Thursday, 15 May 2025

 Lizzie BLANDTHORN (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Children, Minister for Disability) (12:07): It is very timely that I rise to update the house on how the Allan Labor government will continue its significant investment in kinder over the coming years. Recently I was delighted to visit Lollypop Creek Kindergarten in Werribee with the Premier and member for Werribee from the other place to announce the location of three more new kinders on school sites in 2027. These additional kinders bring the total number of kinders on school sites in 2027 to 13, creating more than 1900 kinder places. They will open in 2027 at Seville Primary School, Willow Grove Primary School and Rochester Secondary College. We know that co-locating kinders on school sites brings many benefits to families and communities. It supports children transitioning to school from kinder and also helps more families ditch the dreaded double drop-off. It also helps ensure that there is sufficient kinder capacity for these communities, at the same time providing new and modern kinder facilities for children to learn, play and grow in.

I was also pleased at this event to celebrate the opening of kinder enrolments for 2026 and in particular the enrolments for pre-prep. In 2026 pre-prep will become available in 12 new local government areas – a further extension of the pre-prep program – meaning that another 3000 children at 130 services will be eligible for up to 20 hours of kinder per week. Families in the 12 local government areas of Benalla, Buloke, Corangamite, East Gippsland, Horsham, Loddon, Mansfield, Mitchell, Pyrenees, Strathbogie, Wangaratta and Wodonga will all be able to start pre-prep next year.

Our government also continues to support vulnerable children and families, and next year up to 25 kinder hours a week will be available to priority cohort children, no matter where they live. In practical terms, this will provide for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children from a refugee or asylum seeker background and children who have had contact with child protection to access more hours of kinder wherever they live. We know how important this is for each child’s learning and development and the lifelong learning that it brings. Those opposite should support it rather than fearmonger.