Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before the election, they promised that no school would be worse off, that they would provide exactly the same funding per school. Yet they have said to the states that there are no strings attached to the funding. They have said to the states that they can do what they want, which could lead to cuts. From a school in my electorate, I have already been informed of the first of the state cuts. This is a corker. At Kyneton Secondary College the Victorian state government is dismantling buildings. It is removing the demountables, and that will happen over the holidays, but get this—although the buildings are being taken away, the school is allowed to keep the walkway in between the buildings because that is a permanent structure. They are dismantling our schools already because this government has not been on the unity ticket, and that is the commitment Labor had with the Better Schools Plan.

Before the election the coalition promised public sector workers that they would not be made redundant, yet we have already seen widespread redundancies. Hundreds of workers are losing their jobs, with those wages being withdrawn from our community and services being made weaker. In the time remaining I want to mention a few other commitments made in my electorate before and during the campaign. We have to start with the Bendigo tennis centre—a fantastic project committed to by the previous government, with $5.2 million being allocated to upgrade the facility. At the time, the Liberals supported it. In the Bendigo Advertiser of 24 August we see the Liberal Party comment that they support the upgrade of the Bendigo tennis centre. Yet here we are, the Liberals are in government and the government have backflipped—they are not going to fund the tennis centre. Let us go to university funding. Prior to the election we saw in the Bendigo Advertiser comments from the Liberal Party that they were appalled by the cuts to the Bendigo La Trobe campus. Yet, when they have the chance to stop the cuts, they do not.

This leads me to question the commitments the Liberals made to my electorate during the election campaign. I will put those on the record and ask whether they will backflip on these cuts too. Let us start with the $300,000 boost for the Castlemaine respite facility. The then shadow minister for families, Kevin Andrews, said that he was committed to the project, that it was vital for the area and that his government would put $300,000 in. There was $500,000 for the Kyneton Community Park—the shadow minister for the environment made that commitment. Will that funding go ahead or will there be another backflip? What about the $180,000 for the Bendigo RSL? You might have worked out that they thought they could win this seat, but unfortunately for them they did not. (Time expired)

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