THE Premier Daniel Andrews needs to listen to regional Victoria on school funding, according to opposition education spokesman Nick Wakeling.
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Mr Wakeling said the Labor government must match the Coalition’s promise to spend more than $20 million on the region’s schools.
Ovens Valley MP Tim McCurdy also took up the issue, saying Mr Andrews, who grew up at Wangaratta, should “make sure he doesn’t forget his roots” and properly fund schools in his back yard.
The government is yet to make a single school funding pledge for the region — an issue the Education Minister James Merlino would not directly discuss this week.
The previous Coalition government’s promised involved $15 million for Benalla P-12 College — none of its four campuses have been properly upgraded in 30 years — $4.3 million to Wodonga Middle Years College, $2.1 million to Corryong College; and $410,000 to Appin Park Primary School.
Mr Wakeling and Mr McCurdy made their call after Euroa MP Stephanie Ryan and Northern Victoria MP Wendy Lovell last month raised concerns about the lack of North East funding in Parliament.
Mr Merlino called these promises a “last-ditch attempt” at re-election after “halving investment in school infrastructure”, and questioned why the Coalition hadn’t funded the projects earlier.
Mr Wakeling hit back, saying while the Coalition had to “work through a backlog” of schools needing funding left behind by the Bracks and Brumby governments, it had delivered several projects including the Belvoir Special School and Wodonga Senior Secondary School redevelopments, and funding for Wod-onga West Primary School.
“If Labor really thought schools in North East Victoria needed investment, then it would have invested,” he said.
“They had the chance to not only match our pledges but also to make their own commitments,” Mr Wakeling said.
“Instead they chose to do nothing.
“These projects shouldn’t fall off the radar. People expect them to be delivered.
“If we’d been re-elected these schools would be upgraded, but now they’re at the stage again where the handbrake has been put on.”
Mr McCurdy said he would push for funding for the Appin Park Primary school where a new staff room was needed.
“It’s old, it’s dilapidated and it just can’t accommodate the staff now there,” he said.
“In this day and age it’s pretty competitive to get good teachers.
“Appin Park has a good range of teachers but, in order to keep them, the school needs the facilities.
“I won’t say Labor doesn’t care about regional Victoria, but it’s obviously not a priority.”
A spokesman for Mr Merlino said the government had committed $530 million to upgrade and build new schools across state, “nearly half the amount the last Liberal government committed during its entire four year term”.
Details of how it was allocated were yet to be revealed.