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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-07-06 Daily Xml
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East Marden Primary School

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (15:15): My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister explain why it is that his office failed to respond to me about a very serious issue. With the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TARZIA: On 6 June, I wrote to Minister Boyer requesting that he address a number of ongoing health risks present at East Marden Primary as a result of asbestos and lead in a number of buildings throughout the school.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (15:16): I thank the member for Hartley for this question, and I have received the member's correspondence from the 6th and have taken the opportunity since that was sent to me to speak to the school. I have spoken now to the principal of the school, the assistant principal, the governing council chair, some other members of the governing council as well, and I have been out to the school and had a tour that was kindly provided to me by the people I just mentioned so that I could get a better understanding myself of the issues that the school faces.

If I could give perhaps a very short potted history of what has occurred here, back when the former Labor government was in power a grant of roughly $7.5 million was provided to East Marden Primary School to do some capital works.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for West Torrens is called to order. The minister has the call.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER: As I was saying, about $7.5 million was provided, I think it might have been towards the end of 2017 under the former Labor government, to do some much-needed capital works at the school.

I know the member for Hartley would be well aware, as is the former Minister for Education, that East Marden Primary School is a fantastic school. Its NAPLAN results are very impressive indeed. It has a very, what I would describe as active and passionate governing council, which is what of course we want every single school to have. But given the age of the buildings and when the school was actually first constructed, which I think might be in the vicinity of 54 years ago from memory, it is very out of date and in great need of further investment to upgrade the classrooms, provide more general learning areas, as well as deal with issues that have now been highlighted extensively in the media around asbestos and lead that have been found on the site.

So I have received now the correspondence from the member for Hartley, and of course I take that seriously, and I will respond to the member. But I thought the most prudent and sensible thing to do as the minister would be first to respond to the community and get out there and meet with them about how we deal not just with the immediate need about how the issue of the lead and asbestos that are there and have been found as part of the demolition works that are occurring to get the capital works project started and then, as soon as we can, finished. That is the most important and pressing matter for me as minister to deal with that.

Currently, because of dust containing lead that was found in the ceiling of one of the buildings, the students who were housed to do their classroom work in that building have been decanted to the gymnasium. I had a chance to go and say hello to those kids and offer them my apologies that they have to spend the last few weeks of term 2 in a gymnasium and not in a classroom. I explained to them that the agency, the department and I as the Minister for Education are doing absolutely everything we can to make sure they get out of the gymnasium and back into the remediated space in time for the start of term 3.

After having the tour on Monday, which I mentioned earlier, I asked the new chief executive of the department to go and take along the head of the infrastructure division of the department, Mr Bill Glasgow, as well. They have both been there today. With the exception of not replying to the member for Hartley's letter of 6 June, we have taken some pretty strong action to make sure these issues are dealt with seriously, to make sure the building in question is remediated, to make sure kids are back in the classroom for the start of term 3, and that these works that were funded back in 2017 actually get started and finished.

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