Page 4231 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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essential when promoting tourism to focus on the various tourism products offered. The group will meet quarterly to discuss tourism marketing activities and cooperative marketing activities. It has already developed a number of proposals, including improved marketing of events, a sharing of research information and a proposal to encourage intraregional tourism.
Mr Speaker, the Canberra region receives about five million visitors annually, of which the ACT receives only about one and a half million. The population of the region is almost half a million, while the ACT has a population of just over a quarter of a million. Therefore, the new group,s activities to encourage tourism throughout the region as well as tourism within the region by its residents are expected to provide significant economic benefits for the ACT and, of course, for the surrounding region.
School Closures - Lyons Primary School
MS FOLLETT: My question is to Mr Humphries, the Minister for Education. It relates to the Lyons Primary School. Mr Humphries, the Lyons Primary School satisfies all of the criteria for a viable small school as set out in the Hudson report and there is also, I think you would agree, demonstrated social disadvantage in that area. So I would ask: How do you and your Residents Rally colleagues justify the closure of the Lyons school?
MR HUMPHRIES: Ms Follett, again, as in her earlier question to me, chooses to accept some things from the Hudson report and to ignore others. Mr Hudson very clearly examined a range of issues concerning the Lyons school, as he did with all the schools that came under his consideration. He examined the criteria for the closure of the school and quite clearly decided that the school should close. It, therefore, did satisfy the criteria for a school to close. I am sorry if Ms Follett's reading of the report does not make that clear; but, if the body of the report is not clear, then, certainly, the conclusion to the report, the summary at the end of the report, makes it quite clear that Mr Hudson believes, on the basis of all the evidence, that the Lyons Primary School should close.
Mr Wood: It can satisfy your criteria for staying open.
MR HUMPHRIES: Apparently, Mr Hudson has some sort of split personality according to the Opposition; he will look at the evidence, show that it proves a school should stay open and then conclude that it should close. I have a higher opinion of Mr Hudson,s process of consideration of the issues. I am surprised that the Opposition is prepared, by implication, very subtly to denigrate that, but the fact of life is that they are doing that. His report in fact is the basis for the Government's decision to close the Lyons Primary School.
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