ELECTORATE SET TO CHANGE
In NSW Government there are 93 members of the Legislative Assembly. Each member has an equal percentage of voters to represent.
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Over time voter movement and the enrollment of new voters causes some electorates to grow while others decline.
After every second state election, there is a redistribution of boundaries by the NSW Electoral Commission to address these changes.
In NSW, a redistribution is due next year. With population growth occurring in Sydney, low population growth in the country and drought in the bush, regional NSW looks likely to lose another representative (electorate) in NSW Parliament.
I am particularly interested to see how the redistribution will affect our electorate of Murray.
I am wondering if we likely to see the electorate of Murray disappear to become part of Barwon and Cootamundra? It may be a very interesting redistribution.
Greg Adamson, Griffith
SCHOOL PLAN QUESTIONED
Recently, the Department of Education, through the high schools, advertised that they would have "information booths" at each site. Who knew that? Only the parents of the two high schools were provided with notification. To my knowledge the public primary school parents of the district weren't notified, you know, the parents whose kids will be attending the schools in the years to come. I attended the Wade High site "information booth" which was staffed by government officials from Sydney from the department's School Infrastructure group and several other people. The display was a couple of tables with a brightly coloured brochure of aspirational artists' impressions of the schools after the rebuild.
A couple of area plans were stuck on a whiteboard. I asked questions like, "How much is this outdoor area rebuild costing?" What's a "vertical circulation hub?" (It's a staircase with a lift beside it). The officials present had no interest in the impact of the whole rebuild on the public high school kids of Griffith, because they were, as they said, only there to provide information about the refurbishments, which in some cases they didn't know. They got quite upset when I pointed out that as a member of the Griffith community, I had a right to challenge their claims that "Such-and-such a learning space will be great for the kids!" A "learning space" is any space that is not a classroom apparently.
Now the punch line! When I said I would be at the "presentation" for P&C members and parents and at the Exies, one of the officials from Sydney said words to the effect that I shouldn't come as it will be the same as the display at the school and I wouldn't learn anything more.
When the Executive Principal, Peter King, arrived at the Exies, he set up a data show visual screen display with numerous plans of just about all sections of the two sites, artists' impressions of numerous rooms and areas, and video representations of a fly-through numerous rooms and areas in the schools. In other words, a totally different display of information to that at Wade High that day that I had attended!
This was just another example of the disaster that has been Adrian Piccoli's brainchild in 2016. And again it was an attempt to mislead the community into believing that simply changing the architecture would suddenly lead to significant improvement in student outcomes. And, by the way, students sitting for NAPLAN in the next few years will probably be doing so in one of the dozen demountables that are being used as classrooms until first stage of the "build" is finished. I was told that the gymnasium for Wade High won't be built until "stage two" some time in the future.
People of Griffith, they think you're mugs who don't understand mirrors and shadows. It would be asking too much of the Berejiklian government to give Griffith its public high schools back along with the money promised by Adrian Piccoli and the government for the schools' capital works.
Kevin Farrell, Beelbangera
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