Wednesday, 29 July 2026

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:25): I rise to speak today to the petition that I tabled earlier this morning regarding the death of 16-year-old Chris Rua Antony. His life was lost tragically when he was walking home from his school, Mazenod College, on Friday 13 February at about 4:30. He was hit by a car that left Pound Road and collided with the young man and then crashed into a tree. The words he was saying to his parents on the phone just prior to the collision were, ‘I’m close to home.’ I believe he was speaking to his father Antony at the time, who then realised that something had happened. They turned their car around, and the parents were some of the first on the scene with the people that had actually hit him as a result of the accident.

The petition is really important. It is important that the government pays attention to this, because I went to the wake for this young man and then actually attended the funeral as well, but in the funeral I was outside. It was so well attended by the community, students and schoolmates, people from sporting clubs, people that knew the family and people from the faith community to which the family belongs. It was spilling out into an annexe, and it was also spilling out from the annexe into the outdoors without any protection from the weather. I think that goes to show not only the tragic loss and grief that the family were feeling and the need to support them in this time but also the tremendous respect and love for this student, Chris Rua Antony. He survived for about a week in hospital before he passed away. It was so tragic to be at the wake, to see the photos of this young man at his birth and the beaming face of his parents as they held him up, particularly his father, and to see that tragic loss and be there afterwards.

His father begged me – I was the only member of Parliament that attended, the only local member, and I am an upper house member that represents 11 electorates, of which Narre South is only one – and said, ‘Please do something so that this doesn’t have to happen to any other family ever again.’ So I made an appeal, and I have had a petition that could be signed online and in paper and today presented the online petition, which has nearly 900 signatures. There have been a lot more that have signed up on a Change.org one. I think it is nearly at 8000 signatures. There are so many people that feel so strongly about the government providing proper safety for pedestrians when they are walking home. When we have busy roads that have high speed limits and a number of cars that have been stuck in traffic because of congestion, they get frustrated and then come tearing along when the speed limit is a little bit higher. In areas where visibility can be poor the government needs to make sure that it takes on board the requests from the petition so that we can in fact prevent another death. That is the greatest desire of Chris’s parents and his sister, who he has left behind.

The parents stayed in the hospital, sleeping beside him and waking with him. He was always accompanied by his family, but he remained in a comatose state the whole time after the accident. They knew their son was a fighter, and he did fight, but they then saw his body start to give out. So it was a really tragic ending for a 16-year-old who was sporty, who was bright, who had a strong faith and who had his whole life ahead of him.

The petition calls for greater security measures on the busy road. Close to 2000 signatures came on the change.org petition within the first 24 hours. It asks for VicRoads to install safety barriers between Pound Road and the footpath and demands the relocation of the footpath away from the traffic.