Page 2291 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Excuse me, can you stop the clock for a minute, Clerk. Members on both sides, Ms Hunter deserves to be heard in silence. Ms Hunter, please resume.
MS HUNTER: Thank you. I also know that I have had conversations with and pushed, and my party has pushed, the Minister for Planning for some allocation of funds in future years for a master planning process for the Tharwa village and the Hall village. We already have one for Pialligo. We have had some agreement from the planning minister to put that into the funding mix. What we can see is that these are small communities, and the school closures did have a major impact on them.
As I have said, at Hall I have worked very closely with that community and enjoy a good working relationship with them. That has ensured that we have got the increased preschool hours, and we have now the option of the non-government school going in there. I understand that there are some discussions going on in that area at the moment.
But back to this idea of the master planning. It is acknowledged that we do want to see a viable, sustainable future for our villages. That means that we need to be also looking at the populations and, particularly down at Tharwa, what other things we can do to build tourism, to build the viability to support the businesses in those towns. And they are the conversations we are having, because we look forward. We look forward to the future. We look at viability and sustainability. We do not hang back in the past, sitting there throwing stones and not trying to work with communities or other parties in this place to try to find solutions. That is the hard work we have been putting in. I would say that I really needed to get that on the record.
What I will also say about this bill is that I am really quite taken aback by some of the comments about what it will not do. It really shows a total lack of understanding of what this amendment is about and how it will work. I was quite gobsmacked by some of the comments made.
I would like to say that I have gone about, my office has gone about, really trying to engage very much with the minister’s office and with Mr Doszpot’s office. Mr Doszpot made some comment about not having had contact or not knowing about it. So I did ask my office to go back and document every email and every meeting. In fact, some of the emails are saying thanks a lot to my office, thank you for the briefing, thank you for the update, thank you for keeping us informed. And that is the process we have used.
Yet when we get to actually trying to find out, back in March when I put this up—I remember it was Monday some time—“Are you going to support this?”, the reply was: “I have to take it to the party room. I will get back to you. Don’t you worry, I will get back to you.” How did I find that out? By opening the Canberra Times the next morning at 6.30, and there was the Liberals’ response: “We will not be supporting it.” I do not think that goes very much to the idea of cooperation, collaboration and working together. Call me naive but I did think that there was going to be a little more involvement here.
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