Thursday, 24 March 2022

Mansfield Kindergarten

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (17:05): (6298) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Early Childhood, and the action I seek is for the minister to ensure additional funding is provided to complete the Mansfield Kindergarten redevelopment project. The Mansfield Kindergarten is actually somewhere that I have visited a number of times, and I have watched the committee and the staff really get behind the growth that is happening in the town and try to work out the best option for children going forward, and they have had a project on the go since 2018.

I do want to provide a little bit of background here, because the population in Mansfield has really grown. Even though it only grows by a few hundred thousand every year, it is still growing. What I have seen is a lot of younger families and children coming in. So they have had the growth over the past 18 months—3.5 per cent. Going forward the forecast is 2.2, but that is the second highest behind Wodonga. This project though, similar to many projects in the state, has hit a little bit of a hurdle with the increased costs. They have been very appreciative of the support that the government has given and the support that the council has given with regard to this project, but there has been an unprecedented cost escalation in the construction industry in the last 24 months. And as has happened with other projects, this has put upward pressure on the outcome of what they can get for the funding that has been made available. Now, this is a three-part project. There is the addition of a third teaching space, an update to existing buildings and the restoration of the mechanics institute building. They are offering three- and four-year-old kinder classes and after-kinder care, but this all requires more space as the numbers increase. So I guess at the moment they are very concerned that this project is in jeopardy because of these increased construction costs, and they would very much like to be able to get enough to complete that, because the cost of going back to the architects and to everybody to get it redrafted is probably going to be equivalent to what is needed. You know, you are just eating into that base cost. So I would really appreciate it if the minister could look favourably on increased funding for the Mansfield Kindergarten project.