Mr WOOD - 2002-10-16
Your government is presently building a temporary child care centre at the old Tiwi campus. Could you please confirm whether Environmental Health and Children’s Services have raised concerns about the suitability of this building as a child care centre? What is the future of this demountable building? How much did it cost to build this facility? Could you say why this temporary child care facility was built in Queensland and not in the Territory?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question. No, we are not building a temporary child care centre. We are negotiating with the current operator of the child care centre at Tiwi to finalise her lease and build a new purpose-built child care facility. The simple reason for that is that the building in which the child care is housed is not the best; I can say that. It was built in the 1970s, and like many buildings of that era, it contains a lot of asbestos. It was given to the university which rented it to the current operator. The then government took it back for a number of millions of dollars but it did not spend any money to maintain it. As a result, the building continued to fall apart and I now have a situation where I have a building full of asbestos that is falling apart and houses a child care centre.
We have had successful negotiations with the current operator. We have already commenced the demolition of part of the building because it was not safe. We will continue to complete the demolition when the new purpose-built child care centre is built by the current operator.
The transportables you referred to were brought in as a temporary measure to move the child care to transportables away from the building. However, it was considered better and easier to build a new child care centre far away from the building than house it in transportables.
These transportables, however, belong to the government. They were purchased by the government and they are going to be used for other similar purposes. There was no concern from the Children’s Services and Environmental Health about the quality of the building; there were some concerns about some areas of the building and the configuration of the building that my department is going to consider.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question. No, we are not building a temporary child care centre. We are negotiating with the current operator of the child care centre at Tiwi to finalise her lease and build a new purpose-built child care facility. The simple reason for that is that the building in which the child care is housed is not the best; I can say that. It was built in the 1970s, and like many buildings of that era, it contains a lot of asbestos. It was given to the university which rented it to the current operator. The then government took it back for a number of millions of dollars but it did not spend any money to maintain it. As a result, the building continued to fall apart and I now have a situation where I have a building full of asbestos that is falling apart and houses a child care centre.
We have had successful negotiations with the current operator. We have already commenced the demolition of part of the building because it was not safe. We will continue to complete the demolition when the new purpose-built child care centre is built by the current operator.
The transportables you referred to were brought in as a temporary measure to move the child care to transportables away from the building. However, it was considered better and easier to build a new child care centre far away from the building than house it in transportables.
These transportables, however, belong to the government. They were purchased by the government and they are going to be used for other similar purposes. There was no concern from the Children’s Services and Environmental Health about the quality of the building; there were some concerns about some areas of the building and the configuration of the building that my department is going to consider.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016