Thursday, 31 October 2019

 Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education) (11:13): Earlier this week I updated the house on the success of free TAFE right across the state. Today I want to focus on one region—south-west Victoria. South West TAFE offers a range of free TAFE courses from agriculture, building and construction, accounting, children’s services, food and hospitality, nursing and community services, automotive, plumbing and tourism. There have been 1170 enrolments—an increase of 121 per cent in free TAFE courses compared to this time last year. For jobs in the region, this is a brilliant result for a wonderful TAFE.

They recently had an open day, and I am pleased that there are many supporters of free TAFE in the south-west. Let me quote one of them:

A great open day. A range of free and new courses will be available in early 2020.

… Education is alive and well in Polwarth. If this brings back memories of your time at South-West TAFE, I would love to hear them.

Now, who said that? It was the member for Polwarth. I suspect he does not want to hear about people’s memories of the previous Liberal government’s closure of the Glenormiston campus. I bet he does not want to hear from people who missed out on an education because of what those opposite did.

That is a campus that this government reopened. It is a campus that offers many free courses. I do not know whether the member for Polwarth is one of the 11 votes for the Leader of the Opposition, but I reckon he should reconsider.

Mr Wells: On a point of order, Speaker, seriously, this is a pattern. Yesterday we had a situation where we learned that the education minister could count to 11, so we were pretty impressed by that, but this is a pattern of behaviour by the ministers and we would ask you to bring this to a halt. Otherwise we are just going to keep calling points of order until it is fixed.

The SPEAKER: Order! I do ask the Minister for Education not to attack the opposition. The minister will come back to making a statement.

Mr MERLINO: I will not pick on them. It is a fact though that Glenormiston was closed when the current leader was Treasurer.