Woy Woy TAFE Site

About this Item
Speakers - Andrews Ms Marie; Aquilina Mr John
Business - Private Members Statements

WOY WOY TAFE SITE

Ms ANDREWS (Peats) [6.36]: The future use of the former TAFE site in Shoalhaven Drive, Woy Woy, is a matter of wide community interest in the Woy Woy peninsula area. The site had been set aside for the past 20 years for educational purposes. In 1989, however, TAFE made a decision that the site was too small for a college, the site being only 20 per cent of the area required. A vigorous public campaign which ensued shortly afterwards succeeded in having the auction withdrawn. There have been some murmurs since then about the future use of the site, but more recently there has been a wholesale eruption. The position I have consistently adopted since my election last year as the member for Peats has been for the retention of the site for educational purposes - a view also held by a number of Woy Woy community organisations. More recently, TAFE decided to dispose of the site and it gave Gosford City Council first option.

However, council decided that it did not want the land. TAFE then tried to sell off the site by way of a public auction. Rather than see State Government-owned land fall into the hands of private developers, I wrote to the Minister for Education and Training, the Hon. John Aquilina, requesting that the land be used for meeting the big demand in the area for public housing. I am aware that there are thousands of people currently on the waiting lists for public housing on the central coast because of the incompetent handling of that portfolio by the previous Liberal Party-National Party Government. Many people in the Peats electorate have been waiting eight or nine years, or in some cases even more, for an aged unit. The Minister responded by calling off the public auction.

As a result of the public debate which had occurred in the local community over this issue, I sought and was granted approval to lead a deputation to the Minister of six local community-minded residents, namely Heather McKenzie, Chris Etherington, John Lovell, Ron Clifton, Councillor Judith Penton of Gosford City Council and Bruce Penton, secretary of the Peats State Electorate Council of the Australian Labor Party. The result of that meeting with the Minister was very positive. The Minister confirmed that he had cancelled the public auction of the land but he was adamant that a TAFE college would not be constructed on the site. This was because the site was too small and did not comply with the TAFE commission's reasoning for some form of rationalisation of TAFE facilities on the central coast.

The Minister did, however, accept the proposal strongly put forward by the delegation that all funds gained by the Government from either the lease or sale of the said land be ploughed back into providing courses for students residing on the peninsula. He also accepted that the possibility of utilising facilities already available in the two local high schools, that is, Umina and Woy Woy, would be explored. The Minister indicated that a community committee would be set up and that committee would be charged with a number of tasks, including the future community use of the former TAFE site. I was able to inform the Minister that already I had been approached by a local church organisation which had expressed a keen interest in utilising the site for the building of an aged care project. There is a high demand for more palliative care, nursing beds, hostel and self-care accommodation for the aged on the central coast, and in particular on the Woy Woy peninsula where there is a large ageing population.

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If the way could be made clear to allow such a project to go ahead, it would indeed be of great benefit not only to the electorate of Peats but to the entire central coast. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for Education and Training for cancelling the public auction of the land in Shoalhaven Drive and for ordering a review into the future community use of the land. Further, I congratulate the Minister for his and the Government's commitment to vastly improve TAFE education on the central coast with an injection of $18 million into the Gosford, Ourimbah and Wyong campuses.

Mr AQUILINA (Riverstone - Minister for Education and Training, and Minister Assisting the Premier on Youth Affairs) [6.40]: I extend my congratulations to the honourable member for Peats on the way in which she has pursued her representations in this matter. From the very beginning this was not an easy issue in that the block of land that had previously been purchased for the Woy Woy college of technical and further education was much too small, as the honourable member for Peats has indicated, and clearly did not come up to the standards required today for a TAFE college. The land had been put forward for public auction but following a number of representations made by the honourable member for Peats and in response to community concerns expressed about the land being sold off, I called off the public auction and agreed to meet a deputation led by the honourable member for Peats to explain community wishes on the matter.

Several representatives of community organisations, including Gosford City Council, attended the meeting. They put forward a very strong argument that the land be retained in such a way as to provide a public facility for the people of Gosford and the surrounding district and that if the land was not to be retained in public ownership it should be marketed to an organisation that would provide a service to the local community. One idea we considered to achieve this aim was the provision of public housing. Rather than that, though, we are now examining the use of the land for some kind of nursing-home arrangement with the local church. Whilst we are still in very early days, I have a great deal of confidence that the issue can be resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned. I particularly congratulate the honourable member for Peats on the way in which she is handling this matter and continues to follow it through.

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