Davenport Electorate

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:44): It is our responsibility to ensure the safety of children as they navigate their daily routines, including their journeys to and from school. We have all seen the chaos that is at most school drop-off and pickup locations: cars jostling for carparking spots, impatient drivers rushing to drop kids off or pick them up and students darting across the street. It is a recipe for disaster. It is a constant challenge for schools, councils and state government to solve.

One simple solution to reduce traffic congestion is promoting walking and riding to school. Encouraging our kids to walk or ride to school comes with so many benefits. Of course, there are the benefits of physical activity. In an era where inactive lifestyles are so common and childhood obesity is becoming a real concern, incorporating physical activity into their daily routines is extremely important.

Kids getting themselves to school also fosters independence and responsibility. As children navigate their way to school, they learn valuable life skills such as road awareness, decision-making and time management. Fewer cars on the road during peak hours is not just good for the environment but it is also great for and much safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

Parents in my electorate who live within walking distance of their child's school tell me that they are often forced to unnecessarily send their kids to OSHC because they are not comfortable with them navigating unsafe crossing points between their school and home. Implementing measures to ensure road safety around schools is so important and in this term of government in my electorate we have already delivered a number of school safety upgrades, including designated pedestrian crossings, traffic calming measures and increased enforcement of speed limits. It continues to be one of the most highly raised local issues in my community.

I do not think that my community needs any convincing about the benefits of walking or riding to school, but they do need reassurance that their kids will be safe and that will come with improvements to some of our roads, pathways and crossing points and it will come with changes in driver behaviour. It is our collective responsibility as a government, as parents, as educators and as community members to prioritise the safety of our children and to create safer streets and healthy lifestyles.

I particularly would like to thank people in my community, such as Flagstaff Hill Primary School student Levi, who brought his community's traffic concerns to my attention. I am investigating those concerns and look forward to working with Levi and others in my community to identify some solutions that will give families the confidence they need to reap the benefits of walking and riding to school.

While we are talking about walking, I would like to take the opportunity to tell people about a new walking trail that will be opening in my electorate this weekend. This Sunday we will be opening the Minkarra Link trail, which is a connection from Manning Road at Minkarra Park, all the way through to Black Road in Flagstaff Hill. It is a connection that the community has been lobbying for for decades.

It runs around the edge of the Flagstaff Hill golf course and it opens up a part of our community that we have never tapped into before, so when you are driving down Happy Valley Drive now in my electorate, you will see a whole part of our community that you have not previously been able to see from Happy Valley Drive. There is a beautiful golf course dam there with some nice seating. There have been some new plantings and weeding underway there, so it has really beautified the area and opened it up for our community to enjoy, with a huge benefit being that kids who live on the Flagstaff Hill side of the golf club will now be able to ride their bikes or walk to school at Aberfoyle Park High School which they have never been able to do safely before.

So I would encourage people in my community to come along on Sunday—the Premier will be there to help open this new trail—to come and have a chat with the Premier and me and also members of the council and the mayor. Come on down, check it out, have a nice walk and enjoy a new part of our community.