Northern Suburbs Public Education Facilities

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (14:32): My question is to the Premier. How is the Malinauskas Labor government ensuring that families in the north will have access to quality public education facilities into the future?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:32): I thank the leader—sorry, I thank the member for Elizabeth; he is the leader in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. I thank the member for Elizabeth for his—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: One of a number. The member for Elizabeth knows full well the implications of rapid growth. He has seen it in his own community, as have other representatives here from the northern suburbs. During the course of this week, the state government has been outlining, I think, considerable plans to accommodate the growth that we know the state is experiencing and is likely to continue to experience for some time.

I am at pains to make clear that this is not a policy of the government seeking to pursue population growth for population growth's sake, but rather to acknowledge the fact that because we have a stronger economy the population is growing at a faster rate than we have seen previously, and we anticipate that that should be maintained. Therefore, we have to accommodate and plan for that. The northern and southern suburbs will be particularly important, and also places like Murray Bridge. The Murray Bridge council has been very engaged in the exercise, for which they deserve credit.

One of the key planks of the policy that we have announced this week is the principle of land reservation before the fact rather than after it: land reservation that says, 'Right, if this is a community that is set to grow, whether it be in Two Wells, whether it be in Kudla, whether it be in Murray Bridge or wherever it might be, let's make sure that we are reserving land rather than retrospectively trying to work out where the school is going to go or the health service is going to go or how people are going to move in the area.'

On Sunday I was with the Minister for Transport and the Minister for Housing and Urban Development, making clear that we are reserving the rail corridors—not selling them off but reserving them. On top of that, I was very grateful to be with the Minister for Education yesterday identifying the parcel of land that is now in the possession of the South Australian government, where we will be building in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, in a parcel of land in the area of Eyre in the north, a brand-new school, a high school, which is a big investment from the South Australian government—over $150 million for a 1,300 student school. It's going to be a good one.

We know that Riverbanks up the road is a very popular school. It is well attended and is in demand. We want to replicate that effort with a high-quality facility so that kids in the northern suburbs get access to a school that is of the standard that we see in places like Adelaide Botanic. We are going to see that in the northern suburbs of Adelaide and it speaks to two things: it speaks to a government that is serious about getting this right, learning from the mistakes of the past and making sure that this is not seen as a cost, but, rather, as an opportunity.

When families move into a place like the northern suburbs, with nice surrounds, with tree-lined green areas like we saw yesterday at the development at Andrews Farm, when they get access to a high-quality education facility that is of the best standard and of the appropriate size—we are very deliberate about the size of this school; the Minister for Education is making sure that we are not going down the path of having an unnecessarily large school; we think 1,300 is the sweet spot for a high-quality high school—there is an opportunity there to educate the kids in a family-friendly environment, participating in an economy that is growing and requiring increasingly higher skills.

We do not see growth as a cost, we see it as an opportunity to get it right, which, of course, is an economic policy for the state because we need the labour and we need the homes to unlock programs like AUKUS. We are getting on with this task. We are putting our money where our mouth is, and schools is just the beginning.