Hurlstone decision wrong, wrong, wrong

The State Government will come to regret this decision to relocate Hurlstone Agricultural High School and sell of much of the land it sits on.

It is wrong on so many fronts I really do not know where to start.

First, it is a slap in the face to the people of the south west of Sydney, from Liverpool to Picton and beyond.

To take away from them such a key educational institution is worse than a disgrace; it is downright stupid in this day and age to take good resources from regions like ours which have taken years to fill their cupboard.

To sell the land flies in the face of both common sense as well as the Peters inquiry which found against a proposal by the then State Government to go down the same path.

To its credit, the then Labor government took the advice of Peters and aborted sell off plans.

The current government says it needs the land for housing: rubbish, that’s what we think here in the south west, where we have already copped plans for tens of thousands more homes between Liverpool and Wilton. That’s tens of thousands of homes but no plans for new roads, for new jobs and any other infrastructure that will be needed.

But why relocate Hurlstone Agricultural High even if you sell the land?

Why not re-establish this great school on the same site, which can be turned over to the University of Western Sydney as one of its Macarthur campuses.

This would be a natural fit both with the university but also Macarthur region’s agricultural roots.

“The new Hurlstone Agricultural High School in Hawkesbury, in partnership with Western Sydney University, will be a world leader in high tech agricultural sciences and STEM subjects like science, technology, engineering and maths,” education minister Adrian Piccoli was quoted as saying in the announcement of today.

Nobody’s got a problem with that, except that it won’t be at Glenfield after 89 years there – and it should be there in its new guise.

Selling the land is a political problem no matter what, but if the government were smart they would have sweetened the deal by keeping Hurlstone here as a new age school with all the resources all those millions of housing dollars could buy.

But don’t under estimate how dumb politicians can be. The education minister is just another in a long line of dumb politicians who got it wrong on a major issue.

But it is our smiling premier, Mike Baird, who will be damaged in the long term, because surely he gave the thumbs up to his education minister’s outrageous insult to the people of south west Sydney.

And the buck must ultimately stop with Mr Baird.

In any case, it’s early days and one hopes the government wakes up to itself and changes this ridiculous decision.

If Mr Baird is as smart as he looks he will act quickly to keep the damage to a minimum.