Page 2817 - Week 09 - Thursday, 27 September 2007
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plaque. It is the same plaque. It has a bit of a ding in it, but it was not unrepairable. The damage was quite insubstantial, and most of that damage was administered when the workmen, whoever they were, took it off the plinth. Then, of course—to show that my theory is right—they obliterated the name “Flynn” from the plinth, because they want to obliterate all memory of these schools.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Minister for Industrial Relations) (4.56): In what has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate on a range of aspects in relation to former schools, we have traversed a couple of areas. In question time I did undertake to provide further information to the Assembly in relation to school equipment. In terms of outlining the processes, as I said in question time, equipment and resources from closed schools were offered to other government schools.
The first offer was to schools that were receiving students from the closed schools. Any remaining equipment after that allocation process was then made available to other ACT government schools, and I am advised that most usable equipment was reallocated in this process. The equipment that remained was in poor condition. Where possible, this equipment was dismantled, and usable parts were retained to repair other equipment in the future. What remained after that process, the component parts—metal, timber, plastic, paper—were then made available for recycling where possible.
I am advised by the department that, through the school management asset registers that are required to be held from each school, the record of assets is maintained under that policy. The detail that I can provide is that teacher and school resources, such as books, paper, craft equipment and stationery, were made available to receiving schools and has all been delivered. P&C groups transferred certain P&C assets to other schools during the closing process. Where they specifically requested that assets go to a particular school, the P&Cs were able to transfer assets to those schools. Memorabilia from closed schools has been securely stored. All musical instruments were transferred to the instrumental music program for assessment, and instruments requested by receiving schools were distributed. Artworks were assessed by Arts ACT personnel.
We went through the most extensive process, and only a very small amount of remaining equipment that was not possible to recycle and that was not wanted by any of the other schools or any of the organisations that we approached, such as Revolve and others, was sent to landfill. But my advice is that that was a very small proportion of the overall surplus equipment and that this equipment has in fact now found a new home in all of the remaining schools across the territory and is being put to very good use. This provides a neat segue into the broader issues that we have debated today—that is, the needs of the ACT education system overall.
Dr Foskey and others spoke at some length about why we undertook such a significant reform process. I have debated this probably 30 times in this place in the last 12 months, but I will put it on the record again: changing demographics in this city, declining school age population and declining enrolments in government schools meant that there was a need to make changes in public education systems. As a result
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