Thursday, 19 October 2023

Keysborough South community hub

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (17:35): (400) My adjournment this evening is to the Minister for Children, and the action I seek is for the minister to visit my electorate and see the progress of Keysborough South community hub and the amazing early years facility that will be delivered there. It was only a little while ago that I joined the former Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep Minister Stitt to check out the progress and turn the first sod on this amazing facility. It has been eight years in the making, with a significant community campaign and the Andrews and Allan Labor governments coming together with the City of Greater Dandenong to deliver an outstanding community facility. It will have 123 places, and it will support the educational needs of our kids tomorrow. When we think about the growth that has happened in Keysborough South and the delivery of the Andrews and Allan Labor governments in this community, it is really substantial.

It was former member for Keysborough Martin Pakula who opened Keysborough Gardens Primary School. It was our commitment at the last state election to deliver a $5.3 million investment and upgrade to provide for another 150 students at this growing and thriving school, and it was our government that took a commitment to plan for an upgrade to Keysborough fire station. When we think of the delivery that has happened there with the Keysborough South Community Hub, as our Keysborough South community grows we need to make sure that we have the investment, the infrastructure and the means to support that community into the future. The Keysborough South community hub will offer high-class kinder facilities, it will offer maternal and child health and it will deliver a library facility in this thriving community. Nestled next to Tatterson Pavilion and Tatterson Park there, it will be a hub. It will be able to be walked to in those pristine open spaces. So we are really excited about the progress there when we think about the delivery in early childhood across our electorate and the investments that we have made.

I was with the new Minister for Children just the other week where we got to team up and read Spanish – well, I did not, the minister did; she was outstanding – to kids.

A member: Hola!

Tim RICHARDSON: Hola, yes. She was very good – outstanding work at Chelsea Library. And that was amazing to see what bilingual language means for the brain development and growth of our youngest Victorians. Then I took the minister down the road to Chelsea Kindergarten, which was rebuilt by this government, a two-room kinder facility that has transformed our kinder offering there. When we see three- and four-year-old kinder rolled out, and we know the brain development that happens in the first thousand days of a child’s life, we need to make sure that we deliver the first-class facilities that match the outstanding first-class education of our early childhood educators.

But it is one thing to have the ambition, it is another to build that ambition, and that is why we are delivering the Building Blocks program, we are rolling out pre-prep and we are scaling up such wonderful facilities that will educate our youngest Victorians. Keysborough South community hub will be an absolute showpiece in our community. I cannot wait to go through with the Minister for Children and check out the progress – it will be open at the end of 2024.