Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the few minutes available to me tonight, I would like to talk about one of the great Southern Hemisphere cities of Australia, and that is Frankston. It is a community that runs through my veins and I am deeply proud of not only all that it has achieved but its potential for the future. What is worrying, though, is that I see in local newspaper reports that at a time when it has never been more important for our community to collaborate on a clear, shared vision and a blueprint for the future of our city that the next big thing has come along and that next big thing happens to be a proposition from Swinburne University of Technology. It is not really a proposition, though; it is a thought that perhaps another university campus in Frankston would be advantageous to our community. I understand the appeal of such an idea. It is one in which a number of us have played a role in the past in trying to highlight Frankston as a learning city. We are blessed with Chisholm Institute of TAFE. There are 15,000 students who participate in that institution across a number of campuses, including a very substantial campus in Frankston. The Monash University Peninsula campus at Frankston has been nurtured and supported, particularly by the previous Howard government, with new educational programs that have attracted more students. This is quite a vibrant and energetic campus and presents a range of opportunities for our citizens.

But our region is significantly underrepresented in higher education participation. My thesis as to why that is the case has much to do with the education opportunities within reach and the need to take higher education opportunities out into the neighbourhoods and school communities where it might be less common than it is in other parts of Australia. But the idea that Swinburne is perhaps going fill that hole on its own concerns me in that we need to think through what that will do for our vision for our city in the first place. I believe Frankston needs to have a coherent strategic plan for its future so that ideas that pop up are not chased without great thought and consideration about how they might knit into and contribute to our ambitions for our community into the future.

At the heart of the concern is how the state Labor government seems to have identified a range of central activity districts: it has supported many but certainly not Frankston. Frankston has received only $16 million from the state Labor government under funding for Transit Cities and Melbourne@5Million program compared to $290 million that has gone to Dandenong and more than $80 million to Broadmeadows. This sort of indifference towards Frankston seems to have been carried forward by Labor in the most recent federal election. The concerns relate to not only the economic opportunities that are within reach and how a university can lift aspirations for students about their future but also the need to have those future opportunities located in the community which people are already a part of. Broadmeadows has about twice the number of jobs within half an hour of its city compared to Frankston. There are about three times as many jobs within half an hour of Ringwood. Dandenong is much the same. There are six times the number of jobs within half an hour of Box Hill and eight times the number in Footscray. We need to take a sober, considered and evidence based approach to formulating a blueprint for our city that all levels of government as well as our community can get behind and can understand what it means for future opportunities, the vitality of our community, its appeal as an investment destination and—picking up on the member for Aston’s comment—a destination with one of the few arterial ring roads around Melbourne where you need to pay a toll to use it.

I commend the work of Vice-Chancellor Ed Byrne and encourage him to follow through on his optimism for Monash’s role in our city. I also want to pay my respects and convey my congratulations to Pro Vice-Chancellor Phillip Steele and wish him a really bright retirement, because he has contributed much. I look forward to working with Pro Vice-Chancellor Leon Pitterman, who will be overseeing the Peninsula campus into the future.

But let us get together, let us get involved with the people who have skin in the game and who have been in and out nurturing this vision of a learning city, and let us welcome new players into that picture. But let us not throw our eggs all into a basket that we have not seen before, that has not been described and that has not bothered to engage with the broader community about what they are proposing in return for our unquestioning support for a proposition they may put forward.