Wednesday, 19 November 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:39:429:): (2157) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Community Sport, and the action that I seek is for the minister to substantially increase the amount of state government funding allocated for an aquatic facility in the Mernda regional sports precinct. Last year I asked the Minister for Community Sport to confirm the amount of money allocated towards the Mernda regional aquatic and sports centre. The minister advised me that the state government had allocated $20 million in the 2023–24 budget towards the sports and aquatic centre, a project envisioned to have an indoor stadium, outdoor sports courts and a swimming pool. Ten million dollars of that has been used to build an intersection and an access road into the sports precinct, and the other $10 million has been used to start work constructing the sports courts. Whittlesea City Council endorsed a business case for the precinct that included a 50-metre pool, and the entire sports and aquatic precinct was costed at around $180 million. Local residents got their hopes up and believed they might finally get the pool that Mernda has been waiting for. However, the people of Yan Yean are now feeling very let down by the Allan Labor government, which refuses to guarantee sufficient investment for a future aquatic facility. The member for Yan Yean has flagged that the state government only intends to contribute $10 million for the pool, which is estimated to cost around $100 million. The pool has been dropped from the plans and from the name, and now it is just the Mernda regional sports precinct.

Recently the member for Yan Yean conducted a community survey in order to pressure Whittlesea Council to provide the rest of the funding for the pool – a massive amount of money for a council in a designated growth area that is bursting at the seams and struggling to meet demand for services. How embarrassing it must be to be a member of the Labor Party, the party in government, and unable to convince your own party to properly fund a pool for Mernda. It is even more embarrassing for the member that she fails to understand why Whittlesea council would find it difficult to afford the swimming pool. The final report from last year’s inquiry into local government funding and services found significant cost shifting from the state Labor government down to local councils. Cost shifting involves a drop in the state government’s proportion of funding for valued services such as libraries or maternal and child health or the imposition of new responsibilities on councils without increased funding from the state to carry out these services, like the requirement for councils to implement a four-bin waste and recycling system. These extra costs come at a time when the state government has limited the capacity of councils to raise revenue with the state government’s rate-capping policy. The Allan Labor government is squeezing councils from both sides, but it expects the City of Whittlesea to stump up $100 million for the Mernda pool when the state is only putting in $10 million. The member for Yan Yean has her priorities all wrong.