Page 2698 - Week 09 - Thursday, 9 August 1990
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Mrs Nolan and the Assembly - and Mr Berry, if he will just sit patiently for a minute - that the Government will not agree to - - -
Mr Berry: Fair enough is fair enough. This is just over the top.
Ms Follett: We have had only two questions.
MR KAINE: Well, if you keep interrupting you will reduce your time even further.
Mr Berry: Oh, pay us back. Good on you!
MR ACTING SPEAKER: Order! Members, please let the Chief Minister finish.
MR KAINE: Mr Acting Speaker, I assure Mrs Nolan and the Assembly that the Government will not agree to any proposal for the site without full consideration of all the issues to ensure that there is a clear benefit to the Canberra community resulting from the proposed development. I am sure that Mr Berry wanted to hear those words.
School Closures
MR MOORE: I would like to direct my question to the Minister for Education, Mr Humphries. Since you have not been prepared to give cost estimates of the damage you are wreaking in schools around Canberra, allow me to test the costs in a particular case. Removal of the Independent Living Centre from the Macquarie School so that it will be able to accommodate Cook students will involve a series of costs which I understand have been conservatively estimated in the following way: returning the building to classrooms and toilets, $50,000; and reinstalling the Independent Living Centre, which is equivalent in size to about three houses, at another site with the resultant costs in access, car parking and equipment, $250,000. In addition, the pharmacy of Kath Ridley at Macquarie has specialised stock to link with the Independent Living Centre and her stock is worth about $20,000.
If you take that ball park figure of about $300,000, before you even look at costs associated with transferring Cook children and removing the white ant damage from the floor, will you accept that the advice you have received is incompetent and inadequate and that your decisions on school closures should be reversed, or will you accept that the savings from closures of schools is a questionable notion protected by bureaucratic juggling of money?
Mr Jensen: Now who is having a shot at public servants?
MR MOORE: Unashamedly - and using parliamentary privilege to do it!
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