Page 4308 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 7 December 1993

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SCRUTINY OF BILLS AND SUBORDINATE LEGISLATION -
STANDING COMMITTEE

Report and Statement

MRS GRASSBY: Madam Speaker, I present report No. 22 of 1993 of the Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation. I ask for leave to make a brief statement.

Leave granted.

MRS GRASSBY: Report No. 22 of 1993, which I have just presented, was circulated when the Assembly was not sitting on 6 December 1993, pursuant to the resolution of appointment of 27 March 1992. I commend the report to the Assembly.

SOCIAL POLICY - STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Community and Cultural Use of Schools

MS ELLIS (3.43): I present report No. 4 of the Standing Committee on Social Policy on the inquiry into the community and cultural use of schools, together with a copy of the extracts of the minutes of proceedings. I move:

That the report be noted.

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I present today to the Assembly, on behalf of the Standing Committee on Social Policy, our report No. 4. As I have just said, it is a report on the community and cultural use of our schools.

Just to refresh the memories of members in this place, I will outline very briefly the background to this inquiry. The reference to the committee from the Assembly was made on 17 December, our last sitting day last year. It more or less followed the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee's inquiry before that date into the expenditure of the $19m casino premium. Members may recall that one of the recommendations in that PDI Committee's report was to consider setting up a regional trust arrangement with some of the funds from that $19m to be used within the regions within the ACT. But before doing so the PDI Committee urged very strongly that maybe we should look carefully, first of all, at how well or otherwise we are using our school facilities within the community; hence the reference to the Social Policy Committee. The committee called for submissions in April of this year and, at the same time, we wrote to some 80 ACT government school communities inviting their comment. As a result of that, a total of 42 submissions were received by the committee, and public hearings were held on 1 September. Representatives of approximately 12 organisations gave evidence at those public hearings.

The report goes into some detail, outlining the issues raised by ACT school communities; and I would like to highlight some of them. I will refer to page 3, chapter 2 of the report. The committee's comments in that part of the report read as follows:


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