Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fowler on his motion. It raises national issues and it raises issues of local provenance in his own electorate. I similarly want to address both national and local issues in relation to my own electorate and this motion in relation to school retention. As the motion notes, the national rate of unemployment for persons aged 15 to 19 looking for full-time work was 24 per cent in January 2010. This is unacceptable: it is too high; it is a disappointment; it is a failure; and it is something that we have to address. Of course, it is not 24 per cent of the entire population; it is 24 per cent of those who are not in school. We need to recognise that the best thing we can do is firstly to encourage young students to remain at school to complete year 12 and then to give them the best opportunity beyond that. Failing that, we also need to ensure that they have options that are going to assist them into youth employment through a number of different forms of incentives.

I want to speak in particular about the plans for Somerville Secondary College and the plans for a technical stream attached to Somerville Secondary College. First and foremost, the reason why, along with Neale Burgess, the state member for Hastings, so many parents in the community fought so hard for a year 12 Somerville Secondary College stream was precisely to give local students the opportunity to continue on in a supportive environment. Originally there was going to be no school. The state government of the day, the then Bracks government, had ruled it out. But we won that battle to retain the land. Then we won the battle to get the school established as a middle school in conjunction with the nearby Mount Erin Secondary College. Then we won the third battle to have it established as an independent middle school. Late last year I was delighted that, in working with the school council, the school principal and the school community, we were able to convince the Brumby government to match the coalition’s proposal of a year 7 to year 12 independent stand-alone Somerville Secondary College. That has now come to pass. That year 12 stream is now in progress and Somerville Secondary College will be a full year 7 to 12 school. I am delighted with that outcome.

The next step—and this goes directly to the motion before the House today about school retention—is to ensure that there is a second stream of a technical trades college built as part of and attached to Somerville Secondary College. The state government in Victoria allocated $4 million and I am delighted that my close friend and colleague Neale Burgess was able to carry the argument and carry the day to convince the potential premier at the time, Ted Baillieu, and to carry it forward now so that Somerville Secondary College will be accompanied by a technical college component. That is a tremendous outcome for the students of the area.

The area around Somerville is home to some of Australia’s best employers of trade skills such as BlueScope, Inghams and Esso—all of which are large employers and provide huge opportunities for young people with trades training qualifications. To be able to add to the great work being done at Western Port Secondary College with Somerville Secondary College and a Somerville technical college component is a tremendous increase in opportunities for young people on the peninsula. So I commend that element of the motion by the member for Fowler and I particularly endorse the fact that we have won four battles in Somerville and we now have a standalone year 7 to 12 secondary college. The next phase will be the technical college component and that in turn will be followed at Point Nepean by the National Centre for Coasts And Climate. The Mornington Peninsula should be a centre for secondary and tertiary education and we will make it thus. (Time expired)

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