Wednesday, 15 November 2023

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2023–24 Budget Estimates

Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (11:16): I am going to outrage the member for Mornington by speaking somewhat about the 2023–24 budget estimates committee report. I know that we sometimes stray a fair way from these reports into the domain of federal government, and understandably with the member’s background, but this is an opportunity to talk about some of the things that we are doing in this Parliament and some of the things that we are considering out of the budget. I might actually move to chapter 4 to talk a little bit about the chapter on education, and I certainly want to thank the minister, the departmental staff and all those who were able to provide the committee with some really important information about what it is going on in education across Victoria at the moment.

Of particular note and concern for the community that I represent is the 100 new schools program. Prior to the election last year – and we are almost a year away from that election now – the Labor government promised, if we were re-elected, that we would be building a school in Point Cook and a specialist school as well, and I was glad to see that these were committed to in the budget, and we spoke about some of those 100 schools during the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) estimates hearings.

Why is school so important for the community that I represent? I will give you a couple of facts in a moment. Actually I might go to that to start with. Members here might not be aware that the University of Melbourne judge their intakes each year on which suburbs they come from. Of course as every member would expect here – where the students live when they live on campus – Carlton in particular has the highest intake. No doubt that is the case. Kew, where a lot of these high-, high-, high-cost private schools are held, is number two. I am glad to see that many of those schools will now pay the same taxes as every state school. That is a really important thing so that we can support the state and support the budget that we talked about in this committee. Number three is the suburb of Point Cook for the University of Melbourne’s intake. So education is very important for the community that I represent. It is highly valued, and it is something that our community wants to see improved all the time.

We are also a growing suburb, so these commitments and the commitments in the budget and the commitments that the minister spoke about at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee go to the very heart of some of the things that are most important for the community that I represent. So I am really excited to see these schools built. There is another thing that the member for Kew recently mentioned, which is that she felt that there was too much overcrowding in schools in the area of Point Cook. The reason there are a lot of people going to schools in Point Cook is because they are great educational facilities; they are fantastic education facilities. They are facilities that are destination schools for people from Point Cook and beyond. They are places that people want to go to to get educated, and I am really proud that they are public schools that people want to go to to get educated. I know that Point Cook South P–9, which is the interim name, and Point Cook South specialist school will be such schools when they are built and completed and opened in 2026.

One of those schools that is a real destination school for the community that I represent is Saltwater P–9 College, which also received support during the budget of $37.3 million. We were out there with Minister Hutchins in the days after the budget was announced, and we talked through some of these matters in the PAEC committee hearings as well. The school is just so excited to see more support for the facilities that they need to continue doing great education.

I do want to take a little bit of a moment, with your indulgence, Deputy Speaker, to thank all those educators who do such great work across all the suburbs of the communities that I represent and across all of Victoria, because without them we are not the Education State. We have got great education facilities across our community, and as a government we keep supporting those education facilities.

One of the other things that we touched briefly upon as well were the beacon schools for Punjabi and Hindi as VCE language programs. Seventeen per cent of the community in the suburb of Point Cook have an Indian background or themselves were born in India. It is a huge amount of our community, and I know those programs are going to be so popular across the western suburbs with that commitment. I have got lots more to say on this committee report, and I look forward to having the opportunity to say it on another occasion.