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

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.