Thursday, 30 July 2026

 Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (18:20): (2654) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts, and the action I seek is that the Victorian government and Merri-bek City Council work together to explore every option to save the Don Bosco youth centre. After 87 years of serving the community, the Don Bosco youth centre and hostel is up for sale. The community is fighting hard to save this beloved space for our children and young people. In just over a week more than 5000 community members have signed a petition asking the state government and the Merri-bek City Council to do everything within their power to save the centre. Don Bosco is a place where parents who spent their own childhoods playing at Don Bosco now bring their own kids to play. It is where you bring your toddler to burn off energy on the trampolines and to pat the rabbits, with a trip to A1 Bakery afterwards for a cheese pie. It is where you celebrate your kid’s birthday if your home is too small to host the entire class. Don Bosco is an important third space for our young people. There are not many welcoming spaces left in our community for young people to hang out and socialise that are not big shopping malls or require money to access. Don Bosco has free after-school, weekend and holiday programs, with youth workers on site who genuinely get to know our young people. If you want to know what the youth centre means to our community, I encourage you to look at the more than 80 comments on the petition, like this one from Nicole:

As a youth worker, I take young people who are in foster care here as it’s a fun, affordable place where my young people are safe to connect.

Petra says:

Don bow o has helped so many kids who don’t have a backyard this is our second home please help

I want to be clear that the community are not asking the Salesians of Don Bosco, who own the youth centre, to halt the sale. The Salesians have a documented history of institutional child sexual abuse in Australia. The community does not want to stand in the way of victim-survivors of horrendous abuse receiving compensation for the harms they have endured at the hands of this organisation. But this site’s imminent sale is an opportunity to reimagine how it can continue to serve the community. The site has space for a youth centre, social housing and other co-located supports. Minister, I encourage the state government to work together with Merri-bek City Council to reimagine the future of this centre before it passes into developer hands and is lost forever.