Tuesday, 15 August 2023

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (12:59): It was great to join the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood and member for Footscray to officially open the new Elonera kindergarten buildings this week. It was great to join with the committee, led by Janique Hankins, and the range of parents that for 60 years have contributed to this wonderful volunteer-led community kinder. To Hema Srekrishnan, who is an incredible educator who put her mark on this new three-year-old space, we thank you for your dedication, and we thank all the educators and education support staff that work in early childhood education.

It started out as a dream with then president Anna Hughes, who is a wonderful leader in our local community, and she set out on a mission for a number of years – after chatting under that historic gum tree that has been there for many, many years – to go about doubling the capacity. It will be 61 places at Elonera kindergarten. And it comes at a time of significant reform in early childhood education in Victoria. We see three-year-old kinder going up to 15 hours placement by 2029, and then we will see pre-prep, with 30 hours of critical, important and rich education in early childhood. We have a shout-out for all our early childhood educators. We have seen a lot of development with the City of Kingston in partnership across our local community, whether it is Acacia Avenue kindergarten, Chelsea Heights Kindergarten or Chelsea Kindergarten recently, and all of the significant investments that have been made. We are really proud of what we have been achieving in early childhood education in the Mordialloc electorate.