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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-11-18 Daily Xml
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Schubert Electorate

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (15:16): I rise today to make a public plea on behalf of my community. Recently, the government came up for country cabinet and a public forum held at the Nuriootpa High School. On each of the seats there was a flyer and on that flyer it talked about the government's commitment to regional South Australia. It broke up the regions into the seven RDA areas and talked about the projects that were committed and the money that was being spent in each of those regions.

The funny thing is that this country cabinet was hosted in the RDA Barossa region, which includes Mallala, Light, Gawler and Barossa councils. Interestingly, this RDA region received the lowest amount of funding across South Australia in that document, which I find a little bit interesting, that you would come to a region and say, 'Hey, we want to highlight you the fact that we've given you less money than we've given any other region in South Australia.'

It highlighted $6.2 million worth of funding for two projects. The first of those projects is for dialysis chairs to be housed at Gawler Hospital, which is very valuable and very welcome, but not in my electorate. The second project is the Evanston Gardens Primary School upgrade, which again is an important project, but again not in my electorate. What I would like to do is highlight the two areas that I think are very worthy of funding, and I plea with the government that in the next funding rounds, the next budget round, these two projects for infrastructure spending are considered.

The first of those is at Nuriootpa Primary School. It is a fantastic school, I might say at the outset, that I have had only good feedback from when I talk to the parents of students who go there. Some of them have raised concerns with me, and I did pick up something in the Nuri Primary School newsletter, and I would like to quote it here. They said:

The mouldy/collapsing ceilings are an issue for us to deal with. We have been able to secure the ceilings, at school expense. Again, the facilities manager is trying to find a solution to [this] and has forwarded this request to central office. Neither of these projects are within our budget—the paint cost DECD $54,000 three years ago and the ceiling would cost thousands upon thousands of dollars to replace.

I have a school that is providing high level, high quality education that does not have the facilities that it needs in order to maintain a high standard. When I read statements like 'mouldy/collapsing ceilings', I do begin to wonder whether or not money needs to be put in there. That is the first project I would like to put on the table.

The second project I would like to put on the table is around Nuriootpa High School. I know the Minister for Education, when country cabinet was up, toured the high school. In fact, we had the country cabinet public forum in the gymnasium. It was then reported in the local media, as The Leader, a great Barossa newspaper, reports on everything that goes on within the Barossa, and in there it talked about the visit by the Minister for Education to the school, but it highlighted some issues. I will quote Neil White, the principal of Nuri High School, where he says:

The other major issue for our ageing school site is the cost of maintenance and utilities. Our allocated funds do not cover the costs and we are relying on fundraising and community donations to run some programmes and develop facilities.

He goes on to say:

The department is doing a whole of state audit to determine amongst [other] things, the state of buildings with an aim to develop a blueprint and progressive development plan.

Nuri High School has seen a huge increase over recent years of number of students, and again, I think that is testament to the good quality education that they provide.

Certainly, again, I have had really good reports, especially under the former principal Ian Tooley and the current principal Neil White continuing his legacy, about a school that provides fantastic education and parents voting with their feet to send their students to this school. They are basically going to a school that is now bursting at the seams, where normal classrooms have had to be turned into a disability unit as opposed to having a second stand-alone disability unit that could free up those classrooms, to having old classrooms that are hugely expensive to heat and cool and are really not a good environment for students to be in. So, there are two projects that I put on the table for the government to consider in the next budget round to ensure that the schools in my area are up to scratch.

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