Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:00): I am very proud to represent the growing outer suburbs of Melbourne. They are indeed a wonderful place to live, work and raise a family, and as they grow, we are investing in them. Indeed in particular in the Clyde North area in the outer south-east we have seen just this year two brand new school openings, Balambalam Primary School and Birranga College. We are investing in new kindergartens on school sites, the extension of the routes 798 and 831 bus services, the opening of the Casey early parenting centre, the opening of the Cranbourne Community Hospital and the forthcoming much-needed upgrade to Casey Hospital’s emergency department. We are also currently investing right now in major works to upgrade Clyde Road, both as it goes over the freeway in Berwick and as it intersects with Thompsons Road as well.

We are making these investments because our growing suburbs deserve nothing less. But as we do so, we see the Liberal Party across the chamber fighting against our efforts to ease the pressure on the growing suburbs. We know we cannot keep growing at these unsustainable rates, and that is exactly why this government is focusing on investing in the densification of activity centres in inner and middle-ring suburbs to take that pressure off our growing outer suburbs. But at the very same time the Liberal Party is opposing all these measures, leaving more of that growth to the outer suburbs. They come in here and complain that there has not been enough done. This government will continue to get on with the work whilst they will continue to talk from the sidelines, saying one thing to the inner city and another thing to the outer suburbs.