Casterton school bus services
Emma KEALY (Lowan) (09:50): Unfortunately I have yet another example of the Allan Labor government’s failure to listen to local people, and this time it is around the Casterton school bus runs, where the city-centric Labor government have focused on merging a number of bus runs that will leave our Victorian students worse off. There are proposals at the moment to put massive, large school buses on narrow, winding and dangerous country roads. It is simply inappropriate. This is something that families have raised as an issue, schools have raised as an issue and the bus operators have raised as an issue, and yet the government simply is not listening. We need the government to step up. I urge the Minister for Education to review this urgent situation at Casterton, where bus routes may be lost. We might see that families are instead taking their children to school in South Australia, where they work, rather than having to travel 50 minutes to drop kids off to a school bus run and then the kids have to travel even further. We need to support people who live in rural and regional areas. The people of Casterton deserve more focus and to be heard, which is not happening by Labor at the moment.