Page 77 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 22 February 1994
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MR KAINE: I very much appreciated what you all said earlier. I am sorry that I could not get you all to vote for me.
Mr Wood: You only had to give the nod.
Mr Connolly: Why didn't you call?
Mr Berry: All you had to say was, "I will vote with you lot".
Ms Ellis: All you had to do was call.
Mr Wood: Yes, the offer was there, mate.
MR KAINE: You all know about party room solidarity. To summarise, Madam Speaker, I believe that this is a worthwhile proposal. But if this is a good proposition for Lyons Primary School, given the number of students that remain and all the criteria that the Education Department determined as being valid in relation to this site, why are the same criteria not applied as a matter of policy to other school sites? Why do criteria such as proximity to the school buildings, the student population, the use to which the land is being put by the students, and all those other criteria that the Education Department determined, not apply elsewhere as they did in this case?
If urban infill and using up available land that is not needed for other purposes is Government policy, I am quite sure that there would be other school sites - I will be told that I am slashing and burning, I know - - -
Mr Berry: Not any more. The slash and burn has gone out of you.
MR KAINE: Do those words sound familiar? There would be other school sites where the same logic as was applied here could be applied. There could be further urban infill to satisfy the Minister's objective. It would be agreeable to the community, particularly the school community, and would be economically beneficial to the whole community. I simply ask the Minister to take the criteria that have been determined as being applicable in this case, adopt them as a policy and apply them in a policy sense rather than in an ad hoc sense, as has been the case here.
MS ELLIS (9.41): I found some of the comments made about the direction from which this variation came quite interesting, particularly given that it is often said that governments should welcome input from the community. Here we have a community making a very good input, but all of a sudden we are questioned as to why it should be needed. Credit should be given to the Lyons community for coming up with this idea. I am very pleased to be part of this variation decision.
I take this opportunity, as a member of the committee, to place on the public record my thanks to the secretary of the committee, Rod Power. Members of this committee, I believe, are continually oversupplied with paperwork, and if it were not for the ability of Mr Power to give us that paperwork in some order I am sure that we would drown in it. I appreciate very much his professional approach to his job, and his terrific sense of humour, which helps us get through an incredibly heavy workload.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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