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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-08-26 Daily Xml
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Public Works Committee: Urrbrae Agricultural High School Redevelopment

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:31): I move:

That the 111th report of the committee for the Fifty-Fourth Parliament, entitled Urrbrae Agricultural High School Redevelopment Project, be noted.

Urrbrae High School is located on Fullarton Road, Netherby, within the City of Mitcham, and the high school is a special interest agricultural secondary school, as members will well know. The school's curriculum focuses on modern contemporary farming, agribusiness, veterinary studies, agriculture, technology and the environment. The high school is allocated funding of $10 million as part of the Department for Education's capital works program, initially announced in October 2017.

The Urrbrae Agricultural High School redevelopment project will be delivering a total school enrolment capacity of 1,300 places by 2022. This is expected to support the transition of year 7 students to high school.

The proposed scope of works for the high school redevelopment project includes construction of a new health and wellbeing building, with specialist areas of food technology, textiles, design and physical education; construction of a new year 7 building providing general learning areas, specialist music rooms and practice areas; extension and refurbishment of the existing gym, including the installation of ventilation and tiered box seating; construction of a covered outdoor learning area (known as the COLA) adjacent the new health and wellbeing building; and, demolition of buildings and landscaping. The proposed works will be staged, with construction expected to be complete in November 2021.

The committee examined written and oral evidence in relation to this project and received assurances that the appropriate consultation had been undertaken. The committee is satisfied that the proposal has been subject to the appropriate agency consultation and does meet the criteria for the examination of projects, which members will know is described in the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991. Based on the evidence considered, and pursuant to section 12C of that act, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the scope of the works that I earlier described to the house.

Mr DULUK (Waite) (11:33): It is good to see you back in the chair, Mr Speaker. As the member for Kavel alluded to in his remarks, Urrbrae Agricultural High School is the only special interest agricultural secondary school in the state and is recognised as a centre for excellence for studies in agriculture, science, technology and the environment. Urrbrae is undergoing a lot of change at the moment, which is fantastic to see, and this $10 million project is creating 25 jobs.

Construction of a health and wellbeing building is to include home economics, a physical education teaching space and an agricultural learning square. The construction of a new building to provide additional learning areas for year 7s includes a music space as well, and there is an extension and renovation to the gym to remove the mezzanine level and provide additional seating to enable whole-of-school assemblies.

Like many schools in my community, a lot of the infrastructure was built in the 1960s, and it is great to see the demolition of this ageing infrastructure and a fresh, modern rebuild. Located within metropolitan Adelaide, Urrbrae is no ordinary secondary school, having an outstanding 40-hectare farm in addition to a dedicated wetland for integration with related educational programs, including TAFE programs.

Urrbrae, as it sits, is part of the great legacy that Peter Waite left to the people of South Australia. On the western side of Fullarton Road is the Urrbrae high school campus. That was as part of his bequest, leaving the land to the education department. On the eastern side is the Waite Institute, which is under the custodianship of the University of Adelaide. Sitting in between is the Waite Gatehouse which we, the community, saved from the wrecking ball earlier this year and which will be relocated further in the Waite campus in due course.

Urrbrae high school has a commitment to a sustainable world, which is fantastic. That is a huge, core part of what is taught at the school, focusing on developing our understanding of both the vital role of agriculture and the use of material and information technologies for a globally sustainable world. The motto of the school is 'Science with practice', and no doubt the school embodies this ethos.

Urrbrae enjoys outstanding support from the agricultural industry, parents, teachers and students to make it a city school with a country feel, with a range of co-curricular activities to cater for students' interests in sports, outdoor education, and music and drama, as well as student passions for agriculture, animal husbandry, crop production, science, technology, mathematics, English, humanities and more.

Just the other day I was talking to a year 11 student from Urrbrae who, once again, expressed his disappointment that the Royal Adelaide Show is not going on this year, obviously because of COVID—that is now two years in a row. Students of Urrbrae play a huge role in the agricultural and horticultural aspects of the show, and that has been going on now for generations. Hopefully, in 2022 the Royal Adelaide Show can be back and the students of Urrbrae high school can play their key role in animal husbandry down at Wayville.

A big thanks to Jos Fox who is the principal at Urrbrae—she does a fantastic job and is incredibly well respected within the community—the leaders of the SRC, David Hart as chair of the governing council, and all who have made this project possible.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (11:37): Urrbrae Agricultural High School is an outstanding facility. It is indeed a school in the city, but it is a school for all South Australia and its alumni stretch into every corner of this state, whether they are in agriculture or professional occupations or any other number of fields.

Because of the nature of its specialist programs it is a very appealing location for people in all sorts of settings to send their kids. There are many, many families in the Hills for example—including in part of the Morialta electorate I currently serve but that I am losing at the next election to Heysen, Kavel and Schubert—who send their kids to Urrbrae because of the extraordinary agricultural program there, which is fantastic. Of course, there are other good agricultural programs in a number of other Hills schools as well.

The programs at Urrbrae are special, and the farming infrastructure on the school is excellent. As has been pointed out, the engagement with the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society, the Royal Adelaide Show, is pretty important too. The education department has had an education program at the Royal Adelaide Show for a number of years, and I trust all members have had the opportunity to check it out. If they have not, they should go next year.

One of the real highlights of the show is the way that young children, primary school children and adults interact with animals and agricultural life in many ways. For many years the majority of the student volunteers have come from Urrbrae, and we now have a memorandum of understanding where Urrbrae Agricultural High School will, in fact, be the lead, rather than the education department's central office. Urrbrae high school will take the lead in running that stand—more than a stand; it is a building—in the future, and I am looking forward to that taking place. They will do a fantastic job, as they have done as volunteers in the past.

The project the Public Works Committee has reported on is a really important one. I visited the school a couple of times; I visited with the member for Waite in 2019 and prior to that when we were in opposition (I think he was member for Davenport at the time). The school has a lot going for it, but certainly some of the built infrastructure there has long been in need of remediation, improvement, replacement and, in some cases, expansion.

The project that is being delivered has a $10 million budget and includes the construction of a health and wellbeing building to include home economics, physical education, teaching spaces and a new agricultural learning space. It includes the construction of a new building to provide additional learning areas for the year 7s, including space for music. It includes extension and renovation of the gymnasium, to remove the mezzanine level and provide additional seating to enable whole-of-school assemblies; and, of course, the demolition of some of the ageing infrastructure that we talked about.

We are aiming for the school's capacity next year to be at 1,300. To put that into some perspective, the current student population is 981. In respect of the movement of the Urrbrae TAFE facility, there was an administration group there that is now located elsewhere, so the courses delivered traditionally on the co-located TAFE site can still be delivered. A couple of years ago, when we were restructuring the physical capacity of those TAFE sites, the school was able to also make use of some of that space, which I think has proven to be a very good outcome for all involved.

The member for Waite has spoken on this motion. I know that the member for Unley, into whose electorate the Urrbrae high school is moving as a result of the boundary changes at the next election, is also very excited about the prospect of having the school physically located in his electorate. But I make the point again that this is truly a school in which many members of the house would have students enrolled, as its catchment is very broad. People from right across metropolitan Adelaide, the Hills and near regions are able to access the school quite simply, as are those from further afield whose kids come to Adelaide, if indeed they are able to attend the school.

Principal Fox is well known. She is an absolute true local to the Urrbrae Agricultural High School. Very few school principals can be said to be as local as she is. I commend her for her work. Matthews and Partners are the architects and the builder is Cook Building and Development. This project is well and truly underway. Anyone driving past is able to see the work underway, and we are on track for completion within the next couple of months. We are currently scheduled for late October—these things are subject to change, moving back and forward a bit—and very much in the wheelhouse of being complete by the end of this year, and I cannot wait to see the final project.

The school has also benefited, of course, from the investment the Marshall Liberal government has made in communications technology and internet infrastructure, with the connection to the SWiFT internet rollout, the fibre-optic cable to the school, in July 2019. For the last two years, the school has benefited—as have all our public schools around South Australia—from that extraordinary uplift provided by having 21st century internet connection.

It is the utility sort of connection whereby the reliability of the internet needed by entire classes or entire cohorts of students all at once is as reliable as turning on a light switch in your house. That has not been the case previously, and for a school like Urrbrae, with its connections across the vast landscape of South Australia, they have been able to use that internet connection and those improvements to great effect.

I am looking forward to seeing the project completed. I commend the Public Works Committee for its work in this area. The Chair of the Public Works Committee, the member for Kavel, has a particularly high number of his constituents who drive down the freeway and are able to access Urrbrae Agricultural High School. I remember meeting in the member for Kavel's office not so long ago with a former chair of the Urrbrae high school governing council, who at the time was also a resident of Mount Barker.

Clearly, there is a strong connection there and I am sure that as the Chair of the Public Works Committee he gave it his laser-like focus to ensure that the people of South Australia got excellent value for money and that indeed the students and school community at Urrbrae Agricultural High School got an outstanding facility with the appropriate parliamentary oversight of the project. I commend the project to the house.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:44): I rise to support this Public Works Committee report into the latest redevelopment to Urrbrae Agricultural High School, noting not only the significant investment by the Marshall Liberal government but that I am a former scholar of Urrbrae—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Hear, hear!

Mr PEDERICK: Yes.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Hopefully, I am not using that word too loosely. I attended there in 1978, and the mission was to stay for another year, but I did get allergic to the city and ended up going home to help my father run the farm. It was an interesting year back then. We had only recently gone co-ed at Urrbrae, and I think there were about 800 students there at the time, and about 10 per cent of those were young ladies.

As has already been indicated in the motion regarding the Public Works Committee report, country kids from all over the state come there to learn not only science, technology and environment but, in my mind very importantly, agriculture. It has had great facilities over the years, which have been kept up to speed by governments across that time. I know that Malcolm Buckby, a former member of this place, a former member for Light, instigated some upgrades many years ago as well.

It certainly gave an insight, not just for the country students but for city students who wanted to have a connection to agriculture, and I think it is something we cannot afford to lose as we move forward. You certainly note in COVID times the importance of essential services like agriculture. You get some of the—I will be frank—the anti-COVID, the anti-vaxxers, whatever brigade you want to call them who, when you talk to them, say, 'We don't have enough food to feed everyone.' I say, 'Really? We grow enough food in this country to feed 75 million people, and last time I looked that's about three times our population.'

The research work and the education work that happen out of Urrbrae campus are absolutely fantastic. I remember some of my teachers: Mr Burford, Mr Bell and Mr Cook. It was a long time ago, but I have a lot of good memories from Urrbrae.

I note that in this project 25 jobs will be created per year. It is a $10 million investment. Key features of the upgrade include the construction of a health and wellbeing building to include home economics, physical education, teaching space and an agricultural learning square, and construction of a new building to provide additional learning areas for year 7s—obviously with the year 7s going into secondary school—including a music space. As part of it, there is the extension and renovation of the gymnasium to remove the mezzanine level and provide additional seating to enable whole-of-school assemblies. Also, part of this is the demolition of ageing infrastructure.

It is great to see this level of investment in this school. It is a great school, and it has educated many students from across Hammond and from across the rest of the state to set them on their path in those fields of agriculture, science and environment. It is vital that we keep investment in this sector to promote all of these features around agriculture, science and the environment, and long may it be.

To all those Urrbrae students I wish them well in their end of year studies, especially those in the later years of schooling. Whether they are doing the general course in year 11 and 12 or the agricultural course, which is more focused on the agricultural side of things and farm management and that kind of thing, I wish them all the best in their studies. May Urrbrae have a long and exciting future. I commend the report from the Public Works Committee.

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:49): I am absolutely delighted that we have been able to bring this project forward. It is an essential and important project, not just for the many students who are presently attending the school and will see out their education at Urrbrae but also for many students who are looking forward to going to Urrbrae from our community and other communities in surrounding districts and, in some cases, right across the state.

It is an iconic high school, one that has contributed in very material and vital and important ways to the progress, welfare and improvement of our state and to our agricultural prosperity and success as a state. It is right to say that South Australia has depended on our agricultural success and progress, and there are many symbols in this place that emphasise that point.

Can I thank the member for Waite for his determined and effective advocacy in relation to this project and the member for Hammond for sharing information and background as to his scholarly pursuits and commitments before he joined us here. I think it is telling on occasion when members are prepared to share this information, and I always look very much forward to anecdotes in detail and explanations, I should say, from the member for Hammond as to some of his background. We were very much appreciative of his contribution, as we always are. It was of great interest to me and I know of great interest to members here present.

Can I thank, too, the minister. It is right for me to emphasise again the enormous project that he has been seeing through to completion right across his portfolio. This is but one important example of the fruits of that work which will, as I earlier mentioned, benefit many students and the state in the ways I have outlined.

Motion carried.

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