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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-06-09 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

School Infrastructure Projects

Mr BOYER (Wright) (15:21): Another day and another leak from this hopelessly divided South Australian Liberal Party. In fact, things are so toxic now it would seem between the warring moderate and conservative factions of the Liberal Party that not only are they leaking negative stories against each other but they are also—

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr BOYER: Sorry, Mad Dog has just had a little—

An honourable member: He's off the leash.

Mr BOYER: He's off the leash. Not only are they leaking stories that they know to be negative against each other, they are also leaking stories that no doubt they thought might even be positive as well, and that is what we have seen today. We have seen a very high-level leak that shows the government is poised to spend more than $80 million on a new high school on the Rostrevor campus of Norwood Morialta High School. Don't get me wrong. On this side of the house, we love to see an investment in public education.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr BOYER: Exactly right—more than $1 billion—and what we hear constantly from this side when talking about what they have done in the education space which, when you take away what we did in our last term of government, is very little. What we hear are these stories of the $1.3 billion they are spending on public infrastructure in our schools. Most of that, the vast majority of that, came during the last Labor government's term in power.

There are real questions that must be answered about the leak aside from that and no doubt it is very clear by the nature of this leak that whoever did it did it with the idea of causing absolute maximum damage and embarrassment to the minister and the Premier. The first question that must be asked is: why has the Marshall Liberal government chosen Rostrevor as the location for the new high school?

Less than four weeks ago, right here in parliament, we had executives from the Department for Education appear before the Budget and Finance Committee. In that committee hearing, the Chair asked the chief executive of the department if he stood by his comments in the Sunday Mail from March this year about the need for a new school in the inner north. This was his answer:

I certainly do hold the view, Chair, that there is a lot of pressure on our shared CBD zone. What we are experiencing is a lot of urban infill and so on in that Prospect and surrounds area.

He then went on to say:

…I do believe that not having a school between Adelaide Botanic and Gepps Cross is something that we need to provide best advice and a business case to government on.

So where is the business case? Where is this work? We now have the chief executive of the education department saying in the Budget and Finance Committee on two separate occasions and saying in the Sunday Mail that the clear priority area for a new school is the inner north, but nothing has been done.

What we saw in question time today, interestingly, was a whole lot of false bravado from the Premier and the minister about the Capital Intentions Statement 2021. Contrary to what the minister might have you believe, I had seen that document, but I thought I would go back and just refresh my memory about how explicitly and how comprehensively it actually dealt with this proposal for a school, and now let me tell you: 114 words. That is what the Capital Intentions Statement 2021 says about a new school—one paragraph of detail about it, and that is it. So when this Premier and this minister try to get up in this place and say that they have done a whole body of work behind this school, it is not true.

You would think that the minister would have learned from the uproar that followed his government's decision some years ago now to remove some of the existing suburbs from the shared zone. Suburbs such as Black Forest, Glandore, Kurralta Park, Clarence Park, Torrensville, Mile End, Richmond and Hilton were all removed or in part removed from the shared zone. You might think, following the uproar that we heard from parents of students and prospective students to that zone, that he might have learnt his lesson.

You would think perhaps that the minister might actually take the advice of his chief executive, that very clear advice provided just weeks ago in Budget and Finance, that the Prospect area, the inner north, must be the priority. Instead, the minister chooses to build the new school in his very own seat. When we ask questions in this place about what the government is doing to alleviate the enrolment pressures in the shared zone, he and the Premier list a whole heap of Labor projects—Adelaide Botanic High, the expansion of Adelaide High, all Labor projects.

I can tell you that this is just another example of this government, with no vision, no ideas and no agenda, just getting by on the fumes of the previous Labor government. I expect that same lack of vision to be there when they name this new school, and I think some of the examples might be: Prospect High School, Rostrevor campus or perhaps even, given the events of this week, it will be the Real Sir Robert Menzies High.

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