Speech in the ACT Legislative Assembly

2 April 2009

Canberra and the ACT are often used synonymously – when in fact, as we all realise, the ACT includes not just Canberra but a whole range of rural land holders, communities and villages.  The ACT has many people who face the same regional and rural challenges, and indeed opportunities, as those across the border in southern New South Wales. 

The Ginninderra electorate includes two areas outside of the district of Belconnen. One is the Gungahlin suburb of Nicholls, and the other is the village of Hall.

Hall has a proud history – the village takes it name from Henry Hall, one of the first landholders in the area.  He purchased land in 1833 in what was then the Ginninderra Shire.  His homestead was named Charnwood and he owned land which included where the suburbs of Dunlop, Fraser, Charnwood and Flynn are now built.

Hall was founded in 1882 and to this day continues to provide an invaluable role to the rural landholders surrounding the village as a retail and social centre. 

Unlike most of the ACT, Hall doesn’t depend on government sector jobs – it is a dynamic community with self-starting small businesses and enterprises that create opportunities for the younger generation. 

It is worth looking at the history of the Hall Primary School as a tribute to the pioneering dedication of those early settlers in the community, and the ongoing dedication and unity of the community today. 

In a letter to the editor on 5 July 2006, Tony Morris recalls a story from the opening of the school.  He recalls how the Hall and District Progress Association in 1906 volunteered to build the building and sought a teacher from the NSW Government.   The letter said:
“If we obtain your permission to do so, we will proceed to build [the school] at once as we can assure you we feel very strongly the wrong our children are suffering by existing circumstances [without a school] and we are quietly determined to remedy it in some way.”

The NSW Government agreed, and before the school closure was announced in 2006 it was the longest continuously operating school in the ACT.  Whilst the community will remained, the bureaucratic won’t prevailed, and the school was closed in 2006 as part of that horror budget the government said we had to have.  One of the most particularly callous and heartless measures to come out of that budget was the closure of schools in villages in the ACT without consideration for the particular role these institutions played at the heart of these communities. 

The now closed Hall Primary School houses the Laurie Copping museum – a recreated 1911 class room.  Laurie Copping OAM was a long serving principal of the school and showed a lifelong dedication to children’s learning.  He was instrumental in setting up the museum and since his passing has been sorely missed by the community.

This discussion of the school goes to the central theme of the MPI today – the viability of villages in the ACT. 

Of late, the village has had a tough time. The school has closed, the doctor’s surgery has left, and, in addition to that, ACTION does not service the area. Fortunately, Transborder (operated by Deane’s Transit Group) provides a good service taking students, workers and shoppers to Belconnen and Canberra City.

The previous Liberal Government achieved quite a few things with the Hall community – including sealing the streets of the village, and completing refurbishments at the showground and oval.

Hall has a number of active community groups including the umbrella organisation, the Hall and District Progress Association. The association has been active in many areas of late, including advocating for keeping the Hall Primary School open (an effort the Canberra Liberals supported), making submissions and giving feedback to ACTPLA and running what has to be one of the best community website in the ACT: hall.act.au.

I commend Alastair Crombie and his team for all the good work they do.

I am sorry to hear that the project to get a community bank for the village has been suspended but I understand that it will be reconsidered every four months until it is viable.  Raising the capital for such a venture during these uncertain economic times is quite difficult.  I do commend the steering committee for their work so far and hope that not too far down the track, the capital will be raised. 

Villages in the ACT, including Hall, do not demand much from Government.  They don’t expect to be excessively subsidised or use welfare as a substitute for hard work.  All that the villages in the ACT desire is a Government that realises suburban policy is not suited to rural villages, and that their unique circumstances should be considered.

The community rightly expects that Government ensures their needs are met and aspirations can be realised.  They would expect that the ACT Government would realise that a school can survive and flourish in a village like Hall and that the Government should facilitate this.  We saw in the early 1900s what was achieved when the NSW Government worked with the community – and I am disappointed that the ACT Government can not find the same willingness to work with our rural communities.   It is a cruel irony that the ACT Government is supposed to be closer to the community than our NSW or Federal cousins, yet Macquarie Street Sydney was more responsive to the concerns of Hall than is London Circuit Canberra.

I hope the ACT Government takes note of the importance of the viability of rural villages in the ACT and that Government policy starts to reflect that.