Noel Pearson-Submission to Noosa Shire Council (Good Shepherd College)

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to the school level leadership. This appalling scheme was not cooked up at Lutheran
Church headquarters, it lies squarely with Anthony Dyer and his Council. It is they
who have conjured up this deal or allowed it to come forward.

That Anthony Dyer and his Council have a base fiscal motivation is evident in his
letter to parents dated 10 December where he states:

“Sale proceeds will benefit the College

It is important for our college community to understand that the land is being
sold for the benefit of the college and its students. In 2014 the College
decided the land being developed was not required and that its sale would
better position the College for future development of major facilities.”

That a school leadership would propose such a violation of its own school
community and institution is what is so strange about this situation. In the normal
course it would be the school and its leadership that would be opposing such an
incompatible development such as is proposed here. One could not imagine
anything more antithetical to a school environment and precinct than a service
station at the corner of its two street frontages, and yet it is the school’s principal
and its council who have caused this proposal to arise. And who are supporting its
approval. And resisting the concerns of its parent community through a failure to be
upfront about its own complicity in the proposal, and through its pressure on staff
who share the objections of the college community.

It therefore falls to the Noosa Shire Council to protect the integrity of the long-term
future of the Good Shepherd Lutheran College as an institution of learning. Its
current principal and council have failed egregiously in their responsibility to look
after the interests of their own school community — therefore it is up to your Council
to show the wisdom that the school’s current leaders lack.

With greatest respect, | submit the following considerations should inform your
consideration of this development application:

1. Aschool is an institution for the ages

This is the aspect of this whole matter that is so disappointing: the failure of the
current school leadership to understand that they are trustees not just of a school,
but of an institution of learning that is emerging out of 25 years of its foundation
years and entering its callow youth. Like some of the older schools in the Noosa
region such as Tewantin State Primary School, GSLC aspires to be a long-term
institution in this community — not just a temporary business or even short to
medium term community use. With schools, as with churches, the place, the
purpose and the community are not transient: they have a permanence that is unlike
other commercial or community ‘uses’.

GSLC aspires to be a school in 100 years time, if it be the Lord’s will.

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It aspires to nurture the children of Noosa for many generations to come, and its
Lutheran charter means that the traditions and teachings of our church will be
taught at this school for as long as this school stands.

There are countless schools around the world now hundreds of years old. There are
many schools in Australia entering their second century. Our most esteemed
Lutheran schools are now well into the second half of their first hundred years.

Our school is one of a large number of young church schools, but there is no reason
to believe that it should not aspire to become a long-term institution. | am sure it
was the vision of its founders and supporters from the beginning.

Schools are not temporary endeavours and their proper stewardship therefore
requires its trustees to take the long view — both backwards and forwards.

The current leaders owe it to all the parents and community members whose
students attended GSLC over its first 25 years to ensure they do not derogate from
the good standing and developing institutional presence in the Noosa community.
This is after all their alma mater. To call a school one’s alma mater — nourishing
mother — is a sacred matter. This place of learning has a special place in the hearts
of these past students: the school leadership owes them a trust to keep sustaining
their school into the future and growing the capital which each of its past scholars
and their families have invested in its foundation years. This social and cultural
(perhaps more truly, spiritual) capital that a developing institution grows over time —
is the most important capital a schooling institution needs.

Anthony Dyer and the College Council are animated by short term financial capital
considerations, not the important capital of the school.

The current leaders owe a trusteeship to the present parents and community
members and their students attending GSLC. That the proposed development raises
some very concerning health and other impacts — social, health, environmental,
traffic and safety — is the subject of many other submissions | have read in relation to
this application. | support the concerns that have been put forward, and cannot
believe that the current leaders have failed their duty of trusteeship in respect of
these concerns. | propose not to deal with these grounds for objection except to say
that | believe they are cogent, and are good grounds for Noosa Shire Council to
decline this development.

And of course the current school leaders owe a trusteeship to the future parents and
community of Noosa who may send their children to GSLC. Who wants a school to
be marred by a service station? Who wants the ongoing worries associated with its
environmental impact to hang over its future students?

lam reminded that the proposed development will be 50 metres from the toddlers’
swimming pool. This is the pool where my own children learn to swim. | have been
in the water with my youngest daughter’s earliest swimming lessons. How could | in

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good conscience not want for future children and their parents the same amenity
and peace of mind | enjoyed in the use and enjoyment of GSLC’s facilities?

This tawdry deal which the current school leaders have led the college into, is a
violation of their trusteeship to Good Shepherd Lutheran College as an institution of
learning. Right in the middle of the school precinct. At the very corner of its two
street frontages. This will mean that neither from the Eumundi-Noosa Road aspect,
nor from the Walter Hay Drive aspect, will one’s view of the college not be
compromised by the incompatible and quite frankly, ugly, view of a service station as
the frontage for the school.

Service stations are essential and welcome in appropriate places. In the middle of a
school precinct is not an appropriate space, no matter the potential commercial
opportunity of its situation for the proponent developers.

2. No other school in the Shire has such an incompatible land use affronting
its visual amenity and clear set-aside as a school

There is no other school in the region which has such an inappropriate commercial
development in the middle of its school precinct: Tewantin, Sunshine Beach,
Noosaville — it is inconceivable that those holding these schools in trust would put
their schools in such a situation.

Would Matthew Flinders school expose their institution to such a foolish prospect as
the current school leaders of GSLC are doing? They too deal in real estate and have
fiscal challenges they need to resolve: but would they sell their trust for a mess of
pottage?

The technical basis for the objection to this kind of ugly intrusion into the frontage of
a school is visual amenity, but the amenity goes deeper beneath the surface, as |
have sought to argue in the first section of this submission.

The Noosa community needs good schooling institutions over the next century. Why
could not Good Shepherd be as esteemed as my old alma mater, St Peters, in time?
Noosa needs first-tier schools for the future: with the capacity to educate children to
the highest standards of achievement and social justice.

To allow the current school leadership to make a tawdry, short-term, real estate
transaction, because of some shortsighted fiscal imperatives, and compromise the
long-term vision of the school as one of Noosa’s network of fine schools — is
something the Shire Council should step in and avoid. To show a vision which the
current school leadership does not. To show a sense of trusteeship which they have
failed to uphold.

3. GSLC leaders should not be allowed to make a windfall out of land which it
gained from the Shire Council because of its school purposes

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The Noosa Shire Council was the owner of this land. GSLC acquired it, apparently at
a price not much greater than its reserve at auction, in 2007. The college got this
land from the Council at such a generous price, because of its obvious best use

as schooling facilities.

| do not pretend to know the extent to which the property was therefore obtained at
a discount from the Shire. But it seems clear that there was a discount.

In a school newsletter sent to school parents in December 2007, under the principal-
ship of John Mason, the following account is given of the circumstances prior to the
acquisition of the property from the Shire Council:

The 5019 square meter block on the corner of Eumundi Noosa Road and
Walter Hay Drive, owned by the Noosa Shire Council, will be auctioned on 13"
December. This block shares a common boundary with our new HPE Center
and swimming pool. Because the council rezoned the land from community
use to industrial/service, the successful bidder could establish a service station
on the site. Marketing material distributed by the auctioneer identifies this
type of development. We are somewhat alarmed by the prospect of fuel
storage tanks and fuel vapours being so close.

The decision to sell the land at auction — and at such short notice — has taken
us completely by surprise. Several years ago, the Good Shepherd College
Council sought to buy this block from the Noosa Shire Council for the same
price per square meter we paid for the land in which the HPE Center,
swimming pool, and associated car and bus parking now sits, without success.
Then in response to a call for tenders, we applied to lease it, but again with
no success.

Nevertheless this remains a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire land
around our boundary -— to build a performing arts centre, or a technology
training centre, or to further expand the facilities for health and further
education.

For the current school leaders to now propose to be partners in the very kind of
development that was the subject of such anxiety in 2007 (“we are somewhat
alarmed by the prospect of fuel storage tanks and fuel vapours being so close”), and
in relation to which the then school leaders had sought help from the school
community — is what makes this whole deal so tawdry.

The current school leaders in effect propose that they should gain a windfall from a
real estate development deal in circumstances where the land was obtained from
the Noosa Shire Council at a discount in 2007 — on the basis that the land’s best use
is for schooling purposes. The ratepayers of Noosa subsidized the acquisition of this
land. The parents of Good Shepherd have been contributing to the servicing of the
debt through the school’s Building Fund. How can the current school leaders be
allowed to realize a windfall gain in such a circumstance?

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If the land had not been discounted to GSLC by the Shire Council and the land had
been retained by the Council or sold to another person or entity, and the service
station development that is now proposed provided no such windfall to the college —
would not the current leaders of the college be joined with the parent community in
objecting to this development application? Of course they would. It was the then
school’s leadership that aroused the concern of service station development in 2007.
It is this very scenario that is now playing out. Except this time the current school
leadership is party to the tawdry transaction.

In closing my submission, the Noosa Shire Council should reject this development
application. The current school leadership cannot complain of any detriment from
their inability to extract a windfall from a situation where the Shire Council had
allowed the school to acquire the block for its obvious best use for schooling
purposes. You can’t complain about a potential development when you are not the
owner, acquire the land for a more noble purpose, and then be allowed to flog the
land off for the same kind of development you originally complained about. The
current school leaders of GSLC should not be allowed to get away with this myopic
abuse of the trust they owe to their school. In the absence of them knowing what is
the right thing to do, Noosa Shire Council should show them.

Yours faithfully,

Noel Pearson
[email protected]