Wednesday, 15 May 2024

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (12:51): (859) What a delight to get the call for my constituency question this afternoon. I would love to say that I was absolutely delighted to see that last week’s budget has one of the biggest investments in education in Victoria’s history: $1.9 billion was dedicated to the maintaining, upgrading and building of schools all around this state so we can reach our goal of building 100 new schools by 2026. Joey, as she is known to her mates – or Joanne, if we are being a little formal – lives not too far from Carlton North Primary School on Lee Street, and she has got her first bubba on the way. She loves the idea of a local school and has seen all the signage that has been about the school for a while about the repairs and maintenance work. She wants to know why it is so hard with the complexity of the repairs required for the school down the end of her street. So my question today is for the Minister for Education in another place: what are some of the additional complexities of our heritage schools that make the upgrades so much more challenging?