Thursday, 19 February 2026

 Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (17:16): (1543) My adjournment this evening is to the Minister for Education, and the action that I am seeking is for the minister to provide the house with a full report on the maintenance backlog at Melbourne High School and to commit to a long-term master plan for its facilities ahead of the school centenary in 2027. Yesterday I had the honour of attending the sod-turning ceremony that officially launched those centenary celebrations. The castle on the hill turns 100 ‍years old in 2027, and it was a wonderful event. Students, staff, old boys and the MHS Foundation came together with genuine pride and affection for this institution, and I congratulate everyone that made it possible.

However, yesterday’s celebration also exposed a serious problem: the buildings are falling down, the classrooms are stuck in the past and the government has absolutely no plan to fix it. Melbourne High is one of only a handful of selective entry government schools in Victoria, and around 1600 students sit the entrance exam for Melbourne High School each year for just 338 places in year 9. It selects primarily on merit, with a small principal’s discretionary category. Brains, not money, get you in the door of this school, and that is the point – a profound principle for those of us on this side of the house. And its record is extraordinary. From those halls have come Nobel laureates in Sir John Eccles, a foreign minister in Gareth Evans, a moral philosopher known around the world in Peter Singer, cricket immortals Keith Miller and Bill Woodfull, Olympians, Brownlow medallists and the male members of the Seekers. Melbourne High is not just a school, it is a factory for Australian leadership, generation after generation, which makes what is happening to its buildings all the more shameful.

The iconic main entrance, installed when the building opened in 1927, is falling apart and in need of urgent restoration, and the swimming pool needs repair and is currently unable to be used. Classrooms in the heritage-listed Twenties Building have not been meaningfully updated in decades. Students and teachers are working in conditions that do not reflect the standard of the school that has been set. Here is the heart of the problem: it is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, and that listing is right and proper, but it means maintenance is harder, more complex and more expensive, and the government’s funding formula simply makes no allowance for that. It is a 100-year-old heritage-listed landmark, and it is being starved of the resources that it needs.

The school community have had to fill the gap themselves. The MHS Foundation runs giving days. Alumni donate. Parents are asked for about $3000 a year, in part to maintain buildings and government grounds that should be funded by the government. A Nobel Prize–winning school is passing the hat around to fix its front door, and that is simply not acceptable. With the centenary two years away, the moment to act is now. A full maintenance report is required, a credible master plan and a commitment to funding what heritage status demands. Melbourne High has given the state 100 years of extraordinary education. It deserves more.