Land payments revealed, sizes ‘scaled back’: $18.4m for school sites

By Cherie Donnellan
SURF COAST children will be the beneficiaries of State Government’s $18.4 million deal to buy new school sites at Torquay, according to South Barwon MP Andrew Katos.
Mr Katos revealed this week that State Government had spent $11 million buying land for a “state-of-the-art” Surf Coast Secondary College.
The Government spent a further $7.4 million on land for a proposed primary school in north Torquay, he said.
“This is a great outcome for Surf Coast families and will future-proof Torquay’s educational needs,” Mr Katos said.
He described the school sites as “ideal locations”.
Both would “cater for families moving into new developments in the area”, he said.
Mr Katos believed the deal was a “competitive price” and “far less than the price of the original (college) site”, proposed under the previous Labor government.
“I recall the Member for Corangamite (Darren) Cheeseman along with the shadow minister at the time (Rob) Hulls calling on the Coalition to pay an excessive sum of money, in excess of $20 million, for just the secondary school site.”
Mr Cheeseman hit back, saying the Government had cut back on the scale of the land purchase.
“What they’ve managed to do is buy less land than what they would normally secure for a school, which has resulted in the savings”.
Mr Cheeseman welcomed the funding but said it was “delivered a few years late”.
Victorian shadow education minister James Merlino accused State Government of a “failure” on providing new schools for Torquay.
“Andrew Katos, David Koch, Martin Dixon and Ted Baillieu have completely failed to deliver on what they promised in 2010 to Torquay families,” Mr Merlino said.
“Even now, the high school is so far behind schedule and significantly smaller than promised by the Baillieu Government. They failed to deliver on their promise to have the school open by 2012 and now it’s blown out again.”