Page 2231 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016

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Supplementary answers to questions without notice

Symonston Correctional Centre—security breach

MR RATTENBURY: Mr Wall earlier today asked me about an incident at the Symonston correctional facility. I can report to Mr Wall that, in February 2016, detainees were found to have broken plasterboard of an internal wall of the Symonston correctional facility. Detainees were concealing this plasterboard with a picture or poster. On the other side of that plasterboard, the internal wall was a solid brick wall. This does not even qualify under the definition of an escape in the report on government services, given they had not even got to the brick wall at that point in time. If that is the incident Mr Wall is referring to, I hope that answers his question. If he has further questions, I am happy to take them.

Housing—homelessness

MS BERRY: To help Ms Lawder understand the comments I made about the New South Wales government and the commonwealth rental assistance structure, the commonwealth rental assistance structure has a kind of perverse incentive for governments to sell off or transfer their public housing to the community housing sector. New South Wales are transferring their public housing to the community housing sector, which is about the federal government passing off their responsibilities.

There is no restriction on moving tenants to community housing. However, in the ACT, under the asset recycling initiative agreement, it is specific in that it says that the ACT government needs to retain the 10,848 public housing dwellings. Here in the ACT, the CRA, the commonwealth rental assistance, is helpful, but it is limited in the ACT. We do want to expand our community housing services, but not at the expense of our public housing.

Education

MR DOSZPOT (Molonglo) (3.26): I move:

That this Assembly:

(1) notes that:

(a) it is 10 years and one month since Andrew Barr, as Minister for Education, announced a large school closure plan, called Towards 2020, which proposed the closure of 39 schools, including nearly one-third of all primary schools in the ACT;

(b) the rationale at the time was declining enrolments in many ACT schools, the need to ensure ongoing sustainability and to provide real choice for students;

(c) the plan was highly flawed with costs of small schools over-stated and the savings from the closures overestimated;


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