Page 516 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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Mr Barr: It is 340,000.
MR HARGREAVES: It is 340,000. I am corrected by the minister for education, who has just seen a massive surge in educational uptake in the public education system, centred on, no doubt, all of the goody-good things that his schools are doing with the kids around green waste. What are they doing? Where does it happen? In our schools. They are leading the charge. Go down to any one of the schools in the Lanyon Valley—Mr Gentleman’s electorate and my electorate; Mr Pratt might not know where it is, but that is where it is—
DR FOSKEY: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order of relevance. I will repeat the question: what is it about the ACT that makes green waste pick-up programs more difficult to run here than in Queanbeyan and/or Eurobodalla?
Members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR HARGREAVES: We will not talk about relevance; that is a completely different story altogether. One of the reasons we do not have, for example, yet another bin out in front of everybody’s letterbox next to the police officer is that it costs an absolute fortune to pick it all up—to have a contractor come around and do it with a third bin.
Dr Foskey believes that the Eurobodalla shire is doing such a wonderful job. I will go—not this weekend; not next weekend; but a very close weekend—down to Eurobodalla Shire Council and see the good burghers in Narooma and ask them—over a bottle of Oyster Bay wine, of course. That is what the Canberra Times expects me to do on a Thursday. And that is what I will do. I will find out what it is that they are doing that we are not that is so wonderful. Quite frankly, the ACT is doing very, very well, thank you.
Dragway
MR STEFANIAK: My question is to another minister, Mr Barr, the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation. Minister, my question relates to the dragway. You have now received the federal minister for finance’s response to your request for land on which to build a dragway, which closes off the government’s last option to build a dragway. Minister, what alternative uses for the $8 million appropriated for the dragway have you considered?
MR BARR: The government is of course considering a number of different options in the context of this year’s budget. I indicated to Mr Stefaniak in annual report hearings last week that I had written to the three relevant ministers in the previous federal Liberal government. I have written again to the three relevant ministers in the new government and, sadly, have received the same answer in terms of the availability of the former dragway site and the availability of a further piece of commonwealth land within the territory. That would seem to lead to there being no available site within the territory for a dragway.
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