Wednesday, 23 September 2026

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (11:00): I hope you are ready. It is Committee Report of Fortune time, and I am reporting on the 2026–27 budget estimates. Let us have a look where we will end up first, shall we? Education – wonderful, given that I have got the Shadow Minister for Education sitting behind me, who I believe – he can confirm or deny – is actually going to make his first visit to the tropical north of Victoria. He is not listening to me, which is quite rude. Anyway, we have got some schools to go and see. It was interesting during these hearings of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, of which I am thrilled to be a part. It is some of the best use of time over, well, it is usually two weeks. This year we condensed it into some very long days over 10 days. But there was some interesting dodging of questions throughout the education portfolio.

Brad Rowswell: Tell us more.

Jade BENHAM: I certainly will – why don’t I – particularly around why regional schools have not been getting their fair share, and they certainly have not. I have raised many times in this place the state of schools like Chaffey College in Mildura and the state of Mildura West Primary School, which I was at last week coincidentally. That building has actually been rectified. It was being held together by chipboard for a long, long time. Apparently they got rid of the termites, and they have managed to fix that with the school’s own operating budget. But there are other schools that are certainly not getting their fair share. Last week I was also at Mildura Senior College. H block at Mildura Senior has closed down. It has been condemned, and they cannot use it. The staff and the school council there have told me that there has been no vision. There is no master plan. The department cannot tell them what is going on. So as far as education goes, and the dodging of questions and what schools are in poor or very poor condition, we know that Chaffey College is one of those public schools in Victoria that is in very poor condition. And without a plan, Mildura Senior College, now that it has had H block closed up and it cannot be used, will not be far behind it. That has nearly taken half of my time.

We will spin the wheel again, shall we, and see what we can come up with. Let me get a heading first: TAC, which leads me to roads. Let us talk about the Transport Accident Commission and roads. We know that when the now Premier was the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, he cut funding to road maintenance and in fact ceased resealing roads altogether. I am not a roads engineer, Acting Speaker De Martino, and I assume neither are you, but we know basic common sense tells us that you need to reseal the roads to stop the water getting in. You also need to keep up that road maintenance on the side of the roads because the water needs somewhere to go during particularly wet winters and wet summers, which of course we have had now. What is also alarming is that while I was driving around this state and the 16 per cent that my electorate covers – 16 per cent of the landmass, which I know is big – I saw that the roads are horrific. I had to stop a couple of times. I do not know how the trucks are coping on the Calder Highway, particularly between Sea Lake and Berriwillock. All the way down to Culgoa there are culverts that have literally sunken into the ground. They are now ditches. They are not even potholes anymore. There are gashes that run right up the middle of the road. There is no signage to the south, so in the dark, people that are driving those roads are hitting them and blowing their tyres out. It is absolutely appalling.

I am only going to get to two subjects, because I want to get this on the record. While I was driving around last week, I had contractors calling me, very alarmed that they have only been contracted to do one cut of roadside vegetation in bushfire prone areas. In our area we are headed towards a bumper harvest for wheat, barley and cereals. One cut. I know it is wet now, but that is going to dry out very, very quickly. The weeds themselves are taller than the member for Lowan, which I know is not a huge feat, but it hides kangaroos. I had a kangaroo jump out at me last Wednesday evening, and because the weeds are so long you cannot see them until they are literally in your passenger side door. I did not flinch. There were two trucks coming the other way. I am a very skilled driver; however, I am not skilled enough to battle Victorian roads. It is time. This report illustrates that we are not getting our fair share, and that is what the Nationals will guarantee.