Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

ADJOURNMENT
1738 COUNCIL Thursday, 2 June 2011
guided by the lower house member for Nepean, Martin
Dixon, in making his decision on the aquatic centre
proposal.
The minister knows that the Coastal Management Act
1995 requires him, in considering whether or not to
give consent, to have regard to the Victorian coastal
strategy and any coastal action plan that applies to the
land. Nowhere in the act does it say that the minister
should be guided by the local member of Parliament.
The minister’s only duty is to make sure that the
foreshore option is consistent with the Coastal
Management Act 1995. The minister cannot pick and
choose who he will be guided by; he is bound to make
decisions in accordance with Victorian law. Telling the
Mornington Peninsula Leader that he will back the
foreshore site because it is close to public transport, that
it would provide a focal point and that he would be
guided by the local Liberal member, Martin Dixon, is
completely out of order.
I presume that Martin Dixon, the member for Nepean,
and Greg Hunt, the federal member for Flinders,
persuaded the minister to go down to Rosebud and give
the Leader an interview. We all know that Mr Dixon
and Mr Hunt have made up their minds, and that is their
prerogative, but they are not the Victorian Minister for
the Environment and Climate Change and they are not
charged with his weighty responsibilities. They should
have cared more for their colleague and not used him so
shabbily.
I ask the minister to immediately issue a clarification to
reassure the community that he will uphold the law and
not bend to his Liberal colleagues. The minister’s job
under the act is to make sure that there is a clear and
demonstrated need for the aquatic centre to be located
on the foreshore and that it could not work anywhere
else. The shire identified four suitable sites that met all
the criteria, and there are naturally different views in the
community about the desirability of each of them.
Eaglehawk Primary School: future
Mr DRUM (Northern Victoria) — My adjournment
matter is for the Minister for Education, Martin Dixon.
It has to do with the Eaglehawk Primary School. As
many in the chamber would know, prior to the last
election the former Labor government tried to close
down the Eaglehawk Primary School and merge it with
two other schools: Comet Hill Primary School and
North Bendigo Primary School. The community of
Eaglehawk, led by councillors, business people,
parents, the mayor, former mayors and a former Labor
Party electorate officer, railed against that decision and
came out to make sure that the Eaglehawk Primary
School stayed open in its own right.
The coalition, in response to the community pleas, gave
a $2 million pledge to fix up part of the school that had
been let run down into a state of neglect and to put in
some maintenance work that had been sorely lacking.
Since coming to government we have appointed the
independent consultant Scaffidi Hugh-Jones to conduct
an independent consultation process with the
stakeholders in the school. I was a member of a
working group to ensure that that work was being done
in a totally unencumbered and unaffected way and to
make sure that the process was totally independent.
That report is now finished. It is with the minister, and I
hope the minister will be in a position to accept the
recommendations of that report quickly.
The problem that we have is that the member for
Bendigo East in the Assembly, Jacinta Allan, is still
trying, even in opposition, to close the school. It is hard
to believe that the shadow Minister for Education, Rob
Hulls, could come to Bendigo even now and proclaim
that his wish is for the Eaglehawk Primary School to
close. Unfortunately these two former ministers are
trying to undermine the school’s future. They are
effectively saying that the school has no future.
My request is that the minister give the families that are
sending their children to Eaglehawk Primary School
and the families that are making the important decision
to send their children to Eaglehawk Primary School in
the future some comfort and give them the confidence
and security they need. I hope the minister will be able
to take the opportunity to make a firm statement about
how committed this government is to the future of
Eaglehawk Primary School. We have invested the
money that the Labor Party would not invest. We have
invested in the community of Eaglehawk in a whole
range of ways, no more so than in the Eaglehawk
Primary School, and we are hoping now that the
minister will come out and reinforce this government
commitment to the future of Eaglehawk Primary
School.
Rail: tender process
Mr SOMYUREK (South Eastern Metropolitan) —
I raise a matter for the attention of Mr Dalla-Riva, the
Minister for Manufacturing, Exports and Trade,
concerning the procurement of the remaining 33 new
trains out of the 40 committed to by the coalition before
the election. The coalition’s election commitment
clearly stated that a tender process would be entered
into for the purchase of the new trains and that superior
local content would be achieved as a result of this new