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Education | December 04, 2019

Education Minister drives through Warracknabeal but leaves chequebook at home

Labor Minister for Education, James Merlino MP has finally visited the Lowan electorate today, but disappointingly he is yet another Labor Minister to have left the chequebook at home.

“Rather than announce additional funding for the school nurse program to assess hundreds of Prep kids that have missed their school entrant health and learning screening this year, or announce that Horsham College will finally get the doctor in their school that Labor enthusiastically promised, all the Minister did was re-announce school maintenance funding.

“To add salt to the wound, even though the Minister drove through Warracknabeal on his way to Mildura, he didn’t even bother to stop and meet with families and students who are devastated by the Labor Minister’s decision to walk away from the Warracknabeal Education Precinct.

Labor walked away after getting only a third of the job done, leaving the school with unusable classrooms, empty science labs and fewer educational programs for students with special needs. 

In his media statement Minister Merlino was quoted as saying “We are upgrading schools across Victoria so families can know that no matter where they live, they can access a great local school.”

“In reality what we’ve experienced under the Andrews Labor Government is abandoned school building projects, cuts to school nurses and broken promises about doctors in schools - it’s simply not good enough,” Ms Kealy said.

“The Warracknabeal Education Precinct has been completely bungled by Labor who have now abandoned the project.

“The school community needs funds to finish the project, but rather than listen to Warracknabeal locals and inspect the schools when in town to understand how critical the project is, the embarrassed Minister instead chose to drive on by and shun the school community. It’s a disgrace”, she said. 

“I give full credit to the Warracknabeal community who has been tireless in running a huge publicity campaign “finish what you started”, but Labor’s continual failure to complete the Warracknabeal Education Precinct is all about Labor’s values and priorities – and country Victoria isn’t one of them.

“We must be able to give our local children access to the very best educational services and opportunities and I will not stop holding the Andrews Labor Government to account until the funding is provided to complete the Warracknabeal Education Precinct,” she said.