Page 2485 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 14 November 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
On the question of education, I will not repeat what has already been properly said about the ANU, the University of Canberra, ADFA and so on, but I would pick up this question of a third university which Mr Moore also mentioned. Let us remember that Signadou is in Canberra. It is very properly part of a multifunction polis because it will be linked as part of a private university across Australia with Catholic connections. It will add yet another area to the educational excellence of this city. I would like to see that built into the report in the education section.
Several people have already mentioned the private business colleges. It is good to see that. I would like to pick up another point that Mr Moore rightly made; that is, the uniqueness of the years 11 and 12 colleges. We have a very special benefit here in this city with those colleges. There is nothing else like it in Australia. Some other States are looking at our colleges and beginning to see how excellent they are and how they might copy them. I think that overseas groups coming here would recognise that very special feature. I would like to add, on the educational side, the possibility of private national and international schools, as there are in Sydney, for example. May I commend to the Minister for Education the possibility of an international school within our own school structure. I understand that is being considered. That would be another area which would be very appropriate for a multifunction polis.
I will touch briefly on the question of research. There are some areas omitted altogether from the report. They are areas that almost all deal with the Humanities. Let me urge on those who are rewriting the report, putting it out in a final form, that the Humanities surely ought also to be considered in relation to a multifunction polis. The stress is on the sciences, understandably, and on economic considerations - there are obvious reasons for that - but let us remember, and it is very strange to see this omitted, that we have the National Library in this city. It is surely one of the absolutely central research areas for the whole of Australia as well as for the ACT. So, on pages 14 and 26 I would ask that the National Library, the National Film and Sound Archive and the Humanities Research Centre be added as other possible functions of the multifunction polis.
I do not wish to bore the Assembly with the next part, but I want to do this to indicate problems with the draft report. I have read it all with great interest. I began making changes and corrections at about page 27. Very quickly, I am going to run through the mistakes in the report. Each one represents a grammatical or proofreading mistake. They are on pages 27, 28, 28, 33, 34, 34, 35, 37, 39, 39, 39, 39, 44, 49, 49, 50, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56 and 60. I do wonder at that sloppiness. I wonder whether the final report that will be issued will be in immaculate form so that a representative of an overseas business firm, whether it be Japanese, Korean or whatever, looking at it will say,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .