Tuesday, 2 May 2023

 Darren CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (15:44): I stand with you today to share a very important issue close to my heart, and that is an issue that I have campaigned hard for, which is to see a new library funded and constructed in my community of Armstrong Creek. Pleasingly enough, we won that campaign and we were successful in getting a state government grant to help fund a new library for the Armstrong Creek growth corridor, something that I am enormously proud of. That library will service Armstrong Creek, Mount Duneed and Charlemont, and I am very pleased with the outcome.

Disappointingly, though, the City of Greater Geelong, in their budget handed down just last week, failed to make the necessary allocation of money to provide adequate staffing for that library. Of course Armstrong Creek is full of lots of working families, people who make their way into Geelong for their regular working week, and to have a beautiful purpose-built library to service that community be inadequately staffed is inappropriate. As a consequence of that, I am launching a petition calling for that funding.