Page 1530 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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through all of the plans. She inspected some aspects of them and was impressed by the systems in place and the safety mechanisms there.
In the last few days, I have had several letters and emails from people who are blindly telling me that they are opposed to recycling because of the dangers. I am afraid that I am unpersuaded at this point. Whether or not that ends up becoming one of the options, there is still a debate going on in the city. But on the basis of the evidence I have seen to date, I remain completely unconvinced that there are public health risks associated with this technology. The Singaporeans said that even the ultraviolet process was superfluous; it was just an added precaution.
The Singaporeans’ main interest in water purity is for their computer industry. It has a higher requirement in terms of water purity. They are taking precautions on a range of fronts to ensure that what they call their four taps are all solid and reliable. You would understand that, particularly in a country that imports a substantial amount of water from its neighbour. They have desalination in process. They are damming a river in the middle of the country. I could only imagine what would happen if one tried to do that in this country, but they do not seem to have much of a problem with opposition political groups in that country, so things happen. They have a desalination plant and they have a recycling plant. As I think I mentioned the other night, one thing that amazed me was that a recycling plant which has been contemplated to be of possible use in the ACT had a construct cost of $27 million. Even if you substantially increase labour costs for here, the figure is not astronomical.
It was an interesting experience. I need no convincing about the safety of it. I know that many other experts in Australia have the same opinion.
Lyons primary school—open day
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (6.22): On Saturday I had the privilege, along with Ms MacDonald, to attend the Lyons primary school open day. I thank Ms MacDonald for her interest in Lyons primary school. I put on the record yet again that I am a parent at Lyons primary school. I chose Lyons primary school for my youngest son because it is the only Australian government school to offer bilingual education. As advocates for public education, that is something that we should be extraordinarily proud of. Under Ms Gallagher’s supervision, when she was the minister for education, Lyons started as a fifty-fifty bilingual school three years ago.
The school should be going great guns. Much of what it does it does extraordinarily well—with a huge amount of support and enthusiasm from the parent body. But like all the schools that were subject to upheaval as a result of Towards 2020—I note we mark its first anniversary today—Lyons primary school is struggling to come to terms with where it might be in a few years time. I will dwell on that in a moment.
At the showcasing of Lyons on Saturday, our sausage-o-meter hit 350 free sausages given away on the day or sausages given away with a gold coin donation. My daughter, who assisted with the face painting, said that the face painting was up on last year. All in all, it was a very successful day, with a large number of people coming through the school and looking very seriously at the prospects for education for their children in Australia’s only government bilingual Italian school.
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