Wednesday, 18 October 2023

Matters of public importance

Children

The SPEAKER (16:01): I have received a statement from the member for Preston proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house notes the importance that the Allan Labor government has put on helping Victorian children thrive by:

(1) making kinder free;

(2) delivering hundreds of new and upgraded schools;

(3) making it free to study to become a secondary school teacher in Victoria;

(4) opening 50 new government-owned childcare centres;

(5) supporting students with additional funding upgrades to every government specialist school in Victoria; and

(6) funding the biggest ever investment in care services to deliver improved outcomes for children in residential care.

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (16:01): I rise to propose and speak to the matter that you have read out, Speaker. There is a lot in that matter, as you have just read out, but that is because there is a lot that this Andrews–Allan Labor government has done. I would like to begin by talking about the work we have done for children with a disability, because supporting those students in particular is so crucial to our government’s values of fairness and inclusion. There are a lot of different ways that we can measure the incidence of disability in the community, but broadly speaking about one in 40 students require extensive support in their schooling. An additional one in 20 require what is referred to as substantial support, and then beyond that there is another one in six students who require a lower level of support but certainly do need some adjustments to be made within a conventional classroom set-up. When we add those three groups together, one in four Victorian students needs some form of support, and providing that support is a critically important mission for this government. We do have to recognise that there is a great deal of diversity within disability. Students may come to school with vision impairments. They may come with hearing loss. They may come with autism. Students may need a feeding tube to feed. And we know that mental health is health, and there can often be quite complex interactions between different forms of disability.

There is a lot we are doing as a government to support children with disability, but I wanted to focus, within the additional $3 billion that this government has put into inclusive education, on our flagship $1.6 billion disability inclusion reforms, which arose from the 2015 review undertaken by former minister James Merlino. The new disability inclusion model will replace the existing program for students with disabilities, and probably the most important component of it is that it replaces the old brackets that we had. There were seven or eight brackets that the program for students with disabilities had. I think there is a recognition that those brackets were too crude. I think there is a recognition that they sometimes missed some students out. We are moving away from that, and we are now moving to a much more individualised system that allows each student with a disability to get the support that they need. As one local principal has described it to me, it is essentially the NDIS model applied to schools and applied to disability support within schools. We know that the NDIS model is important to give people the individualised support they need, and that is what we are doing with these reforms.

An additional important thing about the new system is that the reforms do widen the scope of those who will be provided with support, and that is important for two reasons. One is that it has often been the case that schools that have a high number of students who need substantial support also have a high number of students who may need less substantial support but still some support, and we want to make sure that those schools were not burdened, if you like, by the fact that they did not have the funding that they needed to make those less substantial but still important adjustments to their classroom practice. That is why we have widened the scope. In talking to principals, certainly in Preston and Reservoir, I think there is also a great deal of appreciation for the fact that the widened scope now means that some students who have very complex behavioural challenges are supported by the scheme when previously they were not. A valuable aspect of it in particular is that some places where you previously needed to get a diagnosis in order to get the support you needed are now largely independent of those diagnoses, and that is a good thing for ensuring students get what they need.

There is now a three-tiered model that we use. There is some base funding that applies to every school. There is some funding for whole-of-school measures that is based on an index of the socio-economic or socio-educational background of the students. That is important because we know that supporting students with disability is a partnership between their families and the school. Families will come to a school with different levels of resourcing and capability to support their child, and every principal knows sometimes a school may need to step in with additional support where a family does not have it. It is very important to this government that that is possible and that is done. That is why that tier 2 funding is provided in the way it is. Finally, there is the tier 3 bit, which provides the individualised support to which I referred.

There is a very important shift in focus in our disability reform these days. We focus a lot more now on what students can do, not what they cannot do, and we really encourage a collaborative approach in which students and their families, teachers, staff and health professionals all come together to support that student. Those two things, the more individualised approach and that more collaborative approach, come together in the 10-week assessments that are essentially the key feature of the new system, where each student is assessed over 10 weeks and then a funding program is put in place.

I do want to acknowledge that the additional, better and stronger assessments that we are doing require more work of teachers and require more work of staff, and we are grateful to teachers and staff for the additional work they are doing. I know there is a lot of compliance work in it, and I know that teachers who support students with a disability are already doing a lot of work through their student support groups and other measures. We are very keen to make sure that we do not burden teachers and staff unnecessarily, but at the same time, because these reforms assess student needs better, they will inevitably need some additional time and effort to go into those assessments.

We do note that the Victorian Auditor-General's Office released a report looking at this government’s disability inclusion reforms. Those who have been around the public service will know that VAGO is not always glowing in its assessment of government programs, but I think it was very pleasing to see VAGO’s strong endorsement of the approach this government is taking. They noted that we will need to really make an effort to support schools in the implementation of the new model. Schools come to disability support from very different places. I know locally in Preston and Reservoir some schools are very experienced, some less so, so we certainly will be supporting schools appropriately to ensure they can roll out this new program. In our part of the world they are preparing right now for a full rollout in 2024.

A big part of making this work of course will be continuing to listen carefully both to schools and also to students with a disability and their families. We have our new Victorian Disability Advisory Council. We have other groups that allow those with lived experience to feed into the system. We have young people. We have carers. We have First Nations Victorians in those groups. We have culturally diverse Victorians and LGBTQIA+ Victorians. We are really making sure that we are getting a breadth of lived experience within the feedback that we are seeking. We have made some changes, as some members here would know, for instance, to the visiting teachers program, and there have been some other changes based on the feedback that we have received. I wanted to focus on that change to disability inclusion because it really, as I say, is the flagship and I think is making a huge difference and will make a huge difference to the lives of children with disability.

Outside of that but still within schools there are a couple of other really important things I wanted to touch on. We have expanded outside school hours care for specialised schools, and we will have done that for 30 schools by 2026. We are also expanding the students with disabilities transport program, which helps students get to their school. Both those things are important for students, but they are very important for parents. They take pressure off parents, and we do know that being a parent of a child with a disability can be tough. There is a very, very tough thing we sometimes hear about where parents bring their child to the school and then they get to the end of the school day and they say ‘I don’t want my child back’. There is a term, ‘relinquishment’, for when that happens, and it is an incredibly difficult thing. I know it has happened and does happen sometimes in our part of the world. I think of that often in just thinking about the incredible pressure that a parent must be under to do that. That is why our reforms like outside school care and student transport may not sound as big as the key reform, but they are just as important to give parents every bit of support we can to support their child and to care for their child and hopefully to care for their child within their family.

In addition, there has been some very important work done, as we are doing right across government, in workforce support. We are supporting teachers and regional staff to undertake the masters of inclusive education program. We are supporting 1700 teachers to complete the Inclusive Classrooms professional learning program. We are of course making studying teaching free – a great reform. As the Minister for Health alluded to earlier today, we have workplace initiatives to ensure that our health workforce – and we know how important that workforce is to children with a disability – is as strong as it can be, particularly in regional areas, as the minister alluded to. We are also making some important changes to the way that school support for disability interacts with out-of-school support. There are now NDIS navigators. The NDIS is such a big thing in the lives of so many people who have a disability, including children with disability, and we want to make sure that the school support and the NDIS support work together as best as they can.

We have now – and I think it is a great reform of this government – TAFE transition officers, and I know this comes up locally. It is actually very difficult when students with disability, particularly those who do require more extensive support, get to the age of 17 or 18 and they will have had 30 hours of very structured support and then they finish school and they drop off into a very, very different world. Our TAFE transition support program is about making sure that when they get to the end of school there is something for them to go to.

In addition, and I want to sort of finish on this, we have upgraded every specialist school in the state – all of them. Those capital improvements are important. There is, I should note, a bit of a debate going on at the moment about the use of specialist schools or general schools for disability education. I will not touch on that. I think there has always been a longstanding tension between none of us wanting to stigmatise children with a disability but also recognising that of course they need more help. There will be different views on the different models, but I would note locally that we have 600 people waiting to get into the Northern School for Autism. They could double the size of that school tomorrow if they could take the people, so there is clearly a significant proportion of our community who are still looking for that specialist-based school support.

There is a lot more I could say about the work that we are doing to support children with disability. It is a really important area and one in which the government has done a tremendous amount of work over its three terms. Ultimately all the elements of the work we are doing and all the elements of this matter come back to a common value, which is the idea that our education system is here not just to make our society more prosperous but to make it fairer and more inclusive. Fundamental to that is the universal nature of it. We want students to come out as 17- or 18-year-olds knowing that they had the same chances as all of their peers. We know that – I think particularly of my parents’ generation, or our parents’ generation – it was not always the case. People would come out of Northcote High or Reservoir High or Footscray High – high schools that are represented by members here. If we think back, historically they were regarded as tough schools. There was perhaps even some romanticisation of having gone to these schools and coming out of them having survived. I do not begrudge anyone their working-class cred in that, but as a government we do not want those stories to be told. We want every school to be a good school. We do not want schools of hard knocks, as it were, and I should note importantly that all those schools I just mentioned are now great schools represented by great local members.

We had last month the former Minister for Education up to Reservoir High, which of course is now a great school. She opened the new design technology centre there. I think I can say that right now students at Reservoir High have the newest building anywhere in our electorate, and we are thankful to school principal Katie Watmough and student leaders Amelie, Torey, Aidan and Kaitlyn for showing us around. We will keep working with them to ensure that Reservoir High is a great school. We do know – it is just a truth – that historically schools that may have been those schools of hard knocks that let students down were often in areas where students had the highest level of need. Historically we had an education system – when this government came to power in 2014 we certainly had such an education system – that in places was making disadvantage worse, not making it better. We are so proud that we now have done so much work to make sure that early childhood care and education is universal and accessible, to make sure students have all of the facilities and teachers they need all over the state, and to invest in inclusion, as I said, through specialist schools and disability inclusion to ensure those students are supported, ultimately leading to a situation, to come back to where I started, where students come out of the school system knowing that they had exactly the chances that all of their peers had.

I know that the former Premier had a real urgency about him with those issues. I know that the new Premier shares that urgency. If you go back to 2014 and look at the very first contributions of this government – the contributions of the then Deputy Premier and the member for Mordialloc on that first day – you can see the urgency that they had to reform the system that we inherited from the previous Liberal government.

Members interjecting.

Nathan LAMBERT: Thank you, member for Lowan, for assisting me with my notes.

This government knew from day one its values. It set about implementing them, it has devoted itself to acting on those values, and I commend the matter to the house.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (16:16): I am pleased to rise to speak on this matter of public importance (MPI) today. Following on from the member for Preston’s remarks when it comes to ensuring we fund specialised education in Victoria, can I start by echoing many of the points he made about the great work that these schools do across Victoria. In my electorate I have three schools that provide specialised education for children who are not meeting their full potential in the mainstream system. Two of those schools are wonderful independent schools. Giant Steps provides immense education opportunities for children with autism and children with severe autism. Having spent time there with the principal Davina Bate, I have seen the wonderful work that those educators do every single day to support those children and ensure that they have a bright future ahead of them when it comes to the opportunities that education provides, and I thank them for everything that they do every day.

Equally, Andale School, one school that I have spoken about a number of times in this place, provides a primary education for children that are not meeting their full potential in the mainstream primary system. It is a school of just 22 students and around 10 staff, led by Justin Walsh, their principal. It is a wonderful school to visit. The excitement in the classroom and in the playground is something that is infectious when you go to Andale School. They should be very proud of the education they offer.

Belmore School, a government school that has recently undergone a number of upgrades, as the member for Preston mentioned, is also a school that provides education for children with disabilities. It has been great to get out there to present them with their leadership awards on a number of occasions over the past 12 months and to hear firsthand from the now former principal about the legacy that she helped to create at that school when it comes to ensuring that every one of those students has every opportunity ahead of them.

The member for Preston also touched on the debate we have seen from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability and the findings that split the royal commissioners around the future of specialised education in Australia. I think this debate has a long way to go, but it is certainly important to recognise the incredible work that special schools do for children in Australia, particularly here in Victoria, many of which we are very close to.

As the member for Preston noted, many of these schools have waitlists that could double the size of the school at any moment. It is important to recognise that we all want to see inclusive education and we want to make sure that every child has an opportunity to be part of the mainstream system, but there are going to be times when it is those special schools that can provide that specialised education, that tailored education, that ensures that every child in Victoria has the very best start and has an opportunity to learn and to reach their full potential. That is going to be very, very important in this debate as it continues in the weeks and years to come.

Coming back to the motion before us today, there are a number of points here that I think are misleading when it comes to where education is going in the state of Victoria. I start by looking at ‘making kinder free’ and ‘opening 50 new government-owned childcare centres’. Of those 50 new centres, only 30 locations have been identified and specific sites have been located for four of them. So there is a long way to go for the delivery of these, and of course we as the opposition have concerns about the actual delivery and the rollout of this over the years to come – a big program, $14 billion. And just in the last week we were in the Parliament we debated legislation looking at compulsorily acquiring land when it comes to building those childcare centres. This is a very big program. It is the start of it, and by labelling free kinder ‘free’ it does overlook the fact that many of these kinders with the $2500 subsidy provided actually cannot meet the cost of running their own centres. So this is something that is going to have to play out as this program is rolled out and something that we have lots of concern about.

I know those opposite do not like it when I talk about the fact that the free kinder program is a misnomer. This was very much an election announcement, one in the lead-up to the election. It sounded great on the TV ads, but unfortunately for those on the ground that are actually trying to run these kinders, many of which are sessional kinders – family-run kindergartens – it is very, very difficult to make sure that you can meet the rent payments, that you can meet the payments for the teaching staff and that you can meet the payments for the administrative staff. These are all parent-run kinders that find it very, very difficult to actually meet the need for the resources required under this program. We all want to see expanded kinder and expanded childcare opportunities in this state, but we have to make sure we are working with this sector to make sure the rollout is delivering for their needs.

I want to touch on school funding on this topic. We hear a lot about the funding in the electorates of many of those opposite. Unfortunately we do not often hear about school funding in any of the electorates on this side of the house, and if we look at the $241 million that the government has invested in capital works, that is $241 million in government-held seats compared to just $14 million in non-government-held seats.

Members interjecting.

Jess WILSON: Now, I thought that those opposite might make that point – that we do not hold enough seats – but there is a disparity between the amounts. Ninety-three per cent of funding flows into Labor-held electorates – 93 per cent. How many seats does the Labor Party hold in here? Only 63 per cent. So it is not proportional to how many seats are held, unlike what those opposite like to point out. With only 6 per cent of funding flowing into non-government electorates it is very hard to understand how this government can continually say they are delivering for all Victorians. No, they are delivering for Victorians that live in Labor-held electorates.

Now, I only have to turn to my own electorate to look at schools like Kew East Primary School, Balwyn Primary School and Canterbury Girls, which is a wonderful girls-only government school that has literally had a wall fall down while the students were at school. This is a school that needs basically an entire rebuild. It has not had any capital works funding for decades. It provides wonderful education for girls locally. It is one of the few girls-only public schools in the state, and yet there has been no capital works funding in that school for decades. The same goes for Kew East Primary School, a school that has asbestos in its buildings, a school that has to continuously fundraise just to put a coat of paint over the walls that are cracking. These are schools that are desperately in need of funding, so when those opposite talk about record levels of funding it might be the case that that is happening in Labor-held electorates, but it is certainly not happening right across Victoria. And of course today we have seen another hit on education when it comes to the expansion of the schools tax. Another 18 schools will likely be added to the schools tax over the next few years.

Katie Hall: On a point of order, Speaker, just on relevance, this matter of public importance relates to making kinder free and making it free to study to become a secondary school teacher, not private schools paying their fair share of tax.

The SPEAKER: I ask the member for Kew to come back to the motion before the house.

Jess WILSON: Certainly, Speaker. I am looking at the motion here talking about supporting students with additional funding for upgrades and looking at the importance of helping children thrive. I do not understand how putting a tax on schools is going to help students thrive. For many families that is going to make it very difficult to send their children to a school of their choice, a school that reflects their values and a school that reflects their faiths. This is a tax that is going to only hurt families at a time that they can least afford it. Today we have seen the expansion of that tax to an additional 18 schools. These are schools right across Victoria, schools in regional Victoria, a number of schools in Ballarat –

Katie Hall: On a point of order, Speaker, again the member for Kew has strayed considerably from the matter of public importance, and I ask that you bring her back to the MPI.

The SPEAKER: I ask the member for Kew to come back to the motion before the house.

Jess WILSON: Thank you, Speaker. If we turn to the fact that this government also likes to talk about the record funding they are putting into teachers, then let us look at the nearly 3000 vacancies that are being advertised at the moment for teachers across Victoria. Now, I know that we are talking about issues today that the government does not want to hear, and they are looking for opportunities to shut down debate, as per usual, as we saw on the previous motion, but if we look across Victoria there are currently schools that have been advertising for more than five rounds and have had zero applicants. This week we had a story come out about a school in regional Victoria – in fact in the member for Lowan’s electorate – of just 38 students who have advertised five times for teachers. They only need two teachers to meet the needs of that school, and next year they are at risk of not having any teachers at all.

This is a situation where we are seeing teachers leaving the profession in droves. If you look at the Victorian Teacher Supply and Demand Report 2021, 20 per cent of new teachers, that is one in five, leave the profession within five years. We saw the stress that teachers were under during COVID. We saw the immense amount of pressure they were under, and the fact that we have seen so many teachers leave the profession in recent years is only putting teachers under further stress and forcing more and more to leave. Every time I speak to a school principal the number one issue they raise is trying to retain and attract teachers. I have heard stories of schools going without maths teachers for three or six months. The fact is they simply cannot find teachers to actually ensure that the students at their school are being taught the essential foundational skills in many respects that are expected of our education system.

It does not surprise me that when you look at the recent NAPLAN results we have got nearly one in three Victorian students failing to meet the proficiency standards in literacy and numeracy. Now, those opposite like to say that they are in the best in the country, but if you have got nearly one in three Victorian children not actually meeting basic literacy and numeracy standards, I am not sure that is something I would be boasting about.

Looking at the recent funding when it comes to ensuring our students have the best facilities, there was a recent report that highlighted the fact that Victorian schools are seeing the number of relocatable or demountable classrooms increase year on year. We saw schools across Victoria with demountables in numbers of over 20 or 30 or 40. Now, this is a situation where we have those opposite talking about record levels of funding, but schools are simply not having the purpose-built facilities that they need. We need to ensure that our students have permanent classrooms to ensure they are actually able to get the best start to life. There were a number of schools in the report that highlighted the fact that in many respects they were relatively newly built schools, yet they have seen within years of opening the number of portables installed at those schools increase by 15 or 20 – and it will be up to over 40 in the years to come. Portables are designed by the Victorian School Building Authority to be there for scenarios where the school is quickly expanding, but we need to make sure that the VSBA is keeping up with demand and building the required permanent classrooms and facilities these schools need. We are often talking about the fact that this government is building new schools, but we also need to make sure that we are actually investing in our existing schools, particularly in those growth areas.

In closing, Victoria was once known as the Education State, but if you look across the metrics – and I know it is not what those opposite want to hear – whether it comes to school funding in specific Labor-held electorates; whether it is taxing our non-government schools, taxing parents who want to make a choice to send their kids to a school that reflects their values and their faith, taxing parents on their choice on where they want to send their kids; or whether it is the fact that we are simply seeing our teachers leave the profession in droves, Victoria is no longer the Education State. We are failing when it comes to investing in our kids’ future, we are failing when it comes to making sure they are meeting the standards expected, and we need to do much, much more.

Katie HALL (Footscray) (16:31): Sometimes listening to the Liberal Party speak about public education, it is more front than Myer, as my mother would say. Public education is the reason that so many of us got involved in the labour movement and the Labor Party, because I know when I was a kid – and I come from a family of teachers who all worked in the public system – I watched members of my family get sacked by the Kennett government. I watched the local school get bulldozed and turned into a housing estate. So I do not have –

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, you were not in the chamber when the member currently on her feet was very concerned and was drawing points of order to the attention of the Chair –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The point of order is?

Brad Rowswell: It is relevance to the matter, Deputy Speaker. The member is currently addressing matters that are not within the contents of the government’s matter, and as a member of the government, I ask you to bring her back to the matter.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Sandringham. I came into the chamber, I believe, in the second half of that point of order. The debate is about schools, and I see the member has been responding to other debates that have been had in the chamber. Please continue on the matter of public importance topic.

Katie HALL: So much of this matter of public importance (MPI) is about the big, bold reform that Labor governments do in education. We are the builders of public education in this state. We are the people who took the padlocks off the TAFE colleges that were closed and we are also the ones who are transforming early childhood education, because we know that 90 per cent of brain development happens by the time a child is five. From when a baby is born through to whether they are pursuing opportunities later in life at TAFE or university or through a trade, it is Labor governments that are there with them step by step, supporting them, because we believe that public education – high-quality public education – whether it is through funded kinder or TAFE or quality public schools, is the great leveller. That is the opportunity that we provide to every single young person in this state, no matter what their postcode is. So frankly I am not too fussed if some elite private schools have to pay the same tax as my local state schools.

But when we talk about the reforms that we are delivering in early childhood, there is nothing more transformative than changing the trajectory of a child’s life through early childhood education and developmental opportunities. I feel well equipped to be speaking about some of the supports that we are delivering through the early parenting centres, because I have not slept properly in five years. The original early parenting centre is in my electorate of Footscray, and it is called Tweddle – not Tweedle, for the many people who often refer to it as Tweedle – and I will speak a little bit about their extraordinary history and contribution not just as a sleep school. People know them as a sleep school, and of course sleep is so important to mums, dads and infants. But they have a wealth of research. They have done an enormous body of work in brain development and supporting children’s development, and parents – to learn how to be parents and how to interact with their baby. Because for many people, me included, it does not feel like it comes naturally, and so sometimes you need that helping hand to know that, yes, reading to your baby, even if your baby is not responding, is a really powerful thing to be doing for their brain development.

One of the extraordinary things that we have been working on is the delivery of a whole range of these early parenting centres, based on the work of Tweddle in Footscray, around the state. I acknowledge my colleague the member for Northcote who has campaigned tirelessly to have one of these early parenting centres in her electorate. I was delighted to have her come and visit Tweddle and see the redevelopment that is happening at Tweddle, because we are adding an extra 40 per cent capacity into Tweddle. What that means is families of all different shapes and sizes – if you are a single dad or a single mum or if you have got a toddler or a teenager – can come to Tweddle and stay. You can stay in the family rooms, and you can have the dedicated attention and care of the paediatricians and the nurses who are so skilled at helping mums and dads adapt to life with a little one.

We are about to open one of these residential family units in Werribee – the first of our 12 new and upgraded early parenting centres was completed just last week. I am very pleased that Premier Allan, the Minister for Health Infrastructure Mary-Anne Thomas and the Minister for Children Minister Blandthorn in the other place toured the multimillion-dollar Wyndham early parenting centre in Werribee, which is set to open its doors next month. How wonderful for this growth area of Melbourne to have access to one of these centres, because for a long time Footscray has not been able to service this growing part of Melbourne.

I am also thrilled that an additional $18.9 million investment, on top of the $148 million investment already made for these 12 centres, will be going to Northcote and to a dedicated Aboriginal-led centre in Frankston. One of extraordinary things we see through these centres is the work they do with families that are pretty vulnerable, but also with dads. I have seen that work up close, and it is pretty extraordinary, and it has extraordinary results.

I thought I would mention the history of Tweddle because something very significant happened a few years ago for Tweddle: they celebrated 100 years. Tweddle is a public hospital. Not many people understand that, but it was funded through philanthropy 103 years ago, by a donation of £3000 from Mr Joseph Tweddle. That work has evolved. It started off as a hospital for mothercraft. Thankfully those days have moved on. It was initially dealing with the impact of neonatal deaths –

Emma Kealy: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, as the member on her feet pointed out during the contribution by the member for Kew, this is a debate which is focused largely around education. I believe she has strayed very widely from that, and I ask you to bring her back to the matter of public importance before us today.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I ask the member to continue on the MPI within its remit.

Katie HALL: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, I am speaking about the care services aspect of the MPI. We are talking about the care services provided to prevent neonatal deaths and also to provide support to parents.

Emma Kealy interjected.

Katie HALL: Obviously the member thinks that that is amusing and that it is entertaining.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Member for Lowan, you will get your chance.

Katie HALL: If I may continue, Tweddle provides such extraordinary support to people in my community. Their focus on therapeutic interventions in the first 1000 days has led to a transformative body of research and work and will actually transform future generations. This is the kind of investment that Labor governments make because we know that it will have changed things for generations to come.

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (16:41): I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance (MPI), because even if this had been an opposition matter of public importance, it is something we could certainly speak quite widely about and quite passionately about, putting forward the position that the Labor government is not delivering what they say. This is something we always hear. What we see from Labor is that what they say and what they do are two entirely different things.

What happens with this Labor government is they love putting out a glossy media release, they love getting the front page and they love to put out nice socials with smiling faces, but when it comes to the crunch and holding them to account, we find they have not delivered what they promised. Let us talk about what they have promised in my local electorate of Lowan, 20 per cent of the state by landmass. We are not getting anything that this government is promising. Even the spin that we are hearing today in this MPI – we are not seeing it in my electorate of Lowan.

In regard to making kinder free, we have got waitlists for kinder all over the place because there simply are not enough early years educators. Did you know that next year if you live in Jeparit your kids cannot access kindergarten? This government is closing kindergarten in a community that has always had kindergarten, and that is Labor’s record. Make it free, but do you know what? It is not very helpful if it is free if it is not even available. If they have to travel an hour away to get their kids into kindergarten, how does that make any difference to their lives? Make it as free as you like. It is like giving some volunteer a pay rise – doubling their pay. It does not make any difference at the end of the day. If you want to talk about making sure we get those zero to 4 years right, do not close kindergartens.

The other thing that the Labor government can do to make sure we are supporting our kids is to not just say ‘Oh, we’ve got free TAFE and – bang – automatically we’ve got all these childcare workers’. You have not delivered the childcare workers that are desperately needed, not just in my electorate of Lowan but right across the state. Right across the state there are parents – and this particularly impacts women – who are at home. They are impacted by cost-of-living pressures. Their bills are going up, their mortgages are going up, their rents are going up, their grocery bills are going up, their fuel prices are going up and their registrations are going up. Everything is going up because all Labor knows is spend, spend, spend and then tax, tax, tax. When Labor run out of their money, they come after yours. That is exactly what Labor does over and over and over again.

I hear Labor MPs laughing on the other side while their snouts are in the trough, making sure they get the big salaries. They do whatever it takes to get re-elected so they get a job, and they do not care two bits about what happens to Victorians out on the street who are struggling to make ends meet or about these families where both parents have to work just to keep food on the table at home but they cannot afford to because they cannot get a childcare place. They cannot get a childcare place because there are not enough workers and there are not enough facilities right across the state. I take just one community in my electorate, in Horsham. I was chatting to a childcare operator just this morning. There are about 200 families that are on the waitlist in a community of about 16,000 people – 200 families. Do you know how many families are going to come off that waitlist next year? Five – just five. You have got 190 women who are not able to go back to work because they cannot access child care. You want to close the gender pay gap? Provide some facilities to make sure that women can access child care and get back to work. That is what it will take. We hear all these wonderful things you are doing, but when you deliver it, you are not delivering it for women and you are not delivering it for these children. It does not matter whether you live in country Victoria, whether you live in a regional city or whether you live right in the centre of metropolitan Melbourne, there are not enough childcare places in this state.

This is the problem with what we see with Labor. We see these promises – we are making it easier for families – Labor is not making it easier for any family. In fact it is getting harder and harder and harder. This is nine years of the Andrews–Allan Labor government. Since 1999, 24 years ago, Labor have been in government for 20 of those years. There is no further any Victorian has to look – when you look at the state of Victoria, when you look at the state of your bills, when you realise life is getting harder – than at the Labor government, because what you say you are doing has not been delivered in any way, shape or form.

I even look at schools that have been funded across my electorate – hollow promises, absolutely hollow promises. They promised so much when it comes to Casterton Primary School. They promised a fabulous expanded facility with open learning spaces and a new library. It was going to be fabulous – and then they started building works, the earthworks. There were significant sewerage issues that came through. Rather than providing additional funding to upgrade what was existing infrastructure and maintenance infrastructure, all of that money has now gone into the plumbing works, gone into the sewerage, so those kids have got a safe place to play, a safe place to learn. I think they are going to get a lick of paint and a new bit of carpet. What Labor promised, again in their media release, were these open fabulous spaces and modern learning environments. Instead it went to upgrade the sewerage system, a lick of paint and a new carpet. That is not delivering the best learning outcomes for our kids. That is overpromising and underdelivering, and that is exactly what this Labor government does over and over again. Labor cannot manage projects, they cannot manage money and you cannot believe a word that they say.

This is not just one school as an example. In fact every school that has been funded across my electorate has had massive funding shortfalls, and what they promised and what they would deliver are two different things. I look at Warracknabeal Education Precinct, a school that recently opened. Of course I was not invited to the opening. It did not matter to me, because I am thrilled that after years and years of campaigning for funding and standing side by side with that community, finally they have got the school that they deserve and should have got a long, long time ago. But the government cut it short. Did the Labor government provide funding for the school to relocate to their new site? No. It is the parents and teachers association that had to pay that – the fundraisers, the sausage sizzles. That is who had to pay to move into the new school. Did they get a new maintenance shed? No. Did they get a hands-on learning shed to replace their hands-on learning site? No. That is something that the school council is now going to have to fund themselves. That is where you cut it short every time.

Stawell Primary School is in exactly the same situation. Many elections ago it was promised that they would get a brand new synthetic oval with a running track. It is still not open today, because what Labor say they are going to do and what they actually deliver are two different things. We know that we can do so much better than just reading media releases or believing any of the contributions that we hear in this place. There is an opportunity, though. I do hope that at some point in time we will see some honesty and maybe a bit of humility to say, ‘You know what? We could do better. We can do better. We’re not perfect’. The smugness and the arrogance that is coming across this chamber is also being felt out in the electorate. The people of Victoria are seeing this, and they are sick of it. They are sick of a government who thinks it is better than everybody else. While they are earning the big bucks in government, while they are sitting in Melbourne in their ivory towers, claiming money for roles that they do not even deliver, we have got here in the local area and on the ground parents who cannot afford to keep their kids in school, to keep food on the table and to keep them in sporting clubs and associations. That is a problem in this state.

Now, there are a number of issues right across country Victoria. I would just like to quickly touch on them. In Mildura we know that the Charlton building for child care still has no provider. We desperately need more workers. In Euroa and at Nagambie they desperately need more childcare services; they are waiting over six months for a place there. In schools, we know that at Shepparton they have still got three boarded-up schools in regional areas, in residential areas, where the community do not know what the future is. Why have we got these massive boarded-up buildings with no answer? They have a new, big school of 2500 kids, where the one-size-fits-all approach simply is not suiting that Shepparton community. In Gippsland South, the member there has been fighting for years and years and years to have Sale College funded, but while we had a master plan in 2021, since then there has been simply nothing.

I urge the government in this matter of public importance: please be straight. Please make sure that we get some proper funding into facilities for child care and for educational opportunities to support our kids, because we are absolutely sick to death of having a Labor government that cannot manage projects, that cannot manage money. We cannot believe a thing that they say.

Darren CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (16:51): It is with some pleasure that I rise this afternoon to make my contribution on this very excellent matter of public importance proposed by the member for Preston. I must say, in reflecting and thinking about this particular matter of public importance, I thought right from the outset I might take the opportunity to thank the fantastic workforce that we have in Victoria who work in our kindergartens, who work in our primary and secondary schools and who work in our fantastic TAFE training colleges across this state.

The Andrews Labor government and now the Allan Labor government very much believe in a strong public education system. And the reason why we believe fundamentally in having a strong education system in this state is because we believe every single child deserves the very, very best start to life to get the very best education that the state government can enable them to have. And we do that because we believe in the productivity-generating capacity of a strong education system. Right now in Victoria the Victorian Institute of Teaching recognises that we have 141,000 teachers working in and around schools throughout Victoria. Out of that 141,000-odd teachers some 17 per cent are now 60 years of age or older. This is a significant challenge, a challenge that we have identified and a challenge that means we have put in place significant programs to ensure that we, into the future, continue to have a strong education system that values our teachers and that trains and recruits teachers to be able to work in our Victorian government schools. I know when I go and visit my schools in South Barwon – I certainly know, in having many conversations with my colleagues, that when we go and visit our schools we see some fantastic people making a real contribution to the young people of Victoria.

A significant number of teachers working in our schools are baby boomers, and those baby boomers are coming to the end of their working lives. What we need to do is put in place programs and funding streams to support that challenge, to make sure that we are training and recruiting significant teachers to be able to replace the baby boomer generation that will be retiring over the next few years. That is a significant challenge, and I would like to, from the outset, very much thank those teachers who have been working in our schools for decades.

This challenge is a challenge that will not be easy to meet. The number of teachers that we will see retiring in the next few years equates to about one in five teachers. This is not just a problem that Victoria faces; this is a problem that every single state and territory in this country faces, and almost every other like economy across the globe has the exact same challenge. It is significant. Victoria is not only competing for graduates against the other states and territories, we are also in a global race to recruit new teachers to our education system. That is why we have put in place a significant number of investments to make sure that we are recruiting teachers faster than we have ever recruited before, that we are incentivising teachers from interstate to come and work in our fantastic Victorian public education system and that we are incentivising teachers from other jurisdictions internationally to make their way to Victoria to work in the Victorian system. Through all of those efforts we will build a future teaching workforce in this state to make sure that we deliver on that challenge of recruiting, training and retaining the very best that we can in our Victorian government schools.

For a very long time now our government has been working exceptionally hard to build modern schools throughout our state. In my electorate we have seen brand new schools open; of course my seat is in a growth corridor. We have also seen record investment made in existing schools to make sure that those schools have the teaching facilities that they need to deliver a brilliant education system, a productivity-enabling education system, that will build the capacity of Victoria into the years to come.

But right now, as I see it, the biggest challenge we have – identical to the challenges faced by other jurisdictions – is to retain existing teachers and recruit and train new teachers. We have put in place investment programs in all three of those categories to make sure that we value our teachers, we keep a hold of them and we keep them in the Victorian public system but also that we enable future generations of teachers. That is why we have programs such as free tertiary training to make sure that we are incentivising Victorian students, those that are looking to go on to university, to make sure that they see the value in going on to university and getting a tertiary education so that they can go on to become teachers.

We have got scholarships that we have put in place to make sure that we provide those opportunities for graduate teachers to go and work in sometimes hard-to-recruit-to schools. Again, we are making sure that it does not matter where you live in the state of Victoria: if you go to a public school, no matter where that school might be located, you will have great teachers. We recognise that not every location is easy to recruit to, and that is why we have significant programs put in place to recruit teachers to hard-to-recruit-to schools. This is a huge task. It is not an easy challenge, but as is typical for Labor, when we see challenges in the education system we put in place the programs needed, we face up to those challenges, we make the hard decisions, we make the space in the budget and we fund it and we deliver it, because we believe in it.

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (17:02): Once again the matter of public importance (MPI) put forward by the government shocks me, and I will explain why. It states:

That this house notes the importance that the Allan Labor government has put on helping Victorian children thrive by …

I will focus mainly on point (6) –

(6) funding the biggest ever investment in care services to deliver improved outcomes for children in residential care.

The government is trying to claim that they are doing a good job. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. Children in residential care are doing very badly. These are children that are in the state’s guardianship. We are talking about children in the state’s care here. About 10,000 children are in the government’s care on any one night. These are children who hopefully will be in foster care or kinship care, but if that is not available, they will be in residential care. This is collectively known as out-of-home care.

Hopefully most of them will be in kinship care or foster care, but the ones that are not are being left in residential care, and the failing of the whole system under this government of residential care is nothing short of abhorrent. There are about 450 children on any given night in these small group homes in residential care, but if I dive into this situation a little deeper, the reality is the government have not made an investment of significance into their care and nor are children thriving in residential care. What they have done is increased the annual budget allocation, absolutely. But that is only to deal with the increasing demand due to the crisis-driven approach of this government rather than one of early intervention, help and prevention.

If this government was serious about improving the situation of a child in care, we would not be seeing the damning statistics that we are seeing today, that I will share a few of here. I have only been in the role of Shadow Minister for Child Protection for a few weeks, but the briefings that I have had from advocates and families are chilling. They would leave your hair standing on end. Frequently children in residential care are being groomed for criminal activity. Vulnerable children and young children who are removed from their families and placed in residential care are often in greater harm in that residential care situation and are often at risk of abuse whilst in the care of the state, and this is the matter of public importance that this government has put forward today to boast about.

Under this system the government has completely underfunded it. They have not implemented the recommendations from the various inquiries and reports that have gone on into residential care. There are many, many, many recommendations still outstanding, to the frustration of the commissioner. These are children. It is absolutely shameful and disgraceful. This is not something to be noting as a government and to be proud of. Children and young people living in residential care have been criminalised, go missing regularly and are targeted by criminal gangs and paedophiles. High numbers of sexual abuse and exploitation continue to be reported by the children and the young people in these residential care environments. This is shameful. There are high numbers of children dying whilst in the care and guardianship of this state – dying. I just cannot believe what I have been reading. We are leaving children in the state of Victoria to die whilst in the guardianship of this state Labor government. Just yesterday we saw an article in the paper about four children in care that we are waiting for the coroners report on. This is shameful.

Children in care from January to March, in the first quarter of 2023, earlier this year were reported to have had 322 incidences of abuse reported in residential care settings. This also included 76 allegations of sexual abuse reported by the children themselves. Now, this part was not highlighted in the report; it was uncovered by the intense scrutiny in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry. What is the government hiding it for? Why aren’t they working on getting this fixed? I cannot understand this government putting this MPI forward when they have children dying in care, being sexually abused and groomed criminally. The figures, the stories, the facts are evident, and this government should be ashamed and disturbed.

Children in residential care are going missing in high numbers because they are fleeing the residential care for their own safety. They are not attending school. The department are using hotel rooms and other temporary accommodation to place these children in because they have such a need to be removed from home and there is no available foster care or residential care – and I will go further into foster care as the answer soon.

One family I have been working with for some years were advised that their 13-year-old daughter who was suffering from some mental health issues would be better off in the state’s care because they did not believe the family could adequately care for their child. When the family made contact with me they were devastated that, after several years in state care bouncing between residential care homes in Melbourne, the child was not attending school, was frequently absconding from residential care homes, was roaming the streets of Melbourne, had a chroming addiction and had had a pregnancy scare and numerous court appearances all by the age of 14. Is this how an improved outcome for a child looks? I do not think so. At one point the family were asked to take her back with an addiction and with out-of-control behaviour. Her mother contacted me and said, ‘She’s far worse than when they took her from my home.’

In the state of Victoria Aboriginal children are over-represented in the system 11 to one. This is the worst rate in the nation, and the rates have been increasing since 2015. In the state of Victoria working with children checks are the weakest in the nation. In 2022 the Victorian Ombudsman found serious shortfalls in Victoria’s working with children screening. The current minister is the fifth child protection minister sworn in in less than two years. Does this sound like a government who have been rolling up their sleeves and getting in there and fixing the problem? No, it sounds like a government that is spruiking that it will just chuck a bit of money which will only cover the cost of the increasing demand – that is what it strikes me as. Money alone, even if it is more, will not fix this problem. The commissioner for children and young people recently highlighted that within the last two years every second child placed in residential care was charged with a crime. This is a shame. What a disgrace for this government to put up this MPI stating they are noting the importance of what the Allan Labor government has put up, claiming residential care is helping Victorian children to thrive. Thrive? Do these figures and facts that I have placed here on the public record describe an environment where children are thriving?

Kinship carers and foster carers are the best place for children who cannot live at home. Under this government they need support. They have had no increase in their funding since 2016. But it is not about money. They tell me about the red tape and the lack of trust. Where is the research to understand why only 321 foster carers joined the system but 620 left the system last year? Where are the exit interviews? Where is the support? This government have some damning figures on their hands. They have the deaths of children, which we cannot continue to walk past. These are our children that we need to care about. All of us are adults in this room, and we are walking past a disgraceful situation. I am so disgusted to be reading an MPI that is trying to boast about the increase in funding to kinship care, because it is only meeting the demand that has increased under this government, who have had the power for almost a decade to do something about it. There are good foster carers out there who want help, who need help, who need support. This government is ignoring an opportunity, and we must help the children in residential care.

Jordan CRUGNALE (Bass) (17:12): I rise to speak on the matter of public importance – schools and upgrades. I thought I might even start with a story. I think about my upbringing and my dad and my family – they came over from Italy, and he only went to grade 2 – and it was on a trip back from his funeral, actually, in WA, that I remembered a story he used to tell us. There was a little chapel, and the bishop asked a whole heap of builders – because it was on its last legs and falling over – what options there were, and all of them basically said that it was doomed and had to be knocked over. He did ask my dad Fernando, and my dad looked at it, walked around it and kind of assessed the foundation and the ground and what have you, and he said, ‘No, we can just put a metal band around the concrete and the building will be fine’. And sure enough, 50 years later it is still standing. This is where, when we look at building that foundation – and we have heard contributions around the early childhood reforms and TAFE reforms and kinder and what have you – it is about getting that foundation. If you are able to have that greenfield and set it up right, then you can do that, but sometimes you have got to work with what you have got. We know that in the Jeff Kennett years things were cut and closed. It was like having a tablecloth at a restaurant ripped out – everything just kind of went everywhere – and it has taken time to sort of rebuild.

A member interjected.

Jordan CRUGNALE: Thank you. We are an education state. Education is a fundamental right. Early childhood, primary, secondary, adult education, TAFE – all the varying degrees of education. But there is also education outside of the institutions themselves that provides a whole heap of learning that sometimes you do not get in that sort of formal setting. But as a Labor government and as a labour movement, education really courses through our veins. My parents came out here, and education was something that they instilled in us at a very early age. We had to start working to put ourselves through school and then college and thereafter as well, but it was the way to try and get through life and become independent and economically contribute to the community.

When it comes to public education, we are investing. We have heard it from previous speakers as well – $270 million to provide that free kinder in 2023 to approximately 140,000 eligible children. And a bit like setting that foundation, you need the infrastructure as you go through this reform as well. For a three- or four-year-old kinder you need a workforce, which is what we are working on, with scholarships and also TAFE. With free kinder, having those savings of up to $2500 a year means that we have potentially 28,000 people, predominantly women, that can choose to go to work or back to work. So it is looking at it from the whole of ground up.

We committed to building 100 new schools, and in the electorate that I have in season 1 and also season 2 with the boundary changes there was certainly a lot of growth in that Clyde, Clyde North and Pakenham area and a lot of new schools. Last year we opened three in one day in Clyde – Clyde Secondary, Clyde Creek Primary and also the San Remo campus of Bass Coast College. We are powering through those schools from primary to secondary.

It is not just the new schools that we are doing. We are upgrading our existing schools because it is great to build new schools, but we also love and support and value the schools that we have in our electorates, whether it is the 47 kids that go to Powlett River Primary, the 27 that go to Inverloch and Kongwak, or the 1200 at Ramlegh Park Primary School, which is probably one of the largest primary schools. Although it is not technically in my electorate, the zoning comes over into the electorate of Bass. In my electorate there are probably 22 state primary schools, three secondary schools with a number of campuses and one specialist school. Then we add in the independent schools as well, which brings it to over 33. Then, as I said, with the school zones crossing boundary lines we certainly have a myriad more. We have welcomed newly built secondary campuses for Bass Coast College. There are two new campuses, both Wonthaggi, the senior campus, and San Remo, and we certainly look forward to future announcements to upgrade the Dudley campus just to bring that whole narrative of the Bass Coast College to a complete celebration across the Bass Coast shire area.

For Clyde Secondary College we also announced in our budget this year stage 2 works. That is a really growing school in the Clyde area, obviously. It is an inclusive school that caters also for kids that need specialist education. There is Clyde Creek Primary School, which we opened also in 2022, and we recently opened their specialist campus onsite for 50 students. We have got others on the way in Clyde. There is a primary school as well. We are getting land. There is a whole heap of stuff in that Clyde and Clyde North area, and this goes to the fact that we commit to something and we do it. We listen, we partner with people, we build stuff, we nurture and we just kind of get on with it, really.

When I look at the election commitments from back in 2018, for Clyde Creek Primary School there was $23 million. That is finished off, and we are just working out the official kind of hurrah for that one. Koo Wee Rup Primary – I was there only last month. It is a bit of a trifecta there. We opened the election commitments from 2018. They have started building their competition-grade gym and they are getting a kinder onsite as well. At Lang Lang Primary School, with the $1.5 million we committed to, the upgrade is done. They have upgraded the bathrooms, and they smell so much better than they did a couple of years ago. It is really good to know. Cowes have got an award-winning gym. The $5.5 million gym is pure magnificence. It overlooks their swimming pool and backs onto the sanctuary that they have onsite at their school.

The member for Cranbourne and I were recently at Cranbourne South, where we had committed $5.9 million to upgrade their school, and we were actually welcomed by some amazing, articulate, inspiring captains, who gave the member for Cranbourne and me a really insightful tour. This school, like so many others, acknowledges, respects and partners with First Nations community members, land councils, gathering places, artists and storytellers. They generally immerse themselves in wanting to meaningfully learn about Bunurong country, where my electorate sits, and to walk lightly on this land together, showing respect and listening, all with open hearts. Cranbourne South’s new building is called murrup, meaning spirit. It is the fifth element, as the four houses in the school are named after Bunurong words representing the four elements: baany, biik, munmut and wiiny, meaning water, earth, air and fire. It is great to go around to so many of my schools and kinders as well as secondary schools. They are building and strengthening relations with our First Nations community members.

When we look at schools, it is not just the building stuff that we do. I have only got a minute left, but it is so much more than building new schools and upgrading schools. It is all the stuff that happens within the schools and the teachers, the educators, the school councils, the school community and the kids. A real school community oozes out into the wider community. It is energising, and it is great to see teachers and educators and all the staff really kind of spark that love of learning with their students and also that critical thinking and creative thinking and everything that happens in that setting.

We have got the Smile Squads, we have got mental health professionals in our high schools and we have got Head Start apprenticeships. There are mental health wellbeing programs in schools. I have only got 5 seconds, so how great, I love Bass.

Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (17:22): I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to the matter of public importance (MPI) submitted by the member for Preston today. It is focused on education. The government like to think that they are all things education and they are all things rosy education, but really that is not the case. There are quite a number of issues that I want to speak about today that will put a lot of weight to that.

First of all, I want to note that 93 per cent of the funding for education goes to Labor electorates. That is so disproportionate. They might try to argue that it is proportional, but when you have a look at the number of seats in this house, 63 per cent of which are held by the government, they are certainly getting the lion’s share. Many of us in smaller areas, in country areas and in the city, are missing out and have done for a long time. I know that this has an impact in the outcomes of rural and regional Victoria and in the ability to attract a workforce. We saw just last week one of the small primary schools was struggling to recruit staff, and I know this has been an issue for a number of years. It certainly has not got easier.

But I am going to start my contribution on the second point about new and upgraded schools. I have a lot of issues with schools that are missing out on funding for some simple upgrades. I am not talking about $8 million redevelopments or probably $20 million redevelopments; I am talking about some things that are less than a million dollars. The government expects kudos for building a whole lot of new schools. As the population grows, and we know the population is growing in Victoria, and with families and children growing, you have to do schools. We need to do that. It would be negligent if they did not provide schools, because every suburb that is new needs to have a school. Those kids need to be able to go to school locally, not get on a bus and pop down half an hour to somewhere that is already in existence. The government is trying to play up that, whereas this is something that is absolutely required of any government where you have growing suburbs or towns or regions.

I will start with Mansfield. Mansfield is a growing town. The population has been absolutely exploding, and the primary school does not have capacity to hold all of these students. The enrolments were 280 in 2013, and in 10 years it has doubled. Last year there were 530 students, but the footprint of the school remains the same. It is a fairly squeezy little campus there. They do not have a big oval to go and do their sports – they have to cross two roads to go to the wonderful Lords Reserve in Mansfield to do that. The community stadium is next door. They really are suffering from the pressures about whether to go up. There is never talk within government about providing a second campus in Mansfield. Certainly in Seymour they amalgamated four schools into one – two primary, the special school as well as the secondary school – but that is not being talked about in Mansfield. They do need to be thought about.

I have Panton Hill Primary School. They are desperate to have a covered outdoor space – not a stadium, an outdoor space that is covered – where they can be playing outside in the summer in the shade and in the winter, if it is raining, they have got somewhere that they can still play outside. For them to do this project – I know they have applied for a couple of grants; I have raised it in this house. The current outdoor asphalt area is a little bit uneven – it is not quite the size of an actual court, so they want to extend it – and that will require a little bit of earthmoving as well to bring it up to scratch and to have a soft, artificial grass surface there so the kids have somewhere that they can go in all sorts of weather.

Kinglake Primary School really lack the funds to maintain the grounds and upgrade the old buildings and the paths. I did speak to the minister about this, the former minister to say that they have had only $146,000 in capital funding allocated since 2016–17. That is only $20,000 per annum. This is a school that does not have a wealthy parent base by any means to help. They struggle to even get parents to come along to working bees and to provide even in-kind support. A small school like Kinglake really needs that sort of help.

At Chum Creek Primary School in November last year a very large tree fell on one of the relocatables, and I saw that. Not only did it put that portable out of action, it put an enormous area of the playground out of action as well. It was in November 2022. They waited months and months – six months – for a repair. It was going to be enacted in the middle of 2023 – well, it was only fixed a couple of weeks ago. They waited the best part of a year to have the buildings that were damaged by an enormous tree landing on them fixed. I just do not think that that is good enough.

Gladysdale Primary School kind of lucked in in the budget a couple of years ago. They were granted a new building at the front of the school. The old building was torn down in December 2022. New works began. In March 2023 works stopped, leaving the site unsafe. Then nothing happened for five months, so I had everybody ringing my office saying, ‘What’s going on at Gladysdale?’ This is a small school in a small community. I raised a question on notice on 17 August around completion dates, and that still remains unanswered. The school is always in the dark, and the community are fed up. I think it is really difficult for the school to become the project manager. They are told that there should be an end-of-year completion, but they are not confident because at the moment only the frame is up. The government is failing in very many areas there.

I want to talk about the workforce and the difficulties of the workforce and recruiting teachers but also retaining teachers. I have heard way too many stories of teachers leaving the profession. COVID did many of them in. Yes, they worked from home, and some of them actually quite liked that. But what happened when kids came back to school was there were discipline problems, there were knives at some of the schools and it has been put to me – somebody in a primary school in a city electorate reported it – that kids had come back watching pornography, and that is extraordinary for primary school children. It was because they did not have that level of supervision. There was a level of disengagement as well, which has not been recovered for some students. Others did quite well. But a lot of the teachers have found the process absolutely exhausting and have been looking to move away – and many have left.

The fifth point of the MPI is about:

supporting students with additional funding upgrades to every government specialist school in Victoria …

This is an area that I am hoping that the government is very outspoken about, because we have had the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. What has recently come to light is their recommendation to phase out specialist schools, and that is something that I would be very much opposed to seeing. Speaker, I have been with you at Bendigo to see the great specialist school there and to understand the level of disability, and when children have profound disabilities it is very hard to have a one-size-fits-all model. I know in schools where they have tried to do that, what ends up happening is they have a different entrance and they stagger the lunchbreaks to keep the kids separate, because it is not safe in the schoolyards with the rough-and-tumble of kids racing around and knocking kids accidentally. There are incidents that happen with bullying as well. So I am really hoping that the government has a very strong voice in this area to make sure that the specialist schools are protected.

We have schools that are autism specialists – government and private as well – and these schools fill a gap. Often parents have moved their children away from mainstream school because it has been really difficult for them to fit in. I have heard of, in these instances, families homeschooling their children because it has been so stressful for their children trying to really fit in in that cut-and-thrust and rough-and-tumble of the regular primary schools.

There are a lot of issues with trying to open the 50 new government-owned childcare centres. The governance models are really going to be very tricky about where you do that. Do you co-locate them with existing primary schools, or do you co-locate them on existing kindergarten sites? Some of them are council owned and run; some of them are owned by council and they have third-party providers. These governance structures are really tricky and are going to create a lot of problems for the government.

Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (17:32): I am delighted to rise today to speak on this matter of public importance (MPI), which is all about our littlest Victorians – and rightly so, because though our youngest Victorians may not have the voting rights which elect us as members of this Parliament, it is nevertheless the decisions that are made here which will impact on them and their opportunities into the future. So it is very fitting, I think, that this time has been dedicated in the parliamentary program to speak about how the Allan Labor government is supporting Victorian children to thrive. It is an absolute priority for this government, underscored by the fact that we now have a dedicated Minister for Children as well as a dedicated Parliamentary Secretary for Children, my good friend the member for Preston.

The single most precious thing we have as a community and a society is our children. Children are our future leaders, thinkers and innovators. The knowledge, values and sense of community we instill in them will shape the culture and moral fabric of our society into the future. The opportunities, skills and love of learning we nurture in them will determine our future prosperity and our ability to weather the challenges of the decades ahead. Our children are precious, and there is nothing more worthy of our investment, of our attention and dedication or of our love.

It has been a really lengthy debate today, and as I round it out with this final contribution from the government ranks I am conscious that my colleagues have made some outstanding contributions. The member for Preston spoke with complete heart about the work our government is doing to support children with disabilities both in the health system and in the education system. It was a significant and thoughtful contribution, and I extend my thanks to him for sharing it with us.

The member for Footscray, another fellow parent with children around the same age as mine, spoke very eloquently about the roller-coaster ride of parenthood and the absolute necessity of having support around us in those early stages. Together our investment in expanding our early parenting centres alongside our work to open dedicated infant, child and family health and wellbeing hubs and to boost the amount of time maternal child health nurses can spend with families is a dramatic uplift in practical, direct support to families navigating these tumultuous early years.

The member for South Barwon, who is also the Parliamentary Secretary for Education, gave a very good overview about how we are supporting Victorian children through our education system, including by making it free to study to become a secondary school teacher in Victoria. And the member for Bass spoke passionately about our Labor government’s unwavering commitment to modernising schools right across our communities, something which the electorate of Northcote has also benefited from, having just this year seeing the recent completion of a STEAM centre at Thornbury High, a new learning building at Preston South Primary and wonderful new facilities at Croxton School for specialist learning. Right across maternal and child health, early parenting, education, wellbeing and disability support, our government is prioritising children in this state.

I want to add to and augment the contributions of my colleagues by speaking about a part of this MPI which is very close to my heart, and that is kinder. As many know, I have got two young girls – Ariana and Cleo – and for the last six years we have had at least one of them, but mostly both of them, in child care and kinder in Northcote. Cleo is finishing up four-year-old kinder this year, and we will be sad to say our final goodbyes to her centre and all the outstanding, compassionate, talented educators that have nurtured both her and her sister over the years. These are some of the most hardworking, empathetic and oh-so-patient people you will ever know. How they manage to get the best out of my otherwise unruly and wilful little people I will never understand. We think our jobs are hard but, Speaker, try spending 8 hours in a class full of toddlers and see how tired you are at the end of the day.

I have nothing but admiration for our early childhood workforce, and I have been proud to be part of a Labor government which has elevated this sector well beyond outdated understandings of simply childminding into a truly educational practice. That is where it should be, because we know that the first 2000 days are critical in shaping the trajectory of a child’s life and that 90 per cent of brain development happens in these first five years. This is the golden zone – our opportunity to give kids the best start in life and the tools, skills and support they need to prepare them for a lifetime of learning.

That is why it was my absolute honour to join our former Premier at Alfred Nuttall kindergarten in Fairfield last year when we announced an extraordinary package of truly Labor reforms in early education: free kinder for three- and four-year-olds embedded permanently in our state, a new pre-prep year with 30 hours a week of free play-based learning to be rolled out over the next 10 years and 50 low-cost government-operated childcare centres in the parts of our state where they are needed most. This is the biggest transformation of early childhood education in a generation. It is the kind of reform that changes lives, that leads to generational opportunity – the kind of reform that only a Labor government delivers.

Sometimes I think about my grandmother Eleni, who as the oldest child had to leave primary school in grade 3 to look after her younger siblings in their village in Cyprus, and then I think about my mother Rita, who was the oldest of six and the first in her family to gain a university degree here in Australia. That opportunity for an education was one of the big drivers for their migration, and it is a familiar story to many European migrants in those postwar years. Education is the single best tool we have for improving economic and social equality, and it starts with instilling a love of learning in children from birth.

This year more than 2750 kindergarten services are participating in free kinder. That is about 97 per cent of the sector, and it will benefit around 140,000 children. Free kinder is not just incredible educational and social policy but deeply significant economic policy too. Free kinder will save families up to $2500 in fees per child each year, and crucially it gives more women the choice to return to the workforce. About 28,000 Victorians, mostly women, want to work more but cannot because of the cost of child care. Free kinder means more hours of quality free early education and care for three- and four-year-olds and more flexibility and choice for families. As we embark on this decade-long transformation of early education, we know that we will need time to grow a strong and skilled workforce and to deliver the infrastructure required to get more childcare and kinder spaces into our suburbs.

Earlier this year I visited Merri community kindergarten in Thornbury to meet Chelsea Ford, one of more than 3500 early years educators who have joined Victoria’s kindergarten workforce through our government-funded scholarships. Chelsea was very obviously loved by the kids at the centre and was proud to be working to support Victorian children to thrive. We were joined by the former minister for early education, who spoke about the over $370 million Labor government investment to build a stronger kindergarten workforce through things like training scholarships, career development opportunities, targeted financial incentives, access to recruitment agencies and our free TAFE courses. And we are partnering with universities to upskill diploma-qualified educators as degree-qualified educators.

But of course we also need more child places in our kinders, and this is something that has been raised with me often in the inner north as our populations grow and the pressure on our existing network increases. In the inner north many of our kinders are now benefiting from our Building Blocks grants, including Batman Park kinder, Thornbury kinder, Perry Street kinder, Merri kinder and Yarralea kinder, and we are building a brand new kinder at Thornbury High.

Across our state we are dedicated to building 50 government owned and operated early learning centres to address the childcare shortages in areas of greatest need. Where possible those will be co-located with schools to avoid that dreaded double drop-off. It is an ambitious reform but is one that we are committed to as we work to improve early education across this state, and this is Labor policy at its finest. It is groundbreaking for children in this state – for the next generation that is coming through. It is something that we are absolutely committed to. I have not even spoken about bush kinder and bilingual kinder, about our kinder kits and our toy grants or about the hugely important school readiness funding, which is helping support kids with additional needs. It is fantastic policy and I support it.

Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (17:42): I am pleased to rise today and speak on this matter of public importance submitted by the member for Preston. While it is an attempt to be self-indulgent and pat the government on the back, I must give the Labor government a healthy dose of reality. One major point in this matter I want to address is the hundreds of new and upgraded schools that this government boasts about. Within my electorate is Kilmore, the largest town in Victoria without a public secondary school, located in one of the biggest growth corridors in the state. The only secondary school option currently in Kilmore is Assumption College, a private school that has fees starting from nearly $9000 a year. Assumption is an excellent school because it did produce one of my fabulous staff members and digital wizards; however, not everyone in Kilmore has the opportunity to attend private school.

Down the road in Broadford and Wallan the schools are already at or nearing capacity, and students as young as 12 years old are having to make a 2-hour commute to and from school each day. The need for a school in Kilmore has been repeatedly brought to this government’s attention, yet it has been ignored every time. There was a golden opportunity just missed due to a lack of urgency and care from this government and the former Minister for Education. Despite thousands of local residents signing petitions calling for the state government to purchase the former Colmont School campus, it has recently been sold to a private company. The previous Minister for Education was made aware of this opportunity on multiple occasions and was invited to meet with local families to hear how desperately locals need this school. Instead, she did nothing, demonstrating a short-sightedness and arrogance that has resulted in hundreds of families being left without reasonable local education options. This former school campus was ready-made and conveniently on the market and had the opportunity to provide a cost-effective solution to this very real problem for our community, so I ask: why should these children be placed at such a disadvantage just because of where they live? This is not some rural, remote location. This is Kilmore, one of the fastest-growing towns in our state. It is time to listen to the community and provide them with a public school, so to help this government listen I have some direct quotes from Kilmore residents who signed the petition. There were nearly 3500 signatures, so buckle up. Rachel Fairman said:

Education, family’s and children should not have to suffer exhaustion to gain an education …

Jamie Leahy said:

I have 3 kids who will all need a high school to go to soon. I shouldn’t have to bus them out of town so they can get the education they deserve!

Meghan Thorpe said:

I have 2 children that will be attending high school in the next few years my husband and I can’t afford a private school and don’t want to travel really far away …

And I think that is a pretty fair request. Margaret Kelly said:

There is an empty school, you don’t have a school, yet somehow the government is not joining the dots!

Tracey Challis said:

The amount of housing getting built in the area, the growth of the township and surrounding areas, there is definitely enough families to warrant a public highschool … A town this size and only offering a private school is just wrong. There has been talks and petitions … This has been needed for several years. To no avail. It’s about time the government listened.

Rebecca Hocking said:

We need more options for public high schools in the area, having a public high school option for Kilmore will relieve commuting stress factors and make schools more accessible. Families in Kilmore shouldn’t have to be forced into paying for a private school, as they are our only options within our town, or having to commute to a completely different town just so their child can receive an education.

I think everyone in the chamber can agree that everyone deserves an education close to their home. These are just a handful of the thousands of responses received of nearly 3500 signatures. We could fill the school tomorrow, yet I am getting crickets out of this government, who is bold enough to brag about its education investments. How can this government pat themselves on the back about their contributions to education while this goes on?

Another point I must raise and bring some clarity on is the state of child care in Victoria, particularly in regional areas. We have seen the announcement of 50 new child early learning centres that will be established across our state – hold on for the reality check. As part of the government’s rollout of new early learning centres I was pleased that Seymour, located within my electorate, was included to alleviate some of the strain on the system locally. But let me tell you, our community is angry about this misleading announcement. The reality that this will not be delivered until beyond 2028, if it is delivered at all – if we can trust this government is capable of delivering a project – is an absolute slap in the face to parents wanting but needing to return to work. This headline-grabbing announcement has prevented private and not-for-profits from filling the childcare void, yet this government has no goal to actually deliver and relieve childcare waitlists. I just received this message this morning from Alicia in Nagambie, who highlighted the six-month waitlist in Nagambie, which is up to two years in many surrounding towns – two years. Just four out of these so-called 50 centres have been confirmed in the first round, with three of them being found in Labor seats. The issue goes far beyond delays for Seymour. This government has a clear track record of overpromising and underdelivering for Victorians. I have serious concerns that the Best Start, Best Life initiative will be added to this ever-growing list. Initial estimates for the cost of these 50 childcare centres was tabled at $484 million. So far land has only been located for four of the 50 childcare centres, and on top of that, no-one knows where 20 of these 50 centres will be located, including this government. I have quite a few suggestions for my electorate of Euroa.

We are already seeing a scramble by this government to find ways to deliver yet another program they have announced without a suitable or thought-out plan. As this happens, kindergartens across the state are nervously waiting for any scrap of detail. As usual, this government has failed to adequately consult with stakeholders, with kinders and childcare centres finding out about so-called free kinder reforms and the new funding regime mere months before being expected to operate under the new arrangements. We have seen how the Commonwealth Games, or lack thereof, embarrassingly ended. Now we are expected to trust this government to implement this project without an issue, on time and under budget. But you have not earned that credibility.

As things currently stand regional Victoria is in dire need of more childcare centres. Kilmore, Broadford, the Benalla region and the Seymour region are all classified as childcare deserts by the Mitchell Institute. These are major towns, not inaccessible backwaters, but they are being placed at a disadvantage when child care is so rare. The lack of childcare options is placing a significant barrier on young people who want to raise their family in regional Victoria. We have got incredible local childcare providers, but in most of these places there are up to six kids competing for each place – it is not sustainable. Towns like Nagambie and Avenel were not even included in their announcements despite serious problems finding local child care in these areas. The issues raised in the responses, including multiyear waitlists, are part of a petition I put out for a survey and a review for local parents who are in desperate need of childcare providers.

The responses shared overwhelmingly negative experiences, with 100 per cent of respondents saying they had been adversely impacted by access to child care in the region. I would like to add one more example from Lauren in Seymour, an incredible landscape architect with two gorgeous boys. She also volunteers on absolutely every community event in town. She said:

Nash has been on the Goodstart nursery waitlist since July 2022 with the hope that he would start daycare at 12 months of age in June 2023.

In April 2023 we were offered a day which I didn’t take because I intended to be on mat leave for 12 months.

It wasn’t until August 2023 that one day became available meaning I couldn’t return to work more than one day until that time …

We still only have 1 day a week and every Thursday when I drop Noah –

her other child –

off, I ask if Nash can have a casual day this is completely dependent upon another child in the nursery being away or sick.

This is literally parents waiting at the door of childcare centres for access. It is completely unacceptable. Another mum Lou, a local nurse, who recently had two delicious twin boys Freddie and Tommy, is on a 40-strong waitlist in Seymour for a centre that can take eight babies. This government genuinely promised a centre so far down the track that these boys will be at school before this centre even starts to get built. My community is not the only one suffering with these issues. All-year kinder and education has been mentioned so many times in press conferences, motions, bills and more, yet when it comes to action, we have seen very little and our communities continue to suffer.

I would like to make a big shout-out to all of our local teachers and childcare providers for what they do considering the lack of investment. They go above and beyond, in particular Yaya, my little daughter Quinn’s teacher, and my son Arthur’s teachers as well. It is incredible how much they dedicate and allow us mothers and parents to be here.

James NEWBURY (Brighton) (17:52): It is astonishing to think that the government has brought in a matter of public importance today and has not filled their own speakers list when talking about schools.

The SPEAKER: I believe the member for Bentleigh was about to stand and speak.

James NEWBURY: You called me.

The SPEAKER: Because I thought you were going to call a point of order or something.

James NEWBURY: Speaker, with respect, you called me, and I am speaking.

The SPEAKER: Is it a point of order?

James NEWBURY: No, you have called me to speak, and I am speaking.

The SPEAKER: What are you speaking on?

James NEWBURY: I am speaking on the matter.

The SPEAKER: We alternate speakers across the table, as you would be aware, Manager of Opposition Business. It was my understanding that you were standing to take a point of order given what you referred to at the start of your contribution when the member for Bentleigh was ready to rise as well to speak on the matter of public importance. I am not quite sure –

James NEWBURY: When I stood, Speaker, it was based on the fact that, number one, the government had advised they did not have a last speaker. They had advised us formally of that. And the member was not standing. I looked across, the member was not standing, as the camera will show.

The SPEAKER: Manager of Opposition Business, I will not have this argument with you in the chamber. I am prepared to allow you to have the call, but I believe that the government also was seeking the call.

James NEWBURY: We have a matter of public importance that is important. It is important because in terms of government funding 93 per cent of education funding is directed to Labor seats – 93 per cent of school funding is directed to Labor seats. Despite the coalition representing a third of the seats in this chamber, our seats receive 6 per cent of funding. Is there any other definition than pork-barrelling to that breakdown of funding? There is no other way to describe what is being done in terms of government funding. I would say to the new Deputy Premier that as Minister for Education he has inherited an important portfolio that will make and can make incredible differences to the children of our great state, and I would ask him to consider the way that the government currently funds our schools and schools that are not in Labor seats and to look to adjust the funding to just be fair.

If you would like me to, I would be more than happy to talk to you about the needs of schools – good schools – outside Labor seats. I will give you one example: Brighton Primary. Brighton Primary has a specialist hearing unit and has students who cannot hear properly. It is a wonderful unit. It is one of the only specialist units for kids with hearing difficulties in Melbourne, and guess where it is? It is next to a train line – directly next to a train line – because the government in living memory has never committed funding to Brighton Primary School. The last record we have of capital works funding at Brighton Primary was when people were last wearing flares – not when they are wearing flares now, it was when they were trendy previously, 50 years ago. To think that we have a school with a specialist hearing unit in Melbourne where the children are being housed and taught next to a train line because the government is directing funding to Labor seats not Liberal seats purely because of the representation of the seat is outrageous.

Mary-Anne Thomas: Rubbish. That is rubbish.

James NEWBURY: The facts do not lie, Leader of the House. The facts do not lie – they never do. The funding is clear, the statistics are clear: 6 per cent of funding goes to Liberal electorates – the facts do not lie – despite the coalition representing a third of the seats in this place. Ninety-three per cent is pork-barrelled into Labor seats. These are children we are talking about. I understand and anybody who has been around politics understands that governments always play politics and they always play politics with what they are doing, but doing it with school funding and neglecting children in non-Labor-held seats is just wrong. It is just wrong. I am sure that my colleagues would all have examples in their electorates. Every single one of them would have multiple examples where schools have not had funding for decades and decades and decades because those electorates are Liberal held.

But to think there is an example where children have hearing difficulties and are at one of the specialist units in Melbourne – this is not a Brighton thing, this is a unit that teaches children with hearing difficulties, a specialist unit, for the whole of Melbourne. And they are not just based next to a train line, guess where they are? They are in a demountable, and the demountable was placed there in the 1970s. I do not like talking down the quality of the infrastructure, but to think that the demountable has been there for 50 years, I am sure you can imagine. And it is only reasonable to think that that demountable needs attention. Of course it needs attention. How much soundproofing do you think it has? None. It has literally no soundproofing, and the members on the other side are laughing. They are laughing about children not having the capital infrastructure they deserve.

Every child in this state deserves to be treated fairly. Every child deserves to be treated reasonably. The government should be allocating funds on the basis of need, not on the colour of the seat, and that is not what is happening. So the challenge that I put to the new Deputy Premier, taking over that role, is I would be happy to talk to you about what we are seeing in terms of government funding, but the minister needs to consider the way that funding is allocated and consider the children of the state and the fair and reasonable way that school funding should be allocated. But that is not the only example in my electorate; there are numerous examples in my electorate. I am sure that every member on this side could get up and deliver frankly hours of debate on every single school in their electorate that has not been funded. They have not been funded in my case, for most of my schools, for half a century.

Hampton Primary School was promised some funding at the last election – after the Liberal Party made a commitment – as an election commitment, and they were told they would receive the money and the cheque would be in the mail on the day after the election. Guess what they got told after the election – ‘The funding ain’t coming, and it isn’t in the budget’. The funding was not in the budget. What an outrageous broken promise. How dare the government promise my school, the kids in my community, funding as an election commitment and then on the day after the election break their promise. Now they have been told, maybe in three years. Read the budget every year for the next three years – keep looking, keep flicking through the budget. These are children we are talking about. And Hampton Primary School is not the only example. Multiple schools were promised funding for the day after the election by Labor during the election campaign, and all of them had have had that promise broken. It is outrageous. School funding is totally pork-barrelled in this state.