Flynn’s proposal for childcare has been discussed in the Estimates Hearing this week. An extract from the Proof Transcript is below.
THE CHAIR: Okay. I understand there is going to be work done on two childcare facilities for west Belconnen. Have you looked at Flynn primary school as an alternative to the two that you are looking at? We have certainly received representations suggesting it would be a better alternative.
Ms Gallagher: The money in the third appropriation is $435,000 to progress the forward design for two new childcare centres that we made some announcements on as part of the election. In that context the commitment was around one in west Belconnen and one in Weston Creek, which is where some of our data is certainly indicating the need for additional childcare services.
There are views particularly around the west Belconnen site. There is certainly some view that it needs to be close to Dunlop as having, I think, the highest level of under-four-year-olds in that area. There are some views from existing childcare providers about some land in Charnwood and then I have also had representations recently around the use of Flynn primary school.
My correspondence with the organisation that is seeking to have Flynn primary school used was that we had not considered that as a potential site because of the legal action that was being undertaken and I certainly did not want to be seen to be acting in an inflammatory way by pre-empting any of those processes. In addition, there has been an application sought for heritage listing. So I have responded saying that there are these things outstanding that would need to be finalised before we would consider its use as a childcare centre. They wrote back to me last week wanting to meet with me so I think that is probably the best thing that I do in terms of progressing that discussion.
This work is really to design the facilities but also to finalise the appropriate location for them. I guess we do not have a predetermined view of where that should be. I have some ideas of where people want it to be, but I think that is the reason behind this work.
From: http://www.hansard.act.gov.au/hansard/2009/comms/public07A.pdf
Standing Commmittee on Public Accounts, Proof Transcript of Evidence, Wednesday 4 March, pp5-6.
