Parliamentary record : Part I debates (11 November 1986)
Debates for 4th Assembly 1983 - 1987; ParliamentNT; Parliamentary Record; 4th Assembly 1983 - 1987
1986-11-11
Made available by the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory
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Debates
Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
Darwin
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Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory
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https://hdl.handle.net/10070/220605
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/698931
DEBATES - Tuesday 11 November 1986 university in a general sense and Kormilda College. Mr Speaker, I have not the slightest hesitation, knowing the nature of the beast, in saying that I expect the allocation in the budget for the establishment of the university to blowout considerably. Its establishment at the old hospital site raises an old phantom. After 2 years of attempting to get an answer, I would like some final statement from the minister concerned. A dreadful amount of vandalism occurred to public property at the old Darwin Hospital. It is an inexcusable indictment of this government that it allowed that site to be neglected and vandalised for over 3 years. In an attempt to repair some of that vandalism in the member for Port Darwin's electorate, we will have to spend far in excess of what would have been needed for those buildings to be rehabilitated. There is a reason for that which certainly is not the fault of the current Minister for Education. It would have been impossible to have done anything substantial with those buildings during that 3! years because it would have exposed publicly, as it has finally done, the complete myth that existed in the form of the so-called Myilly Point development, the 23-floor office block, the condominiums, the hotels and so on. After 3! years, and 4 days after I had to track through the hospital buildings with a couple of television crews, the Minister for Education announced that the university site would be transferred once again. I began to have visions of students mounted on roller skates in order to keep up with this constantly shifting campus. It moved from University Avenue, Palmerston, to a proposal at the East Arm leprosarium, to Cavenagh Court in Cavenagh Street, to the old Darwin Primary School on which $O.5m was spent and, finally, to the old Darwin Hospital site. Mr Manzie interjecting. Mr B. COLLINS: Mr Speaker, I must say that the Minister for Education with his non-stop monologues today, instead of mere interjections, has become very tiresome indeed. The minister will have an opportunity to reply to this debate so I would ask him to cut out the monologues and say what he wants to say when he gets up. Mr Speaker, what the announcement of the location of the university at the old Darwin Hospital finally did after 3! years was to nail on the head the non-existent and phantom development at Myilly Point. The government was forced finally to admit very publicly that it did not exist. That brings me to the question that I have been pursuing for 18 months. Some 18 months ago, the minister concerned stood up in the Assembly and poured buckets over everyone on the opposition side for daring to suggest that a hotel would not be constructed on the Myilly Point site. He said that the only question to be resolved, and I am quoting from the Hansard as he well knows, was whether this development was to be a 400-room or a 600-room hotel and that he would be making an announcement within 6 weeks as to which one it would be. Mr Dondas: Made in good faith. Mr B. COLLINS: I don't doubt that. I pursued him for the following 2 sittings and finally gave it away as a bad job. Mr Dondas: Well, don't give up yet. Mr B. COLLINS: appropriation debate. I have not given up. Here it is again in the Could I ask the honourable minister again to explain on 821