Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Friday, 22 October, I had the great honour of officially opening the new multipurpose hall at Blackburn Primary School in my electorate of Deakin. Sue Henderson, the school principal; Peter Chaffey, the school council president; Rod Williamson, the Whitehorse regional network leader; and Tony Robinson, the state Labor member for Mitcham, were all in attendance. Each of those people has done so much to ensure that this project was successful and that it delivered the infrastructure that the school actually needed. Through many meetings and discussions, along with to-and-fro arguments, the project was put together and was accepted into round 1 of the Victorian government’s delivery of the federal Labor government’s Primary Schools for the 21st Century. Also attending the opening were more than 400 students and another 200 or so parents and staff. The school captains, Breanna Beck and Jack Roughsedge, were on hand to welcome me and all the other guests at the school gate.

Blackburn Primary School is a fantastic local school that has a proud history of excellence in education but especially music. They have a very accomplished school band that played at the opening ceremony, and I am sure that many of the students there will go on to actually make that their career. I have visited Blackburn primary on many occasions and can well remember being crammed into the old assembly room where there literally was not enough room for all the students to meet at once for an assembly, let alone for the parents, many of whom used to stand outside and put their heads in through a window. Through Building the Education Revolution, Blackburn Primary School received a $3 million grant for a building, and that was a great thing. They have now been able to build a multipurpose hall that their school band can fit into and play in. They now can play school sports on rainy days in the hall, something they could not do before because they simply did not have the facility.

On this particular project, from start to finish, in one way or another more than 110 people were employed. That is one of the great things about a P21 project, part of Building the Education Revolution: it provided employment when it was needed. It has also provided infrastructure that the school has been after for years; now it finally has it.

Of course, we must remember that this did not just happen by chance. It was part of the economic stimulus program, and that program only made it through the parliament by one vote in the other place. It almost did not become a reality. The school almost did not get its new hall. The students almost missed out on that benefit. So it was a very proud moment for me to open this facility for what is a great local school—and of course it is not just the school that uses it; it is also local community groups. They already have a basketball club that has moved in and uses the facility after hours and they also have community groups use the facility when it is not being used by the school. It is a great result for our community, and I commend the program to the House.