Tuesday, 3 February 2026

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (20:19): The Labor government is interested in optics, but what is it delivering? It complains that budget black holes are not its fault, but let us consider a couple of examples of how our hard-earned taxpayers money is being used in areas of Cranbourne. For instance, we had the Balla Balla centre that was very modern and lovely; it was right next to the Cranbourne library. It was completely levelled, demolished – a beautiful building that was being used. Then, to keep the optics going, they took the name of the Balla Balla centre down to Selandra Rise. They renamed the Selandra Rise community centre ‘Balla Balla Community Centre’ so that people would not realise that they had completely demolished a perfectly good building to put up what they called the Cranbourne Community Hospital, which was a promise in the 2018 election. That hospital turns out to not have an emergency department. It cost millions of dollars, and all they did was relocate the allied health services from about 100 metres across the road to what they call the Cranbourne hospital. But the Cranbourne hospital is not a real hospital.