Both Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Government should offer incentives and cut infrastructure charges to encourage private schools and colleges to renovate buildings in the central city, the Queensland Greens said on Wednesday.
The Queensland Government is struggling to provide classrooms in inner-city Brisbane suburbs where many thousands of apartments have been approved by Brisbane City Council.
This comes as the Destination Brisbane Consortium – the developers of Brisbane's new Queens Wharf integrated resort – said they will eventually pay $272 million for the 99-year lease of the state government land to build the casino.
The Queensland Greens on Thursday proposed building a "vertical school" in a high rise as part of the new Queens Wharf development in George Street near 1 William Street.
Greens' Brisbane Central candidate Kirsten Lovejoy also said Brisbane City Council should offer infrastructure charge reductions and other fee reductions to attract schools to the inner-city in the same way the council successfully offered incentives to attract new five-star hotels to the city.
That is similar to a model used in Melbourne to build a new inner-city school.
"Absolutely, there are so many ways we can look at this," Ms Lovejoy said.
"And the main problem is that this has not been investigated at all over the years," she said.
"We can see schools alternatives popping up in South Australia and in Melbourne where they are looking at different ways of coping with this increasing population.
"And that is just not happening here in Queensland."
Education Queensland is part of the way through a public private partnership to build new schools, which is building schools in outer-residential suburbs.
Greens councillor Jonathan Sri said he would raise the incentives concept in Brisbane City Council, but said it was really an issue that should be addressed by the Queensland Government.
"Council should definitely be smoothing the planning process so that the State Government does not have to jump through all the hoops," Cr Sri said.
"I am open to a conversation about reduced infrastructure charges," he said.
"But I'm not convinced that will solve the deeper problem which is that land is treated as a speculative commodity which is driving up the price of land out of the state government's reach."
Cr Sri said the main problem was the state government land was "gifted" to the casino and integrated resort developers, Destination Brisbane.
That was immediately rejected by the Destination Brisbane consortia, which includes Star Entertainment Group.
"Destination Brisbane Consortium is paying the government $272 million to build the $3 billion Queen's Wharf Brisbane integrated resort development for all Queenslanders to enjoy," stakeholder manager Graham Witherspoon said.
"Our focus is on delivering the equivalent of 12 football fields of public realm and green space, an enhanced bikeway and cycling facilities, a pedestrian bridge that will link the CBD to South Bank as well as attracting more than 1.3 million additional visitors to Queensland each year
New school enrolment figures show an increasing number of students living in inner-city apartments, an issue conceded by Education Minister Kate Jones last week.
This is expected to be confirmed when new census figures are released this year.
On Thursday, the Queensland Greens suggested a "vertical school" in a high rise - similar to recent developments in Melbourne - be built in a revamped new Queens Wharf development, because it was until recently, state-owned land.
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