misrepresentation of a letter, similar to Gungahlin.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): Ms Burch, order, please! Mrs Dunne has the floor.
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