Tuesday, 29 October 2024

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (22:16): (1213) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education, and the action that I seek is for the minister to instruct the Department of Education to begin negotiations to acquire land that adjoins the Grahamvale Primary School. Grahamvale Primary School urgently needs to acquire this land. The primary school is located on Grahamvale Road, an arterial road, the C391, that forms part of the Shepparton alternate route, which allows heavy vehicles to bypass Shepparton town centre. The regular flow of truck traffic outside the school raises safety concerns that become more serious when parking at the school cannot meet excessive demand. Grahamvale Primary is surrounded by farmland, so there are no side streets where parents can park and walk their children to the entrance. The primary school itself has 106 parking spaces, but on a typical day there may be more than 160 cars parked outside during the school drop-off and pick-up times. Drivers who cannot get a designated parking space fill up the roadside in front of the car park or, worse, park along the grass verge on the main road. I have seen the peak-hour chaos, with a line of cars parked on the road’s grass verge stretching almost 200 metres north of the school. Dropping kids off on the grass verge of a major truck route is clearly a major hazard.

Grahamvale Primary School urgently wishes to acquire some of the adjoining land in order to build staff car parking behind the school, which will free up space at the front for parents to park and alleviate the traffic hazards. Without acquiring the land it will only be a matter of time until the traffic situation causes a serious incident near the school, perhaps with tragic consequences. I raised in Parliament the need for the new land for Grahamvale Primary way back in 2008, but nothing has been done by this government. I asked for a traffic safety audit in 2018 and again called for acquisition of new land. The then Minister for Education replied to me in 2018 to say the department recognises the impact of proposed housing developments on the school. The then minister acknowledged that an expansion of the Grahamvale Primary School site would potentially ameliorate issues which may arise when new housing boosts student numbers and associated traffic. Then in 2019 the Minister for Planning approved the Shepparton North East Precinct Structure Plan, which earmarked the land around Grahamvale Primary as the area for the school’s potential expansion. However, the Department of Education wrote to the school two years ago, in October 2022, saying that it had no existing plans to move forward in acquiring the land. I urge the minister to instruct the Department of Education to open discussions with the relevant stakeholders, with a view to acquiring the land around Grahamvale Primary School for the school’s use.