Falklands : The Hon Mrs Jan Cheek: Motion for Adjournment Speech 23 July 2012
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 30.07.2012 (Article Archived on 13.08.2012)
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, I was somewhat stunned by the suggestion that some of us might need a stair lift. Some of us can run up the stairs depending on the occasion.
The Hon Mrs Jan Cheek: Motion for Adjournment Speech 23 July 2012
Transcript by J. Brock (FINN)
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, I was somewhat stunned by the suggestion that some of us might need a stair lift. Some of us can run up the stairs depending on the occasion.
I would like to support a lot of what the Honourable Gavin Short has said. But the problems and advantages that oil may bring are in fact dependant on the delays and hick-ups that are on the way. We shouldn’t be counting the oil millions yet although preparations are necessary now and I know there is an impression around that nothing was done before the announcement of the farm-in. That’s not true. Many people in Government have been working hard preparing for that time and looking at the things we are going to need. We also have an away day as Members planned very shortly; again to concentrate just on that issue.
We’ve known for a long time that we need to look at our legislation, making sure that we have covered every loophole that we can think of and the regulation that goes with it. Fiscal and taxation matters are in hand. We have already had someone down looking at the taxation legislation. There is a lot of work to do and we mustn’t be railroaded into doing it skimpily or inadequately because people want it done NOW! We need to work through it properly and as far as humanly possible to get it right. And that applies to our environmental protection as well. The oil exploration phase has worked to good standards and explorers have been required to present proper environmental assessments but we need more and we need to be aware of that.
Another caveat – and I don’t want to be too gloomy here – but we know from past experience both at the start of the fishing industry – the carpetbaggers that arrived on the planes hoping to take advantage of the Falklands resource and how they worked very hard trying to prevent Islanders getting involved at all. We had warnings before about the sharks who may circle and dare I say it, born again Islanders who, after cutting their links for 30 or 40 years arrive on the plane with Pound Signs in their eyes because they have read in the Daily Mirror that we are all going to be Billionaires.
Another area where we are working hard to address potential increases in demand is Education and I am part of the working group that’s identified the building needs. Fortunately, due to the wisdom of many past Councils, not just this one, we had reserved a fairly large area of land beyond the Secondary School for Educational purposes. And in this build I hope we will be able to include purpose built facilities for our fairly large number of special needs pupils. At the moment they are camped out sometimes in tiny spaces in the Community School and in just adequately adapted classrooms in the Junior School. We are identifying increasing numbers of special needs (pupils). We must cater for them as best we can with the resources that we have. And I felt there was an unfortunate slant on some of the discussion on the number of new posts in Education – a suggestion that Education somehow was looking for too much. Most of those posts actually relate directly to the special needs of some of our students. And we mustn’t forget that while staff is giving the extra attention needed by those students with special needs we must not neglect the students who don’t have those special needs. So we need to free up teaching time for everyone.
I would like to join Gavin’s congratulations to both the Rifle Club Shooters and the FIDF Teams on their recent successes at Bisley. It does seem that shooting is a sport where we can compete with the best in the world on a pretty level playing field. Most of our other sports struggle to get into the kind of competition that enables them to raise their game.
Finally, I’d like to say a thank-you to the people who said thank-you to us. It’s nice that so many people took the trouble to speak to us after we rushed through the work on preventing the import of psychoactive substances. I cannot remember another issue in which I had been approached by so many people who were so pleased that we have taken that first step. We now have to see if that is having the desired effect and we may have to have more extensive legislation in the future.
I support the Motion.
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