Gum Nut Gully Preschool
Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (20:32): (1272) My adjournment tonight is for the Minister for Planning and is in regard to the Gum Nut Gully Preschool in Doncaster East. On Sunday the educators and committee and many parents of Gum Nut Gully Preschool rallied in support of the preschool’s survival in its current location. At present the state government is offering grants to rebuild preschools under their initiative to expand preschool, which I support and our side supports. But concerningly, the government’s program means in terms of rebuilding the preschools, they have to take a certain form to be physically rebuilt. What that means is, for instance, the land needs to be flat and a certain style of preschool is then going to be put in place. That is all fine, except for the fact that the City of Manningham Council finds it difficult to accommodate those planning conditions simply because the Gum Nut Gully Preschool in its current location on Larnoo Drive is near the Mullum Mullum Creek, which is wooded and, as is typical for my part of Melbourne, on an undulating location, so it is fairly hilly. It is difficult of course to find a flat block of land to build the government’s cookie-cutter approach to kindergartens. We all want the preschool to be upgraded – the committee does, everyone does. The only other option the Manningham council have to avail themselves of the government’s grants in this circumstance is to move the location of the preschool to a few hundred metres away, which is a suburban block.
My action tonight is very simple. It is for the Minister for Planning to put an incorporated document into the Manningham planning scheme which would override the overlays that are on that block, such as bushfire and native vegetation, so we do not have to cut down trees so we can allow kids to have the bush education which they are getting on that side at the moment and keep that all intact. If an incorporated document was done by the planning minister for the City of Manningham, it would allow the new preschool to be constructed at the location that Gum Nut Gully is at now and allow the parents, the educators and the committee to continue with what is a magnificent education at that preschool.