Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had the good fortune of being in your electorate last week, Mr Deputy Speaker Causley. Lismore is a wonderful place. People are very concerned about the industrial relations laws, of course, like every other community in Australia—concerned that the Howard government has enacted very extreme, harsh provisions and imposed its will on working people across the country. I think you would know this as the local member. The people in Lismore are indeed very concerned about a number of things. One is the fact that now they can be dismissed without cause. Even small businesses in your electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker, are concerned, in that they do not want to reduce their staff’s employment conditions but they are fearful that, if their competitors do, they will be forced to do the same. The legislation allows bad employers to do bad things and forces good employers to consider doing the same. They know that in Lismore, and I thought I would just pass that on to you.

I want to raise an issue that has arisen very recently in my own electorate. It is to do with an application for land by Christ the Priest Catholic Primary School, which made application for land that is held by Delfin, the company that, along with other companies, has been developing Caroline Springs. They made application very recently. They had a view that they were given an undertaking that they would be given an extra piece of land to ensure that their students would be able to move to the second campus, because of the extraordinary and exponential growth of the community in that region of the electorate.

However, instead of ensuring that that application went to the Catholic Education Office, Delfin chose to provide that land to Independent Colleges Australia. Of course, as we know, if that is not a subsidiary of ABC Learning, it was established by that company. In effect, many would argue that it is a for-profit company looking to set up a primary school. It would be the first primary school in Victoria that would be run by a company that is on the stock market, I would allege, and I have grave concerns that that would take place.

Forty-five per cent of the constituents in the region of Caroline Springs are Catholic. Many were given undertakings by Delfin that they would have a place to put their children in those schools, and now they feel that they have not been given that right. I think it is important that the governments at both the state and federal level examine whether they want to provide funding to a for-profit organisation that wants to set up a primary school in Victoria. I certainly have grave concerns about that happening.