Thursday, 20 November 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (22:53): (2171) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education, and the action that I seek is for the minister to ensure that school buses that bring students from New South Wales to Victorian schools adhere to the Victorian rules that govern the criteria for who can travel on a school bus. I was recently informed about an alarming incident in which an unauthorised adult male was allowed to board and travel on a school bus carrying students to a Victorian school. A girl who attends Cobram Secondary College was waiting at her driveway for the school bus to arrive when an adult male approached her, tried to engage her in conversation and followed her when she moved away. The girl was rightly concerned and shaken by this. But it got worse. The man was then allowed to board the school bus, despite the student warning the bus driver that she was frightened by him, and he stayed on the bus even as it entered school grounds. The bus driver did ask the passenger to sit at the front of the bus and informed him that he was not permitted to disembark at the school, but that did not stop him trying. This is a completely unacceptable breach of student safety and the Victorian school bus program policy, as the male was unidentified and had no authorisation to board.

The student was alarmed and quite distressed and reported the incident to school authorities, who contacted the bus company to complain. The bus company had said it was very unhappy about the situation, but that following a rule change in New South Wales it is required to take any regional passenger on a school bus. This New South Wales policy violates basic safeguarding principles. In rural areas where students travel from small towns or isolated farms and are often on their own, random adults from the community should not be allowed to board a school bus without prior permission. In Victoria the rules do not allow this. As the Department of Education’s website says regarding the school bus program:

No ad-hoc travel is to be provided to members of the general public.

In Victoria members of the general public who wish to travel on a school bus must apply beforehand for a whole-of-term travel permit, get approval from the coordinating school principal and pay a fare for the full term up-front. The website also states that non-school passengers must provide the coordinating principal with a working with children check to protect the safety of all travelling students. In New South Wales these safety requirements apparently do not apply, and a problem arises when school buses that serve border communities bring students from New South Wales to schools in Victoria. In this instance an adult in New South Wales was able to freely board the school bus going to Cobram in Victoria and did not have to abide by the Victorian requirements even though the bus was taking students to a Victorian school. This is clearly unacceptable.