Wednesday, 19 February 2020

Matters of public importance

Government policy initiatives

The SPEAKER (14:01): I have accepted a statement from the member for Mordialloc proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house notes the Andrews Labor government’s delivery of a range of state-shaping policies and projects that benefit Victorian children, including:

(1) the start of universal three-year-old kindergarten rolling out in regional communities first. Part of the Labor government’s almost $5 billion decade-long reform, this investment will ensure every Victorian child can benefit from an extra year at kinder—an Australian first;

(2) the next phase of the Labor government’s landmark Smile Squad free dental program, which, once fully rolled out in 2022, will provide check-ups and dental treatment to more than 650 000 students in government schools every year;

(3) the opening of 11 new schools at the beginning of the school year, part of our commitment to open 100 new schools by 2026, ensuring every child has a great local school and a great start in life. The Labor government has invested $6.1 billion to deliver more than 1400 school upgrades, supporting more than 7500 construction jobs for Victorians.

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (14:02): It is an honour to rise as a member of this place in the 59th Parliament and the Parliamentary Secretary for Schools on this matter of public importance (MPI) around education. It was once remarked by civil rights activist Maya Angelou:

Hope is born again in the faces of children.

It strikes a chord with me, this statement. When we think about the world and how we confront inequality, inequity, oppression and fear, hope is indeed the driving force of a better tomorrow. Through the actions we take in this Parliament and in how we empower our children and the next generation, this is an obligation that we have to all Victorians: to support and protect hope.

Without hope we have very little as a society. If we are to truly break the link between disadvantage and poorer outcomes, our young people are that essential ingredient. Education is absolutely a core tenet of hope and in cultivating the dreams and ambitions of our youngest Victorians. It is why education is so fundamental in the United Nations sustainable development goals and is outlined with these succinct words:

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Education is truly transformational. It is aspirational and it is the fundamental right of every young Victorian. I see the power in education every single day, as a member of Parliament and also as the Parliamentary Secretary for Schools. Whether it is our amazing primary schools, our kindergartens, our secondary schools or our specialist and low-socio-economic status schools across our sector, all do an incredible job supporting some 1 million students. It is truly inspiring to see the teachers and educators that underpin their development and their growth into the future. When you think about the values that are set down in education and everything that stands for, one cannot go any further than reflecting on the fundamental nature of Victoria as the Education State.

It is a revolution in education the likes of which this state has never seen before. It is inspired, it is passionate and it is transformational. It is ensuring every student, regardless of their circumstances, gets the very best opportunities each and every day. It is ensuring that we make those critical investments in infrastructure to deal with the growth and development over the years to come. With those 80 000 new preppies coming in this year, we have some 1 million students across our Victorian education system.

It is remarkable to think of the school builds—more than 100 over the coming years—that are driving those outcomes and of having the opportunity to open some of those buildings, in established suburbs and also on the edge of a growing Melbourne and growing regional areas where we see new communities forming and the hopes, dreams and aspirations of those communities getting underway.

When we think about the incredible work led by the Deputy Premier and his incredible Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and kinder, we see a transformation the likes of which we have not seen. It is one of the biggest social policy reforms. It is exciting to see the $5 billion in investment in this area. I am sure the member for Carrum will reflect a bit more on some of that transformational power in delivering universal three-year-old kinder to all young Victorians.

Health and education are intrinsically linked, and one of the transformational policies that we are embarking on is with the dental van program, the Smile Squad vans that are getting underway. Critically and devastatingly, one of the biggest reasons for hospitalisation in Victoria for young people under the age of 10 relates to chronic dental issues. That is also a symptom of disadvantage and the austerity that comes from disadvantage in our communities. This is about breaking the link and ensuring that those challenges that young people face with their oral health are not a barrier to future opportunities as well. That is being rolled out right now, in 2020. We see substantial investments—a $300 million-plus investment over four years to deliver the school dental program, and that is the most significant investment in public dental health to date in Victoria. This is the transformational nature of education and health policy on show and on display right now. It is built on the back of those values of education for all and quality health care for all, and we have come a long way in a relatively short period of time.

When you reflect on where, only a little while ago, we found education in Victoria, it is a stark contrast to the hopes and aspirations that we find ourselves here with today. I want people to reflect for a moment on where we found ourselves at the end of 2014, with the damage and destruction caused by the former Liberal-National government, with hope and aspiration being trampled upon and our young people’s opportunities being stifled. I want people to think for a moment of education, and indeed our schools, as like building a home. Like our schools, a home provides safety and security. It is a place where you grow and develop and create your memories. It is a place of nurture and of deep care. Like a home, our education system and our schools take time to build—to develop their foundations, their values, their ethos and their structures. Each brick is a building block. Each teacher and each student contributes to the fabric of that school.

However, the demolition of a home can take a matter of moments. And like a home, in Victoria in 2011 and 2014 the Liberal-National government deeply damaged and destroyed our education system in swift, swift fashion. Whether it was betraying our teachers on pay, delivering a savage $1 billion cut to education, losing countless teachers, underinvesting in our kinders or the destruction of our education regions, which were skeletons of what they were when they came to government, the education system was in dire straits. It was in ruins, but thankfully we can turn it around and rebuild and recover. When the Labor government came into power at the end of 2014, we set about the journey of rebuilding. We set about the journey of re-establishing trust with Victorians in our education system, reconnecting with our communities—every single one of our 1500 government schools—and building back that trust and respect with teachers, school communities and school councils, school by school, brick by brick.

As former United States Vice-President Joe Biden once remarked:

Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.

If you take that reflection and that standard alone and then consider the intrinsic relationship between hope, education and breaking the link of disadvantage, one cannot fathom how the former Liberal-National government found itself in the position it did when it embarked on its savage cuts agenda. Because when you think about the intrinsic link between hope and education, you wilfully accept that you are damaging and trampling on the dreams of Victorians into the future.

When we reflect on values for a moment, it is worth looking back at history. It was journalist Sydney Harris who said:

History repeats itself, but in such a cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.

This happened once again. Once again we saw this play out in the Napthine-Baillieu governments of 2014 and way back in 1993 under the Kennett Liberals. An article of October 1993 in the Age under the headline ‘Outrage Over Closures’ stated:

Angry teachers and parents are threatening mass protests at the State Government’s decision to close 159 schools across Victoria.

…

The closures were widely criticised and there were warnings that the cuts would undermine the quality of education, forcing many students to drop out of the school system.

To add insult to injury at the time were comments from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) stating:

The Institute of Public Affairs said the Government had not gone far enough. An institute spokesperson … said more school closures were necessary …

At that time the driving force for the cuts, devastation and closures was an aptly named body, the quality provision task force. It was the battering ram for a generation of school closures the likes of which we had never seen before. This quality provision task force has an eerie similarity to other bodies proposed or established by former Liberal-National governments or politically aspiring candidates. It was the Baillieu Liberal government’s eerily similar independent review of state finances, which recommended $5 billion worth of cuts and also would have taken a further savaging to our education system. It was the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Bulleen, and his then Shadow Treasurer, now the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Malvern, who proposed a commission of audit. That would have driven a stake through the public service and smashed our education system, even further damaging the record of the Labor government if they had come into power.

Sydney Harris was indeed right about history repeating itself, and it is again repeating itself as we are into the 59th Parliament. Just this week we had the member for Brighton and a member for Western Victoria in the other place ambushing and blindsiding the Leader of the Opposition, invoking the legacy of the former Liberal Premier, the Honourable Jeff Kennett. Championing and celebrating the virtues of small government were the features of the quotes and the comments that were espoused, and we all know what that means. That means cuts to the public service. That means the devastation of our schools and our kinders and further closures.

When you think of these values—the values that were championed and advocated for by the IPA back in 1993 when they were cheerleading further school closures and cuts—the number of members who list on their public interest records as being members of the Institute of Public Affairs and the fact that some, in their first speeches coming into this Parliament, champion the policy engine room that is the IPA, we again see that Liberals are destined to repeat the damaging history of the past in cutting schools, in cutting kinder funding and closing our TAFEs.

This is in stark contrast to the substantial investment that is being embarked on by the Andrews Labor government. In five years we have restored the trust, confidence, hope and aspirations of our communities, and with 1543 government schools now up and running across our sector, it is an exciting time for Victorian students coming into our system. By setting ambitious targets, by aiming to break the link between disadvantage and poorer outcomes for our kids, we know that we will drive forward a better outcome for our state, we will set an example for our nation and we will also lead internationally. That is what being Victorian is. It is being aspirational. It is having the hope and the aspirations for the future, not the cuts and closures, not the small government approach. When the notion of smaller government is put forward, I am always vexed as to why anyone who is a champion and cheerleader of the IPA would take a publicly funded job, would bring themselves into this Parliament. Whenever they want governance, it is to go towards smaller government and cutting the public service. The savage cuts that we have seen repeat themselves time and time again have never truly been addressed by those opposite, and it stands in stark contrast to us.

So when you think about Sydney Harris’s comments about history, when you think about history and time and the communities that stood up in 1993 through to 1999 pleading with those Liberal-Nationals governments to support communities, when you saw that the first action taken by the Baillieu-Napthine governments was to take a $1 billion axe to the education system, you know that Labor will always stand on the side of education. You know that the hopes, dreams and ambitions of our young people will always be protected, advocated for and strived for under a Labor government. You know that the health of our students and our children will always be protected. An example is of those dental vans and that transformational policy in making sure that kids who have those dental-related chronic illnesses can finally have that link of disadvantage broken.

You see, as a parent, as a member of Parliament, as someone who is now the Parliamentary Secretary for Schools, I cannot fathom and stand here and think of anyone who would sit around the cabinet table and propose policies like that of the IPA, who would say that less funding in education, lower outcomes for our kids and less funding in disadvantaged areas leads to better outcomes for our communities. That is why we will always champion equality, why we will always champion excellence in education and equity, and it is why this Labor government will continue through its second term and beyond to champion investment, and record investment, across schools, across kinders, across TAFE and across health. It is the social contract that we have signed up to with Victorians and the great trust that they place in us. It is why we do not waste a single day in government, and it is why this MPI is so critically important.

It might be for those opposite to reflect upon some of the comments made by those opposite through time and maybe clarify their values. But right now history gives the next chapter in what they stand for and shows that Labor governments through the decades are always on the side of the next generation—their hopes, their dreams and their ambitions.

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (14:18): I rise to make a contribution to the matter of public importance put forward by the member for Mordialloc, and I know by the tone in which he was delivering his contribution that he is really vying and jostling with the member for Essendon, waiting for that reshuffle. You can really see him positioning himself there. But I have got to say, he has got a very chequered view of history and also of current status, about where things are at. He may be, well, unaware that in fact under the Labor government, since I have been in Parliament, three schools in my electorate have been closed. Because it is in the country, they probably do not care so much, but that is the reality of the situation.

Now, there is a lot more work to be done in Victoria to fully benefit our children, to provide them with every opportunity, the opportunity for good-quality education, health care, a safe and secure environment and a good, healthy outdoors, so that these children, our children, can participate successfully in society as they get older, regardless of where they grow up. I am extremely concerned because the Treasurer has announced that there will be $4 billion in cuts that he will be seeking, and I worry particularly that investment in services for our children and therefore for our future will be cut by the Treasurer, who has let costs and major projects get out of control—not being able to understand and rein them in. I also want to remind the member for Mordialloc that Labor has been in government for 16 of 20 years, and so some of the poorer outcomes are certainly not the result of any coalition government but their poor management.

I want to start with the PISA results, the Programme for International Student Assessment. Australia and Victoria are performing poorly in this area. This is a study of some 600 000 15-year-olds from 79 countries, and it is done every three years, comparing maths, reading and science performance. In Australia 740 schools and 14 000 students were assessed. They found that our students were struggling in reading, science and maths, and all were in long-term decline. These results are underwhelming. Our students are falling well behind countries that we would think perhaps we should be on an even keel with. Victorian students here are just sitting on the average, but Australia as a whole, and remember Victoria is in there, lag three and a half years behind their Chinese counterparts in maths, and as I said, maths, science and reading were in long-term decline. We are lower than China and Singapore, and people might think, ‘Okay, they have different values in the way they view education’, but Estonia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Korea and Poland—they are countries we should be up there with, not falling behind.

One of the measures also is about the frequency of events such as noise and disorder, students not listening to the teachers, students not being able to work well or students having to wait a long time for the lesson to start. Well, Australia was way down the bottom of the list there. I know that if you are in China, you may not want to report on some of those things, but in Australia people will, and we were very low down the ladder in this measure. What is most disturbing is the researchers’ link that the worse the classroom environment, the worse the performance in academic outcomes.

In rural Victoria we are letting students down big-time. We know that the outcomes in country areas are much poorer than in the city. The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority data for 100 state high schools outside Melbourne shows that the average VCE performance of 61 schools had worsened. Eight schools had improved and 31 had maintained their results. So more than half of all regional and rural schools recorded a slump in their VCE results over the past decade, triggering concerns about that widening gap between the country and the city—and we know that when we have a city-centric Labor government this is quite a challenge.

The Minister for Education did convene an expert panel. It was a little bit of a talkfest. People were a bit unsure about how they actually were able to contribute to that panel. But the panel came back, and the minister announced proudly that he was going to be doubling the internet speed and perhaps looking at some strategies around teacher attraction.

The schools in country Victoria look very different to those in the city. I have visited many schools in country Victoria and in the city. It is very easy when you walk around and look into a school to see that the investment is made in city schools, not surprisingly in the marginal seats, and the country areas have very much missed out. I want to raise a couple of country schools that are in an appalling situation. In Warracknabeal, the education precinct there: so we have had the special developmental school and the secondary college with its structural issues—possum urine running down the walls, all sorts of things—being moved to the primary school location because there was room. Now, when I visited the special school, their area was not finished—nothing is finished; it is an absolutely appalling situation—and they were in the science labs, in the newly constructed science labs at Warracknabeal. The students from the special school were actually having their classes there. So the secondary school was not able to use the science labs because they were being used for the special developmental school—an appalling situation. The primary school itself is not finished. How this has been able to continue on is just beyond me. The government needs to invest very much in the school at Warracknabeal. The member for Lowan has been an absolute fierce advocate in her electorate for this. I am concerned that the $4 billion worth of cuts that the Treasurer is looking for may impact on the investment in Warracknabeal.

Likewise, in St Arnaud there is the outdated, outmoded and poor condition of the toilets and change rooms. I have been there and seen that, and I know the member for Ripon is a very fierce advocate for improved facilities at that school as well. Again, I am worried that the $4 billion worth of cuts that the Treasurer is looking for in every line item might hit the schools in rural Victoria. They need good environments for the kids to work in. They need investment in country Victoria so they do not slip further behind and we get two very distinct demographics—country Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne.

Now, some of the issues also faced by country Victoria are the workforce issues. We need good outcomes, and so we need good attraction and retention strategies for these areas. We have got young teachers walking away. Up to 40 per cent of graduate teachers—and these are very recent figures—quit the profession within five years of work. New teachers find this very difficult. They find challenging environments. We have parents who are much more forward in coming forward and students saying that they know their rights. I cannot help but draw a link between all of this work that is being done about people understanding and children in kindergartens in Sydney being taught their rights and how to protest. What is happening in classrooms is that teachers are struggling with kids and families who are in their faces saying, ‘I know my rights. You can’t do this. You can’t make me do that. I’m not going to do this’. It is no wonder that we have such a high percentage of young graduates moving away.

Again, I am worried that the government will fail to invest in retention and attraction strategies. I know that in country areas they struggle to get CRT, casual relief teachers—some have got 100 staff; they are big schools—and once a term they have to find one day for each of those staff members to go on their professional training. That is 100 days each term, and it is really hard for the bigger towns in country Victoria, the regional cities, to find people to do that work. It is extremely challenging.

We really need development in our regional cities. We need to have the fast rail. We cannot have the government squib on costs and give us an inferior product for airport rail, because we know what that will do if it is done properly. It will open up fast rail to Geelong, to Ballarat, to Bendigo, to Shepparton and to Wodonga. We need that to happen.

Most disturbingly, I have been hearing of a number of new schools that are opening or schools that have been extended from year 6 to year 8, or even a school that has been burnt out, that do not have books. Again, I am worried that the government is already cutting costs and not giving schools the—

A member interjected.

Ms McLEISH: In the south-east suburbs I would be awfully worried, the member for Carrum, about what is going on in your backyard, because there are too many schools that are missing out on schoolbooks. This is an essential. The government is now having to look for those $4 billion worth of cuts—every line item. They are already starting by not giving books to all of those schools that need them.

I want to talk about the government’s Education State targets, because they are falling short of their targets. These were released last year with little fanfare—not surprising when you have a look at how they are falling behind in the targets. Pride and confidence in our schools: the parents report that their pride and confidence in their local government schools is on the slide. In fact it was not even reported last year. Breaking the link—ensuring more students stay in school and breaking that link between disadvantage and outcomes for students: there are failures in year 5 and in year 9, where it is measured. There is barely an impact on year 9 to year 12 students staying in education. The member for Mordialloc needs to have a good understanding of what is going on, because these are the state education targets that are reported. Resilience is going in the wrong direction. The percentage of our students reporting a high level of resilience is on the slide. They have stopped recording science targets, and one can only be cynical about why they have not recorded science targets.

I want to now move to distance education and Virtual School Victoria. It is 19 February—I think it is 19 February today—and school has been back for nearly three weeks. Virtual School Victoria is one of the biggest schools in Victoria. The secondary level there has almost 1500 kids full-time equivalent. Well, they still have not got access to their online materials. How is this helping out our students? If you have a look, a lot of these kids will be in country Victoria. Now, the minister has said for the first time that country students will have access to the same range of VCE subjects as city students—well, not if they have not got access to their materials three weeks in. This is an absolute failure of this government.

Child protection is extremely concerning for me. I hear so many instances, with people coming to my office, of failure in this area. Child protection is in crisis. I am pleased that the minister is here, because he will understand this and he will know a lot of the stories. I hear dreadful stories time and time again. I have heard from the family of a 12-year-old boy who had some difficulties and was placed in residential care with older children who have been on the street and who are drug users. Now, this young lad did not mind school. He is 12 years old, and his parents come into my office in tears often. He was moved into residential care, and he did not have to go to school. He did not even have to come home. He breaks the curfew—well, that is okay. He breaks the second curfew, and that is okay. And then he breaks the real curfew at about 2.00 am. So of course when you have kids keeping hours like this then they are in no state to go to school, but nor are they encouraged to go to school.

The family had identified a brilliant program in Chum Creek—Lesley Porter’s Good Life Farm. It is a fabulous program. They identified him—the kid is in the outer east—but it was too hard for him to get there. So again he continued along with drug use, substance abuse and staying out all hours of the night. Now, what concerns me is that these kids are on the path to the youth justice system. The ironic thing is that when you get to the youth justice system—and I must thank the Minister for Corrections for facilitating a visit for me to the education system there—they have to go to school. So you have got this whole cohort of children in out-of-home care, probably between the ages of 12 and 17, who do not have to go to school and who are not encouraged to go to school. They are allowed to stay out all night. They get on the wrong track, and then they go to youth justice and they have got to go back to school.

It would make a lot more sense if we stopped failing these kids and made efforts to keep these kids in schools to look after them. These are vulnerable children in child protection for a variety of reasons, and it disturbs me greatly, the reports of 14 000 calls to the child abuse hotline that went unanswered between January 2018 and July 2019. This really undermines the confidence that people have in the Department of Health and Human Services and leaves children in danger. There has been a 47 per cent jump in the number of children needing protection under Labor. When the minister was asked at a Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearing in 2019 what he was going to do to reduce the number of children in out-of-home care, he said ‘Hope’. He hoped that the number would reduce. Now, I have got news for him: hope is not a strategy. You do not see any organisation draw up their strategic plan and have as one of their strategies hope.

We really need to get a grip on what is happening to do the right thing by our children. The government is failing our children dismally. A lot more can be done. A lot more needs to be done to lift us to the international standards that Australians expect. We expect that we are up there with the best, not languishing midway or at the bottom. Things need to improve for our children.

Ms KILKENNY (Carrum) (14:33): I am absolutely delighted to be able to speak on this matter of public importance. I want to thank the member for Mordialloc, the Parliamentary Secretary for Schools, for bringing this to the house’s attention. Ten minutes does not even do justice to this topic.

When we speak of benefits to Victorian children, nothing to my mind is more profound, more significant, more important than investment in education. The Andrews Labor government is a government that proudly invests in education and education reform and invests in Victorian children and families like no other government in this state’s history. Of course at the very core of this is our most profound investment, which is funded three-year-old kindergarten. I have to say we are leading the nation. This is the most profound educational reform we have ever seen—the introduction and rollout of universal three-year-old kindergarten for every Victorian child.

As 90 per cent of a child’s brain development takes place before they turn five, nothing is more important than investing in their early education. Australian and international research is so clear on this: that the single most impactful reform we can make to our education system is to expand kindergarten to three-year-olds. That is exactly what the Andrews Labor government is doing in an Australian first. We are rolling out three-year-old kindergarten across Victoria.

Can I first start by acknowledging the Premier, our Minister for Education and of course our Minister for Health, who was the Minister for Early Childhood Education in our last term of government. The commitment they have shown to this significant reform—this investment in early childhood education—is extraordinary. We are so profoundly fortunate to be in a position now where we are rolling out this incredible initiative across the state. It is an initiative that is going to benefit children for generations and generations to come. I would also like to acknowledge the highly professional departmental team, whose knowledge, expertise and commitment to early childhood education, to working with the stakeholders, to working with the sector, is second to none.

Yes, this is a huge investment. We are talking about $5 billion over a decade. But again study after study around the world tells us that the return on this investment is not just good; it is absolutely tremendous. The more we can invest in early childhood education—and we are talking about quality early childhood education, which is programs led by qualified teachers—the better the results right through school and right through life. So, yes, I wish this house to note this matter of public importance and to acknowledge the leading policy reform that the Andrews Labor government is introducing with the rollout of three-year-old funded kindergarten and the benefits that it is going to bring to all Victorian children.

Can I also say how proud I am that we are actually rolling this out in the regions first. I know how proud those regions are to be leading the nation on three-year-old kinder as well. Six local government areas commenced three-year-old funded kinder this year. They are Buloke, Hindmarsh, Northern Grampians, South Gippsland, Strathbogie and Yarriambiack. It has been my absolute privilege to visit many of the kindergartens in those local government areas over the last 14 or so months.

Yarriambiack is one of those shires I have visited a number of times. Yarriambiack Shire Council is the council that has responsibilities for kindergarten services in Beulah, Rupanyup, Minyip, Hopetoun, Murtoa and Warracknabeal. This is a shire that covers more than 7000 square kilometres and has a population of 7000, so that is nearly one person per square kilometre. This is an area where the major employment sectors are agriculture, retail and health care. It is the heartland of grain production and handling in the Wimmera and the Mallee.

Like other shires, Yarriambiack shire has been a really active partner in the introduction of three-year-old kinder and preparing for the rollout this year. They have played a really key role in the planning and working group meetings. They know, like other shires where three-year-old kindergarten has been rolled out this year, that the rollout of funded three-year-old kinder needs to be a great success. It is so important for the regions. Victorian children, especially children in our rural and regional areas, have so much to gain. There are such significant benefits for them—educational benefits, economic benefits, social benefits—to gain from a quality early childhood education.

Just in early February I had the privilege to visit Minyip kindergarten, and it was the first day of funded three-year-old kindergarten. I have to say that it is when you get out to the regions—so the Mallee and the Wimmera—and beautiful towns like Dimboola, Stawell, Charlton, Sea Lake, Nhill, Birchip, Warracknabeal, Leongatha and Mirboo North, you get a real sense of just how profoundly important it is that we are rolling out three-year-old universal kindergarten with up to 15 hours in these regions.

As I said, I visited Minyip kindergarten in early February. It was the first day of three-year-old kinder. This is a town which is about 320 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. It was a huge day. Many families turned up. We had the mayor there, Cr Graham Massey. There were representatives from the shire; there were business representatives there; there were people from all over who came to have morning tea with this first group—the inaugural group—of three-year-olds who are going through the funded kindergarten program. It was such a wonderful morning. I sat down and spoke with the children, and I asked them what they were hoping to gain this year, what were they most looking forward to. It was playing, it was meeting new friends, it was working with their new teacher. Their teacher, Christiana Henke, was pretty terrific, and I have to say she had a really special story to share as well. She is actually a former primary school teacher, and it was only I think last year that she did some relief work in early childhood education and decided that this was her passion, so she applied for a scholarship to upgrade her skills and is now one of our 700 scholarship recipients. She is doing a postgraduate diploma to be able to qualify as a teacher in an early childhood education setting. She is currently completing her graduate diploma through Victoria University and will become the director and head teacher at that kindergarten. This is a fabulous story that we are also seeing replicated in other areas.

In those six local government areas we see that 20 new teachers and 20 new educator jobs have already been created. But the really significant thing that I found was that in Yarriambiack shire, in the first year that we have introduced funded three-year-old kinder, their participation rate this year is 91 per cent. That is absolutely extraordinary, and we are seeing that mirrored. In Gippsland South the participation rate is 86 per cent this year. You compare that with the same time last year when there was a 30 per cent participation rate. What we have done is we have got rid of, we have eliminated, that financial barrier. We have opened up three-year-old funded kinder. This is going to have significant benefits for not only those children but for the greater communities there, and we are proudly kicking it off in the regions, with those regions leading us out on this most profound reform.

Of course by 2029, when we are fully rolled out across Victoria, up to 90 000 little three-year-olds are expected to be participating each year and benefiting from a funded three-year-old kindergarten program, and I have to say what a fantastic and wonderful Victoria that is going to be. When we are contributing to the early education of these three-year-olds and four-year-olds, they are getting two years of early learning before they even reach school. We know that those benefits will not only carry them through school but carry them through life, and not only are those children going to be the beneficiaries of that education but the rest of Victoria will as well.

This is a tremendous reform. It is groundbreaking, it is nation leading. I have not even touched on the $1.6 billion investment that we are making to build and upgrade nearly 1000 kindergartens across Victoria, nor the 6000 jobs, teachers and early educators that are going to be created by this uptake in three-year-old kinder. This goes to the core of Labor’s values, and I am so proud to be part of a government that is rolling out this historic reform across Victoria for the benefit of all Victorian children.

Mr ANGUS (Forest Hill) (14:43): I am pleased to rise to make a contribution in relation to the matter of public importance (MPI), and I want to start by setting the scene in relation to the finances here in Victoria by quoting a recent Age article from 13 February which is headlined:

‘Trying times’: Pallas to slash $4b from budget

Let me read from it. It says:

Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas says he needs to cut $4 billion in spending from the state’s budget over the next four years to keep it in surplus amid ‘trying times’.

Mr Pallas’ new savings target doubles the $2 billion in spending he planned to slash …

It then goes on:

Mr Pallas later told reporters there were ‘plenty’ of government programs where the savings could be found.

Also on that same day in the Herald Sun was an article headed ‘Dan’s huge jobs axe’, which says:

The bid to reduce the $70 billion budget comes amid cost blowouts on major projects …

and other things. That sets the scene in relation to where we are financially here in Victoria, and there have been some numbers quoted in the MPI put up by the member for Mordialloc, but I think it is important to look and to see and to wonder with trepidation as to where these cuts are going to be made, particularly in the education area. The Shadow Minister for Education, the member for Eildon, in her very informative contribution a few moments ago outlined some of the problems that we have already got and the fact that throwing money at things does not necessarily work. We can see that overwhelmingly if we look at the results. If we look at the PISA results—the Program for International Student Assessment that looks at reading, maths and science—we can see that the outcomes for that are continuing to be poor. As the member for Eildon said as well, outcomes in country areas are poorer than those in the city, and there are a whole lot of other issues. That is before the $4 billion cuts come in.

The point I am making there is the fact that the government seems to have a mindset of throwing money at problems and thinking they will go away, that the government will somehow buy their way out of the problem. But they are not addressing the fundamental issues, and this is the delusion that those opposite are under. They think if you spend more, that equals a win. Well, it does not, and that is clear to everybody in Victoria and elsewhere. Just by looking alone at the education sector you can see, despite whatever the correct numbers are on what is being spent, it is not getting the outcomes that we need to be getting here in Victoria. In other words, it is not a good return on investment.

I think the government has got to step back a bit. They have got to come to grips with the money that they are throwing around left, right and centre and actually see if it is achieving the goals, because they love spending it. They like cutting ribbons, they love opening things, but is it achieving the goals? Are the children better behaved, are the children better educated, are the children ready for secondary education and tertiary education and the workforce? As a result of that there is a lot of work that the government needs to do.

Similarly, the MPI also says ‘ensuring that every child has … a great start in life’. There is some absolutely damning information in relation to that, particularly if we look at the child protection system. The fact is that, as we heard again today in this place, there were more than 14 400 phone calls to the child abuse hotline that went unanswered between January 2018 and July 2019. Let me tell you, Speaker, and I am sure you would agree, it is not giving every child in Victoria a great start in life when their fundamental needs, through the systems that are supposed to be in there working for them, are not being met. A child abuse hotline, for goodness sake. When the phone calls are going through, who is on the other end of those phone calls? Children and probably parents and other family members that are desperate. They are desperate for assistance, and they are just going straight through to the keeper—and this government does not care. Heaven help us all because that is before the $4 billion of cuts, so goodness knows what is going to happen then.

We also know that there has been a 47 per cent jump in the number of children needing protection under Labor. So there are record numbers in that area as well. We know that the number of substantiated reports of child abuse and neglect have increased by 42 per cent since 2014–15. They are alarming statistics, and I am sure deep down everybody in this place, even those opposite, would concede that they are alarmed with that. All of us would be alarmed with those particular numbers.

What I am saying is that we have got the government out there trumpeting the money that they are throwing in all sorts of directions, but is it working? Is it hitting the mark? Are the outcomes better? Clearly in this area, it is absolutely not. It is failing comprehensively, and the government has got to get a grip. The government has got to come back and see how these systems are failing so terribly and neglecting the children, the young vulnerable ones in this state. They have got to get to grips with that, come in and solve that problem, and that is, as I said, before there is $4 billion worth of cuts.

Also, if you look, there are children taken out of abusive homes that are still being abused in state care. Between July and December 2019 there were 422 category 1 reports in relation to abuse of clients, as they are called, and hundreds of other cases as well. We have got fundamental crises in a whole lot of areas, not least of which is the child protection area, so to say that everyone is getting a great start in life here in Victoria is completely delusional. I trust that the government will get a grip on the situation and, instead of just trying to bat things off with platitudes and fancy one-liners, get in there and sort this mess out. I should say it is a mess that has largely been created under the current government, because the statistics I mentioned were off the back of when we last left government. It is a disgraceful situation, and the government needs to get on top of it.

If I turn to other school areas, I also note the fact that when we came to government in 2010 the maintenance backlog here in Victoria was hundreds of millions of dollars in relation to schools—the maintenance backlog of schools. That was the minister at the time, the member for Nepean. He instituted an audit of schools so that we could see the extent of the problem, and the extent of the problem was just disastrous. It reflected 11 years of neglect because, as I said, the government—those opposite—love to cut ribbons and pull back curtains on plaques and all that, but they will not do the hard yards. When you have got to replace the roof of a school to stop the leaking, you cannot cut the ribbon on that and you cannot unveil the plaque on that, so they do not tend to go for that.

Let me look at just some of the local schools in the Forest Hill district. These schools have been dreadfully neglected by those opposite and they lack basic facilities. We have got Vermont Secondary College. We desperately need a new basketball court, gymnasium and associated facilities down there. We have promised to continue to advocate for that, and that is exactly what I have done in this place many, many times. So that problem could be solved. We have got Vermont Primary School, which we took to the last two elections to get the central administration and classroom building rebuilt to solve the problems. I have not got the time to go into half the problems—the sewerage problems, the water problems, the asbestos problems, the leaking problems, the rot problems. I have not got time to go into those, but that is just another example in my own patch.

Orchard Grove Primary School: we have got the upgrade of the administration area that is so sorely needed. We have got female staff that have to line up at recess and lunchtime to use the toilet because there is gross inadequacy in relation to the number of toilets available for the female staff. We have got a staffroom there—and I have talked about it multiple times in this place—where when the staff all come together in that staffroom (a) they have not all got a chair and (b) if they did, they would not have a table to sit at and would have to sit on the floor. What sort of a deplorable situation is that? We have got the Education State, the fancy label on the numberplates, but that is all it is when you are talking about the needs of these existing schools.

I have got Livingstone Primary School, one of my fast-growing schools. A number of my schools are fast growing indeed, but that is certainly one of them. All we need for there is $200 000 to construct a staff car park. I have asked in this place multiple times for that to be provided, and we look at the number that is quoted there by the member for Mordialloc—billions of dollars; $200 000 would not be a rounding difference on that, but do you think the Minister for Education will give a penny to the school? Not on your life, so we have got horrific traffic problems and other issues around that school,

Just in conclusion, I note that in stark contrast—as I stated in this place on 10 May 2018, and I have not had a chance to update these numbers, but they will be increasing—the member for Monbulk in the four budgets that he was involved in as a minister invested over $40 million in 11 of his own or adjoining schools and over $30 million in 13 schools in the Premier’s electorate of Mulgrave. We can see that they are not growth areas, so most of those are not new schools, but what I am saying there is the fact that they have invested—or pork-barrelled, basically. That is what I am saying, if you cut straight to the chase. They have left my schools with desperate needs languishing, and they have just gone and feathered their nests up in the hills and up in the seat of Mulgrave. I think that is disgraceful. There is not much joy in this at all. It is fancy words, but there is no delivery and no solving the problems.

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (14:53): It gives me great pleasure to rise on the matter of public importance before the house raised today by the member for Mordialloc, and I thank the member for his contribution. The member is right that this house should take note of the range of state-shaping policies that benefit Victoria. It is this Andrews Labor government that is delivering on its promises to the community, and it is in this delivery that we are seeing a transformation in Victoria unseen for many years.

Only recently we were in this house paying tribute to the late Premier John Cain, and we were all reminded from the late Premier that we should not waste the opportunity or a single moment whilst in government. That advice has not gone unheeded from the Andrews Labor government. We have seen the start of universal three-year-old kindergarten rolling out in regional communities first. This rollout is part of the Andrews Labor government’s almost $5 billion decade-long reform. This investment will ensure every Victorian child can benefit from an extra year at kinder. From 2022 all three-year-olds across the state will have access to 5 hours of a funded kindergarten program each week. Ninety thousand children could benefit from this reform each year at full rollout. One of the reasons the Andrews Labor government is championing this reform and introducing this policy is that international studies consistently show long-term benefits for children who attend two years of kindergarten compared to those that only attend one year. Two years of high-quality, teacher-led kindergarten programs have been shown to improve academic and long-term outcomes for our children.

This policy is also creating jobs—an additional 6000 early childhood teachers and educators as well as jobs created through infrastructure investments. It is not just a slogan that we are known as the Education State. We know that education does not just start when we dress kids up in their uniforms on their first day of school to start prep, like a record number of families have done just this month. Of course those families have had the thrill of opening the bright red library bag of books and resources that were delivered to all new prep children attending a Victorian government school. These fun and engaging items have been provided to every child starting prep in every classroom regardless of their background. Giving families, regardless of their financial position, access to educational resources at home helps improve our children’s education outcomes. This investment in our children will help their education at home, but of course prep is not the start of education. We know that an early childhood education is essential to give every child the best start. An additional year of kindergarten goes some way to changing the lives of children but also to transforming Victoria as we know it.

This is particularly true for our diverse multicultural communities in Victoria. In other contributions in this house I have previously highlighted that giving children from migrant and refugee families, like the many families in my electorate of Melton, a quality early childhood education helps those children have the best start in preparation for their primary school education and beyond. It can also help their parents and caregivers connect and be a part of their wider community. Often in a preschool or child care environments parents of many cultures interact with others as their children form friendships and connections that cross cultural barriers. The first steps of truly multicultural societies come from understanding others, the seeds of which are often sewn when our children start in early education, like three-year-old kinder.

I am also extremely excited that the next phase of the Andrews Labor government’s landmark Smile Squad free dental program will be hitting the streets of Melton in term 3 this year—Arnolds Creek Primary School, Coburn Primary School, Exford Primary School, Kurunjang Primary School, Kurunjang Secondary College, Melton Primary School, Melton Secondary College, Melton South Primary School, Melton Specialist School, Melton West Primary School, Staughton College and Wedge Park Primary School. All these schools in my electorate of Melton will benefit by being eligible for the rollout. Parents in Melton are as excited as I am that their children will receive free dental care and that they will save hundreds of dollars every year. Standing up for families is what this government does. Dental health has a huge impact on the long-term health impacts for people, so getting this right for our children across Victoria will have long-term positive impacts on the health of Victorians for years to come. This is fantastic preventive care that will also benefit the healthcare system in the longer term. This will help reduce the pressure on hospitals and other healthcare facilities as we know that good oral health has a lasting impact on general health and wellbeing. We know that dental conditions are the highest cause of preventable hospitalisations for Victorian children under 10 years of age.

Good oral health also has an impact on mental health and improvement in job participation later in life. Giving Victorian children access to good oral health is giving Victorians dignity. Once fully implemented in 2022 the school dental program will provide free annual oral health examinations and free follow-up treatment needed for around 650 000 children in more than 1500 government primary and secondary schools. This program is designed to make dental care easier and more affordable. Modelling indicates that this program will save the average Victorian family around $400 per year per child. Parents in Melton and Victoria could not be happier; the Smile Squad not only puts smiles on Victorian kids but on their parents as well.

This is part of the Andrews Labor government’s commitment to the health of all Victorians. The benefit of this investment into health is having a transformational effect in Melton. Families see not only the investment in their children with dental care but also the investment in delivering a new hospital in Melton. They trust the Andrews Labor government to deliver on their promise of dental care, and they have seen the investment in planning for a new Melton hospital and the recent announcement of Western Health as the operator of the future hospital in Melton.

Families in Melton have also seen the investment in other areas of their children’s education. The opening of 11 new schools at the beginning of this school year has shown families in Melton, especially in the new and growing suburbs like Eynesbury and Cobblebank, that the plans for their new schools will be delivered as part of this government’s commitment to open 100 new schools by 2026. The investment of $6.1 billion to deliver more than 1400 school upgrades helps families and of course will support delivering more than 7500 construction jobs. There are 10 new primary schools opening in 2021, Eynesbury Station Primary School being one of them.

One of the key features of these schools is another fantastic policy by the Andrews Labor government that all new primary schools will include a kindergarten facility on or next to the new school sites. For families like those in the community of Eynesbury this is transformational to avoid the dreaded double drop-off, especially in new establishing communities where educational facilities may be very far away from each other. The new Eynesbury Station Primary School will be one of the schools incorporating a co-located early learning centre. Currently the families in the Eynesbury estate have no option other than to drive their children to Exford Primary School. Exford is a fantastic school and is led by the amazing Lisa Campo. With the explosion of population from the nearby new housing developments, this has put huge pressure on the school infrastructure as well as the roads and other public infrastructure. The new school in Eynesbury and the co-located early learning centre will have the flow-on effect of relieving traffic congestion for the rest of the community.

Earlier I mentioned the advice that former Premier Cain gave the Andrews Labor government about not wasting your opportunity to deliver. We have seen that this government has taken that advice and is delivering for Victorians. This state will be a very different place for our children, and for the better, because we are wasting no time in delivering for them and their future.

How very different is that to the position under those opposite? The last time they were in government this state was frozen in inertia. Families in Melton and across the state saw those opposite sit on their hands as their children suffered from poor investment in schools, education and health care. That was a travesty because families across Victoria deserve better. They wanted their children to succeed and needed to see their government investing in their future. Those families and all of Victoria sent a strong message at the ballot box, restricting the coalition government to one term.

I am proud to be the elected member for Melton and to be part of the Andrews Labor government delivering for all our communities and all Victorians, delivering what Labor stands for: health, education, jobs and infrastructure. We are not wasting a moment in government getting things done.

Ms RYAN (Euroa) (15:02): I welcome the opportunity to also contribute to this matter of public importance moved by the member for Mordialloc. I have to say, upon reading the MPI, that I was a little surprised at the direction that the member for Mordialloc chose to take, given the environment in which he is proposing this matter. We know that the Treasurer has flagged $4 billion worth of cuts that the government is seeking to make. The Treasurer said, and this is a direct quote:

I’m looking at every line item of expenditure and I’m looking to take something like $4 billion out of government expenditure going forward.

I think it is a difficult proposition for the member for Mordialloc to put that Labor is championing investment across schools, health and education when they are struggling to manage the budget, they have had massive cost overruns in major projects, and now as a result it is vulnerable Victorians who are going to bear the pain of those massive cuts—a stealth program of cuts, as the Herald Sun has put it. We see that the Herald Sun has reported that there will be freezes on external hiring, employees not having contracts renewed and tighter rules on using consultants. That is what governments say when they are looking to rein in the public sector, but I suspect that it will be impossible to achieve $4 billion in cuts by putting a freeze on the use of consultants. We are going to see this smash frontline service delivery. I think if you consider the performance of government ministers standing up here in the last two days when we have asked them to rule out cuts in child protection, in transport, in hospital and health services, affecting waiting lists, not one of them has been able to do that. Not one of them has been able to guarantee that those critical services in their portfolios, services like child protection, will not worsen as a result of this $4 billion in cuts.

If we go to child protection and have a look at Labor’s record there, we see that more than 14 400 phone calls made to the child abuse hotline between January 2018 and July 2019 went unanswered. That is 14 400 cries for help that were not even answered, and that is under the child protection system as it currently stands. How is it going to cope? How is it going to serve the most vulnerable in our state when we have massive cuts imposed upon it?

As the member for Forest Hill said, there has been a 47 per cent jump in the number of children who actually need protection under this government, and the daily average number of children in out-of-home placements is expected to hit more than 11 000—almost 12 000—this financial year, well above the 8000 that we had in 2014–15. So there are huge, huge gaps in the child protection system, and we have to keep in mind that these are not just numbers; they are lives and they are families, and I am sure that every member in this place, if my experience is anything to go by, has a large number of these cases coming through their offices. Many of them are heartbreaking, many of them are complex, many of them are difficult, and I think we need to acknowledge that the child protection workers working at the coalface of these issues are often doing the best that they can, but they are already incredibly stretched.

I also wanted to touch on adolescent mental health. If you are talking about the wellbeing of young people, then no conversation is really complete without talking about the mental health crisis that we have sweeping this state. Certainly in my electorate I would put this in the top order of issues. As I mentioned earlier today in my members statement, the Victorian Auditor-General has found that this state has the lowest spending per capita of any state in Australia on mental health. I think that is an indictment of this state and of this government, that under Labor we have the lowest investment in mental health of any state in Australia. We simply do not have the workforce in country communities—in my communities—to be able to resource the intervention services that are required to help those young people. I have had so many young people walk through the doors of my office or approach me when I am around the community telling me that they cannot access the services they need. They cannot get in to see a psychologist. They have to travel half an hour, an hour, just to access basic services.

I am not sure if members of this house are even aware that there are no adolescent intake services anywhere in regional Victoria. If there is a young person in my region who needs urgent assistance, they get zoned to Box Hill. I have parents who are stressed beyond belief, out of their minds, some of them having to put their businesses up for sale because they cannot run their business whilst they have their child bouncing in and out of Box Hill. They get home and there is no service to actually look after them. There is no follow-up. They just get bounced between these crisis services in the city and then going home and having no follow-up at all. It is at absolute crisis levels, and I think when we have these warnings from the Auditor-General it is incumbent on the state not to wait for the royal commission to actually hand down its findings to address some of these gaps. The Auditor-General said that the state needs to act now. It should not be waiting for the recommendations of the royal commission when it is so obvious that additional investment is needed.

I am a very firm believer in the importance of early childhood education. When we were last in government we implemented the Advancing Country Towns program through the $1 billion Regional Growth Fund, and that in my own community helped fund the rollout of the Parents Early Education Partnership program by Tomorrow Today. PEEP is a locally driven program for a local problem. It is very evidence based; they brought it from the UK where it has had amazing success. It brings parents together—particularly disadvantaged parents but not necessarily—with their children and it holds regular sessions where parents read to their children. That program has now been running for six or seven years—maybe longer than that now actually—but in the last couple of years the children who first started that at between zero and six months old are now reaching primary school, and the local teachers are reporting that their readiness for school has dramatically increased. Suddenly, kids who had no hope of paying attention are now sitting on a mat, taking direction and paying attention. It has been really transformative around Benalla, and I am very proud that as a government we were able to support that program.

That program was axed by the Andrews government, and I guess that goes to my point: that while I understand that the government likes to have things to open and things to announce, sometimes there are existing programs which are doing really fantastic work which also deserve support. We do not always need to reinvent the wheel in order to get great outcomes. That is a locally driven program that deserves the government’s support.

The member for Mordialloc asked what our vision was, particularly around education. At the last election we went with a policy to invest an additional $100 million in those disadvantaged communities across rural and regional Victoria, in particular to integrate education, allied health, child and maternal services, early childhood and child health services. Integration in those communities is particularly important, but it has to be driven locally, and it needs to be flexible to the needs of the local community.

As the member for Forest Hill said, the ultimate test for the government needs to be whether the lives of children are actually improving, whether education standards are improving, whether children are safer. We have seen a lack of investment across country areas. In East Gippsland we built two schools in our four years of government. There have been no schools built there in the last six years. In the member for Lowan’s patch, at Warracknabeal, the Warracknabeal Education Precinct has just become a disaster. The government has built a third of the specialist development school then walked away. It has built half of the secondary college and then just walked away. These are projects that need to be completed if we are serious about the future of our young people and the future of our young people in regional Victoria.

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (15:12): It gives me great pleasure to join the debate on this matter of public importance (MPI) submitted by the member for Mordialloc, who is also the Parliamentary Secretary for Schools. We have absolutely put at the centre of the business of our work supporting the next generation. I know that the National Party would like to gloss over their record and verbal us as being only a government for Melbourne. Nothing could be further from the truth. The member for Euroa exhorted us to support programs that are working. The Parents Early Education Partnership program, I acknowledge, is a good program. However, we are going much further than that: it is called universal access to three-year-old kinder. Do not, National Party, go out there and mislead regional Victorians like you always do. You only hear their voices in opposition. You do not hear them in government. They are too busy sucking on the teat of government, driving around in those white cars, with their noses in the trough, while their schools get cut and their health services get cut.

What we are seeing and what we are delivering is our three-year-old kindergarten program, which is going where it is absolutely needed first, and that is deep into the heart of National Party electorates—where those people have never cared. I have been in this place for 17 years and I have rarely heard National Party members speak up for their schools—and particularly not when they are in government. I have talked about how I went to Charlton College and Donald secondary college because of the great outcomes that they have reported with their students, and I saw the great outcomes of their students—but their buildings were shameful, absolutely shameful. It was intergenerational neglect and a failure by those National Party members that had successively represented them for a very long time.

It is not only in terms of the way the member for Mordialloc has articulated this matter of public importance around spending in three-year-old kinder, in early childhood, the Smile Squad program and our building of schools, but our regional partnerships have worked absolutely with communities across regional Victoria. The National Party would love to criticise those. Let me tell you those regional partnerships are working way better than the federal government’s Regional Development Australia. People who have been on those RDAs have just walked away, because there is no money attached and there is actually no ability for volunteers on those RDAs to get anything done. This three-year-old kindergarten initiative being rolled out in the far west of the state is purely because of the work that the regional partnership did in that region in identifying how disadvantaged early childhood services were there.

I heard the member for Euroa talk about the workforce—give me a break—in relation to mental health and other services. What did they do? What was their investment for regional services, the workforce in regional Victoria and their own employees? They cut them; they gutted them. Child protection services and numerous offices were shut down. I know that this was something that you, Deputy Speaker, were very concerned about because of what you saw in your area. I recall in Swan Hill, for example, the heart of the Leader of the National Party’s electorate, they had a child protection worker whose duties were answering the phone, acting as a receptionist, not working with the children where they were needed. So do not give me the hypocrisy and cant that the National Party come in here with. The cuts to women’s health services and the cuts to other health services led to a spike in teenage pregnancies and led to a decline in educational attainment in the regions. So do not talk to me about that.

This three-year-old kindergarten initiative is not just about rolling out those services. It is actually about investing in the personnel and in the professionals that are going to work in those services and lift the standards of those disadvantaged communities. Do you know what that will lead to? It will mean that more parents are actually able to work. I know that the member for Lowan has spoken in this place about lack of access to child care. Well, three-year-old kinder will be a big step towards that—three-year-old and four-year-old kinder will actually—

Ms Kealy interjected.

Ms GREEN: You could have your turn and speak on this MPI, member for Lowan—and you could do it from your place, rather than interject on me. In terms of health services—

Mr R Smith: Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

Quorum formed.

Ms GREEN: I should not be surprised at all that the National Party and their city masters would try and silence me when I am talking about their lack of investment in regional Victoria. The member for Euroa spoke before me and talked about a crisis in mental health. Well, we have actually fessed up to that crisis. It is not for us in government to actually deny that there is a problem. I recall during this time when the former member for South-West Coast tried to deny that there was an ambulance crisis. We do not deny those things. We have a mental health royal commission that has recommended an immediate 170 new beds, and the Premier has said that we will fund every single recommendation of that mental health royal commission. And the region that the member for Euroa and I share will be a beneficiary of that.

The other component of what we care about for young people and their mental health is that every secondary college in Victoria will have mental health professionals based in those schools, where they can make the most difference. I think that the member for Euroa is misleading her community if she is not getting out there and saying to them that they should be speaking to the royal commission and commenting on the recommendations. She is completely silent and trying to add to the air of crisis.

Well, we do take mental health seriously. I remember the four years on their watch when people were having to be transported from Hamilton down to Warrnambool, when a member in the other place, Mary Wooldridge, had cut services to mental health. We will not cut them. We are changing it root and branch. I am very proud of the Goulburn Regional Partnership, and I hope that the member for Euroa shows up to the deep dive that the Goulburn Regional Partnership are doing, because they are going to be doing it about youth mental health and because they will work with the government in addressing that problem.

Of course, that region has been beset with problems and additional health challenges since the horrific fires of Black Saturday. There are more students at school now than there were at the time of those fires, and those students were not assisted by the cuts to education that occurred. So there is a legacy there that we are addressing. We are supporting people in regional communities with children’s services. We care about their dental and their mental health, we care about early intervention and we are building the schools that they need and co-locating them with early childhood services. I support this matter of public importance.

Dr READ (Brunswick) (15:22): I would like to focus particularly on the dental aspects of this motion and, if time allows, talk a bit about schools. As the member for Mordialloc correctly pointed out, oral health is critically important. In Victoria alone, just a couple of years ago 17 500 potentially preventable hospitalisations were due to dental conditions. That is around 20 000 bed days of hospital time, so preventing dental admissions to hospital will free up hospitals for elective surgery and other necessary care. One report from a doctor at the dental hospital, which I quote, said:

It’s not uncommon to be taking up to 12 or 14 teeth out from very little children, even from the ages of three and four …

We have a dental health crisis and dental health has been seriously neglected, so the government is to be commended for commencing this program of 250 school dental vans. Getting Medicare to cover dentistry has been an important Greens policy for over a decade, with priority for children. Fortunately we achieved this at a federal level when Adam Bandt’s agreement was necessary for Julia Gillard to form government. It was something that was nicknamed ‘Denticare’, and we negotiated $2.7 billion in funding for that. That is now known as the child dental benefits schedule. That is up and running.

What is important for supporters of the Smile Squad to note is that of the $322 million for the Smile Squad, $128 million is coming from the child dental benefits schedule; that is about 40 per cent. Around about 100 of the 250 dental vans are federally funded, courtesy of the agreement between Julia Gillard and Adam Bandt all that time ago. So thank you, Adam Bandt, for recognising the importance of this.

The other key point—and I go back to the comment from the doctor at the dental hospital about children as young as three and four—is the importance of prevention. Funding dentistry, Smile Squad or otherwise, is expensive, but prevention need not cost a cent. One key area and indeed a golden opportunity for this government in prevention is for advertising on government infrastructure, particularly transport infrastructure, to no longer be accepted for junk food and sugary drinks. If we follow the advice of the dentists, by preventing those advertisements we should reduce the amount of tooth decay in early life.

As we move into adulthood, and I think this has been a glaring omission in dental health care for a long time under successive governments, community dental clinics have unjustifiably long waiting lists—as long as an average of 31 months for people in my electorate of Brunswick. In the neighbouring electorate of Northcote it is just under two years. It does not get much lower than a year for most of Victoria. I think the state average is just under two years. So community dental clinics, which see healthcare card holders for dental care, are almost a non-service if you have got to wait up to two years or even longer to be seen for non-urgent care. Of course the consequence of having to wait so long for non-urgent care is that about one-third of the consultations conducted in the clinics are emergency consultations. So it is great work with the school dental vans, but we need to drive our attention to greater resources for community dental programs for adults.

I want to talk now briefly about schools. Victorian government schools are seriously underfunded. Over the past decade, the gap between private and public school funding measured on a per-student basis in Victoria has increased. There have been small recent increases by the current Labor government which have not compensated anywhere near enough for the deep cuts in commonwealth and previous state government funding to public schools in Victoria. Government schools in this state, according to the Save Our Schools website, will remain underfunded while private schools will achieve full funding within a few years. The Andrews government has unfortunately handicapped the Victorian education budget by committing it to pay 25 per cent of state funds to private schools. Now that students at independent schools are funded at almost twice the amount per student as those in government schools in Victoria and Catholic schools are still getting around $2000 more per student, I submit that it is time to stop this. It is time to reverse the change made in 2015 by this government which committed 25 per cent of state funding to go to private schools. It is time to redirect that to the neediest schools, which are the state government schools, the primary responsibility of this state government.

This has shown up in many ways in government schools but particularly in school maintenance. For the past five years the underfunding has been severe. Particularly in electorates like mine, where a lot of the school buildings are over 100 years old, school maintenance is expensive. Slate roofs are more expensive to fix. The old plaster and lathe walls and double-brick buildings are hard to insulate. Windows will not close or will not open. As we get more climatic extremes, this gets more important. So particularly we have got leaking roofs at schools like Coburg West or Brunswick East primary schools. We have also space issues. Merri Creek Primary School is very cramped, and there is a severe lack of play space there.

Getting back to talking about old buildings and insulation and weather, I would like to conclude by pointing out an opportunity that this government has to direct more funding towards government schools—that is, by reducing their utility bills. Solar panels are now so cheap, around a dollar a watt, and schools provide a unique opportunity because they are in use in the daytime. If families put solar panels on their rooftops, most of the benefit is when they are away at work. Schools are the reverse. Schools are using their electricity primarily when the sun is shining. Utility bills for schools are very high, and replacing gas and coal-powered electricity with solar with a modest investment in solar panels for schools will cut their utility bills and enable them to direct more funding towards school maintenance, teaching programs and other areas where they are chronically underfunded.

We already have a program—the Resource Smart program—which is a great start, but that relies on the schools to initiate and apply for funding. At the moment most schools either have little solar or none, and now would be a great time, with both capital and solar panels being so cheap, to simply supply them all. Roughly $60 000 per school on average would give most schools an adequate complement of solar panels.

So I conclude by saying that there are some great inexpensive opportunities to improve dental care in the state and, further, to reduce the power bills of schools, but critically we have underfunded state schools. We need to reverse the initiative of 2015 which committed the state government education budget to supply an additional 25 per cent of funds to private schools.

Ms RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (15:31): It is with great pride that I rise to add my contribution to the member for Mordialloc’s terrific matter of public importance—or perhaps we could call it a matter of public priority. It is certainly a matter of priority for the Labor government. I note that the start of universal three-year-old kinder being rolled out in regional communities first, as part of the Labor government’s $5 billion decade-long reform, is something that is welcomed wholeheartedly across Victoria. We are looking forward to it arriving in Cranbourne, but in the meantime this reform is extraordinary. I look forward to talking about dental in a little bit of detail later. I will touch though on the fact that this first stage of the Smile Squad will be rolled out further but is starting in Cranbourne.

I am going to have a bit of a battle on who takes credit for the federal investment and the federal policy. My memory of then federal Minister Plibersek, an incoming Minister for Health, identifying dental as a priority is very clear to me. Of course we had recently the 30 per cent cut to the national partnership agreement on dental by the federal Liberal government. That just goes back to those constant cuts that are part of the DNA of those who think that people who have access to good quality dental ought only be those who can afford it.

I will just quickly point out to the member for Brunswick that those children who are getting access to dental care in our dental vans will become adults. I am pleased that he welcomes this extraordinary reform and acknowledges, I hope, that the waiting lists that are experienced in our dental services can be attributed to the tens of thousands of people that were added to the waiting list when we had such major cuts to the national partnership agreement only very recently, and also acknowledges that to have a big change like we have is going to make long-term differences.

I will begin where I will, perhaps, be finishing: with the opening of so many new schools and the extraordinary investment that this government is making in education. What a pleasure it is to talk about education in Cranbourne, because we know it is only a Labor government that makes the investments that we make, makes those priority decisions and makes those decisions about where resources go—such groundbreaking reform. I am so pleased to be able to start by identifying that I had two new schools opening in Cranbourne just a few weeks ago. So all those sparkling little preps were joined by children from across the year levels at two new schools, and they are included in the 1543 government schools that will be educating our children in addition to the 498 Catholic and 222 independent schools. So more than 80 000 preps are starting school this year, and we have already heard that we have a million students in our schools.

It was lovely to go to the schools, actually, to hand out prep bags in the last couple of weeks. What a reform that is. I visited Marnebek School to be able to hand out those bags that really are giving our young children an opportunity to thrive. I was pleased to welcome the Deputy Premier and Minister for Education to Cranbourne, to Casey Fields Primary School, for the first day. It was a lot of fun. It is a sparkling new school—one of 100 new schools, as we say, and one of the 11 new schools that are opening this year.

I wake to the sound of children playing in the street. I have said that before, because of course Cranbourne is booming, and I would like to just talk about Casey Fields as a primary school that was visited by the member for Mordialloc, the person who has brought this matter of public importance to us today. Casey Fields is located in the Livingston estate, and the Livingston estate is a booming estate. I have watched over the last year the families of Livingston watching this school being built, in particular the terrific grandparents. I would like to pay tribute to our Sikh community, who have their little charges that they collect from child care and kindergarten. They walked past the school and watched as it was getting built. They often had conversations with the bricklayers, the chippies, the plumbers and all the other construction workers—and of course the electricians—who were building Casey Fields. I was very pleased when the member for Mordialloc, the other Richo, came to visit Casey Fields while it was under construction. We had a terrific opportunity to watch that school emerge out of the ground like a phoenix. It was amazing. Of course we met the workers, the people in employment who are from the south-east and some from Cranbourne.

Back to the opening day, we were met and welcomed by a great new principal, Cameron Heath. He has surrounded himself with the A-team, adding Gerard Lowrie and Melanie Seal to his team of educators who, along with grandparents, parents and other people who care for their children, provided the hospitality that I think is typical of the Cranbourne community. A sparkling new school, modern facilities—it does not get any better, and it is something only a Labor government will do.

Later that same day I visited Botanic Ridge Primary School, an amazing school at Echidna Drive. I pay credit to the principal, Lisa Vandenbosch, a very well-established educator who is very well known to the Cranbourne community, having recently come from Cranbourne Carlisle Primary School and Cranbourne Primary School—again, joined by a terrific educator and assistant principal in Tobin Cuss. We were greeted at the school by one of the sparkling wits and clever young people of Cranbourne, an articulate Eliz Szasz, who invited me into the school and reminded me that the future is bright. What sets this school apart is the overwhelming community that it is building in this new estate. They had a wonderful smoking ceremony. It was quite an emotional image to watch the children leave the smoking ceremony and head off to their new school environment in a community where the new motto is ‘Where connection and community come first’.

That is really what this matter of public importance speaks to—the fact that schools are about communities and about connecting. The principal said the benefits of having a public school built in a new and growing community cannot be overstated. So here we have a public school that not only provides an education for its children but also provides space for families to connect with each other. In new and emerging communities it is so important to have those connections. It is so important to know that there are places where people can join together. I wish I could talk forever about the education in Cranbourne, but I actually—

Mr Pearson interjected.

Ms RICHARDS: I know. I could if I had another 20 minutes or so. But I do need to just remind the house of the contrast. It was a time of great sadness, of course, the last time that we had the Liberal government take the levers in Victoria. What happened in 2016? I remember not much happened in education; that is for sure. I remember looking around at the school communities that I knew, and later learning that there was not one new school opened that year in our growing state because there was a failure to plan. To think that you could have such a failure to plan that there was not one new school in the state—I mean, the contrast—not in Cranbourne, not in our growing suburbs, but across the state of Victoria. And of course that was working off that DNA that we learned from the Kennett government, who of course closed 350 schools and sacked 7000 teachers. I know that there are some who hark back to those days. As a parent of a state school teacher—to think that they would return to the days of 7000 teachers being sacked—it is just heartbreaking to think of what happened in that time. Since assuming government, of course, we have invested $154 million in schools in Cranbourne. I commend this matter of public importance and I commend the member for Mordialloc.

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (15:41): I rise to make a contribution to the matter of public importance debate today. The member for Mordialloc’s MPI is a veiled attempt to hide away from what is really important. With this MPI it is crystal clear that this Labor government is more concerned about reputation management than the real, pressing matters of importance to the Victorian public. So keen is the member for Mordialloc and this Labor government to avoid any meaningful debate on matters that will actually impact Victorians, like the looming cuts to jobs and wages that will come from the Treasurer’s brutal $4 billion of cuts to the budget.

The harsh cuts and higher taxes that are coming certainly will not benefit Victorian children. I invite the member for Mordialloc to ponder the impacts on the children of those government employees, including Forest Fire Management Victoria and Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning staff, that have not been paid by this Labor government. Surely that is a more pressing matter of public importance today. The Premier has talked about jailing employers who do not pay their workers, and now he has been caught out failing to pay his own employees who bravely fought the recent bushfires, which will no doubt cause anxiety and financial pain for these families right at the time that their children have just started back at school. It is absolute hypocrisy.

Today’s MPI is a veiled attempt to avoid scrutiny by rehashing a few policy headlines. It will not soften the blow of the $4 billion of cuts and the looming higher taxes that will hurt Victorians badly. However, if the government wishes to talk about itself and topics like universal three-year-old kinder, dental vans and school infrastructure that they had let degrade for so long, then we are here at the ready. We are happy to scrutinise Labor’s flagship policies, which they are already dismally failing on.

Universal three-year-old kinder—now, as a mum of two I believe strongly in education and quality early education. But this is the government’s catchy headline. By the government’s own admission, it will be lucky to be rolled out by 2029. It might only ever be a headline and is doomed to failure, because the Treasurer and the education minister have provided no guarantees that this program will not be subjected to savage cuts—have the axe torn through it as part of the $4 billion of cuts. The sector is likely to never see the promised 6000 jobs in early childhood education as part of the program because, as we know, this government has already said it will be cutting jobs. The education minister will be lost for a punchline when the Treasurer drops an axe on universal three-year-old kinder, forcing him to break his promise of jobs in the early childhood sector. I can see the Treasurer eyeing off the $49.7 million kinder fee subsidy too. I mean, let us face it, the Treasurer will have to be pretty drastic in his cuts to reach his target of $4 billion from the budget.

Now, I was interested to note the wording of the MPI failed to mention the government’s $58 million school breakfast program. It must already be on the chopping block. The universal three-year-old kinder program is under pressure before it is really getting underway. In the 2019–20 budget estimates public hearings the education minister conceded the government had not even conducted an audit to assess the capacity in early childhood education—that is, both infrastructure and resourcing. The minister noted that an audit would occur, and I quote:

… through Ernst & Young over the course of the development of this rollout.

I am sorry to break it to the member for Mordialloc, but as the Treasurer looks to cut $4 billion from the budget it is consultants fees that in the first place the Treasurer will be looking to cut. As the Ernst & Young audit has barely gotten started and is years off being completed, then it looks like the three-year-old kinder program is right in the firing line of the looming budget cuts.

The further flaw in the government’s rushed plan—chasing headlines but with no regard for its financial commitment—is that we heard in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee budget hearings that the program requires co-investment of kinder providers, including not-for-profit providers. Therein lies a huge problem. As a former board member of a not-for-profit kinder, I can assure the member for Mordialloc that cash of the magnitude that would be required not only for capex but also for the operating expenditure simply would not be able to be sustained.

So to the next attention-grabbing headline, the Smile Squad dental program. I mean, what happened to ‘Dan’s vans’? Did the Premier did not want his name attached to a program that is doomed to failure? On the dental vans, instead of landmark reform what the public is actually facing is a landmark failure. The Treasurer and the health minister have provided no guarantees that this program will not be subjected to savage cuts as part of the $4 billion of cuts. Despite the $395.8 million election commitment, the Labor government only provided $321.9 million for the program in the budget. Before it even got off the ground, before it even got started, Labor cut its own program by 18.7 per cent, and there are no guarantees that these cuts will not continue.

In a comical twist, at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) hearings last year the Minister for Health conceded that her dental van program was actually funded by the federal Morrison government through the child dental benefits schedule. Dental health is an important matter for Victorians, yet the Labor government is failing miserably; as we saw in the 2019–20 budget Labor has already heartlessly cut $74 million from dental care for Victorian students.

Moreover, at the PAEC hearings, the health minister either did not know or deliberately refused to answer questions about the program, including those on the cost of screening and treatment vans and on why government procurement policies had not been followed for such an intensive spend on the capital assets of vehicles and medical equipment. This is over $320 million of Victorian taxpayer dollars that we are talking about. In getting a huge and costly truck fleet I think the government has entirely underestimated the cost of the purchase and operation of this truck fleet, and it simply is not core government business. Victorians deserve better.

Now to school infrastructure and the government’s headline on spending on upgrades to new schools: well, as a mum of a child in the public school system, I think it is very well known that the Labor government is really just playing catch-up. Labor has been in government for 16 of the last 20 years and has been failing dismally on school infrastructure investment. Now, with the Treasurer wielding his heavy axe to reach $4 billion of cuts, the Treasurer and the Minister for Education have provided no guarantees that this school infrastructure investment program will not be cut. Part of the issue is that the government has failed to be transparent in terms of which schools will receive funding and why. Infrastructure Victoria made clear recommendations about transparency and the need to publish five-year investment priorities for new and upgraded schools alongside planning data that shows demonstrated need.

At PAEC, the government indicated they are years and years off even completing an inspection and audit of the quality of each Victorian school, so it remains unclear to parents and school communities which schools are in and which schools are being kept in the dark. Manchester Primary School in Mooroolbark in my electorate, for example, has very much had the door kept closed to them for meaningful and much-needed upgrades for school infrastructure, including the toilet block that has been quarantined for over two years now because the ceiling is exposed with wiring.

How will the government pay for these services and infrastructure outlined in this MPI when costs on all of their projects have already massively blown out? There is already $25 billion of cost blowouts. Net debt is projected to increase by 10.5 per cent over the forward estimates to almost $60 billion, with no plans to pay it back. Labor is scrambling to increase taxes and to make massive budget cuts. It is the real cost of Labor. The Treasurer did not mince his words when he said, and I quote:

I’m looking at every line item of expenditure and I’m looking to take something like $4 billion out of government expenditure …

His words: ‘every line item’. Nothing committed in the 2019–20 budget is safe—not the universal three-year-old kinder, not the school dental program and not the school infrastructure investment program. This government continues to run from the brutal truth of its own making. It cannot manage money.

Ms CRUGNALE (Bass) (15:51): What a great opportunity it is to rise to speak on this matter of significant public importance and to rattle off a litany of positive capital and social investments, borne from some pretty remarkable policies and projects across many a portfolio, that at their very core are to bring out the best, offer the best and to support each and every Victorian to be their best. Because we wish our children well; we want them to participate, and we want them to be active citizens, to contribute, to challenge the status quo and to realise their potential.

Half of the world’s population is under 25 years of age, so our young and our youth are an absolute asset to our community. They can change the future and show the rest of us a different way of seeing the world. Their stories, ideas and experiences can importantly inform how we better deliver programs, services and supports, both locally in my electorate and across Victoria. Our job as a government is to prepare them, to support them, to skill them up and to enable them so that they become good critical thinkers and so that we also encourage creativity at every stage of their journey. I have been told that over their lifetime they will average five different careers and work for 17 different employers. This is the workforce and the world that awaits them. So here I go on an impressive ‘Hear ye, hear ye’ kind of moment with real outcomes. I want everyone to picture me in a thespian-style velvet outfit holding an elongated roll of parchment paper bigger than the biblical Old Testament or the Dead Sea scrolls.

The school build: we have 1 million students, and of those, 81 000 are preps. There will be 100 new schools across the state over the next eight years and there will be an investment of $6.1 billion to deliver more than 1400 school upgrades, supporting more than 7500 construction jobs for Victorians. This is the largest and the most ambitious investment in school infrastructure in Victoria’s history ever. The investment is making sure that every child has access to a great education, that our schools can cater for Victoria’s rapidly growing population and that government schools are better equipped to prepare students for the 21st century.

This year we opened a new primary school and a new senior campus in Bass. We welcomed Grayling Primary School, a beautiful new school, just this month—a wonderful addition to the Clyde North community that has already lived up to its motto, ‘Proud and connected’. It is aptly named after the endangered freshwater fish that is known to inhabit Cardinia Creek at the back of the school. The principal, Luke Abdallah, and his teaching and support staff are super energised and are already delivering a quality education, programs and activities for all students to be their best—another new school proudly brought to you by the Andrews Labor government.

There is another one: the Wonthaggi Secondary College senior campus. It was with a spring in my step that I stood next to the Deputy Premier and Minister for Education to celebrate the senior campus opening at Wonthaggi Secondary College. To everyone that has been on this journey—we did it. It was an incredible moment to see this new campus built, opened and full of energy, with around 670 students alongside fabulous teachers, support staff and community, all in a super big three-court stadium—a competition-grade stadium—cheering away with smiles galore. This is a top-quality public school with fabulous light-filled learning spaces, an oval, wetlands and more—again, proudly brought to you by the Andrews Labor government.

On the elongated scroll of school buildings let me also champion the upgrades, because we are not just about all things new. Clyde, Koo Wee Rup, Lang Lang and Cowes primary schools all have architects appointed, and away they go. It will be a healthy $30 million-plus investment once all is complete, with buildings to match their excellent and capable teachers, support staff and students.

I am really looking forward to first term 2021 when Pakenham Henry Road Secondary School—an interim name—comes on line. The land acquired last year now has the longest and most rectangular fence wraparound I have ever seen. The site shed is on, the architects are appointed, dirt is starting to move around and machinery is en route. Also in term 1, 2021, will be Thoroughbred Primary and Timbertop (Officer North West) Primary in the neighbouring electorate of Gembrook. Bring on 2022, with Clyde North Secondary, Clyde North Primary and Bass Coast Junior Secondary School in San Remo—of course all interim names.

At all the primary schools mentioned we co-locate kinder facilities for obvious reasons—easy drop-off as a practical one. More importantly we do this to strengthen the connections and continuity between early learning and school. This is great for the kids themselves, their parents, guardians, educators and teachers. What can I say? They are proudly brought to you by the Andrews Labor government.

Speaking of kinders and what a massive reform our universal three-year-old funded kindergarten program is, I will add to the contributions of my caucus colleagues by saying a cause for celebration with the rollout and also the building program of upgrades and new facilities is that we need a workforce. So we have just added to the free TAFE course list certificate III and diploma in early childhood education and care, and these are being delivered at Chisholm’s Berwick and Wonthaggi campuses, skilling up a local workforce needed for local jobs close to home. It creates jobs through two principal means: the 6000 early childhood teachers and educators we will need as well as the jobs created to actually build the infrastructure. Parents have already got on board with three-year-old kinder. In South Gippsland, which flanks the Bass electorate, 86 per cent of three-year-olds are attending the kinder program now.

It would be really remiss of me not to segue into our Local Jobs First policy, which supports local businesses and gives them the opportunity to compete for both large and small government contracts, but what I love is that it is also mandated that apprentices, trainees and cadets will work on these projects—from schools and hospitals to manufacturing and road projects.

We are not just about the physical build either. Take the rural and regional package; rural and regional education reform—I am going to have to skip through this as I am running out of time—the school readiness funding; the inclusive kinder grants; breakfast clubs, and this year the number of schools participating in Bass grew from 11 to 16; and the school building maintenance blitz. Even Pick My Projects saw a sensory play area, community school farm and food project, solar panels and bee education program for kinders, schools and outdoor ed organisations.

There is assistance for school uniform programs; the Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund; Glasses for Kids; mental health professionals in state high schools—I could go on and on and on. This is not an exhaustive list and I am in no way exhausted by talking about it, but I will run out of time so I might skip through it. We have got the Smile Squad, and can I just say that Clyde Primary School is in the mix for the rollout, so they will be having Dan’s vans coming onto their premises this year. Good dental health is more than just healthy teeth. Tooth decay is over five times more prevalent than asthma, and we know that dental conditions are the highest cause of preventable hospitalisations for Victorian children under 10 years.

In summary, we have a really rapidly growing community, and with that comes new opportunities and also many challenges. I did go through some of them in my inaugural speech, where I said that we have a low year-12 completion rate, we have one of the highest rates in the state for the number of children with developmental vulnerabilities, food insecurity is really high and the number of children attending three-year-old and five-year-old maternal and child health checks is the lowest in the state. It is no surprise that things like three-year-old kinder, mental health professionals, dental vans, school builds, community hospitals, free TAFE—all this—were responded to so positively at the 2018 election.

We are addressing all of the above, and we are effecting change through social, health and educational reforms. We have a lot more to do, but we have the will and the determination. We started the minute we were elected in 2014, because this is what we do, this is our job and we have to, because all Victorians are worth it.