Wednesday, 19 June 2024

Matters of public importance

Privatisation policy

The SPEAKER (16:01): I have received a statement from the member for Prahran proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house calls on the Victorian Labor government to end its privatisation agenda.

Sam HIBBINS (Prahran) (16:01): The Greens have proposed this MPI, matter of public importance, debate calling on the Victorian Labor government to end its privatisation agenda because the Victorian Labor government has got a problem. It has got a problem with privatisation, and it is time, I reckon, for an intervention. The Greens believe that public services should be delivered in the public interest. We believe that public assets should be used for the public good. But the Victorian Labor government is embarking on a massive privatisation agenda, arguably bigger than what the Liberals did. The government are privatising parts of government that one would not have thought possible in the past, and now they have reviewed every single Victorian government asset for privatisation.

Let us go through the evidence of what we have seen under this government: the privatisation of public housing estates, the Port of Melbourne, the land titles office, VicRoads licensing and registration functions and public land sales. They have continued on with the privatisation of the train and tram network, continued on with the privatisation of toll roads, continued on with the privatisation of prisons ‍– private prisons – and continued on with and expanded the privatisation of infrastructure. We are now seeing construction and basic maintenance of roads, schools and hospitals all under public–private partnerships. We see the privatisation of policy advice – around $100 million going to the big four consultancies for policy advice; they are basically a privatised government department. Looking towards the future, we have now heard that they are looking to privatise Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria. That is extraordinary. And now we find out the fact that they have got an investment bank to review all of the state’s public assets for privatisation. That means that every single government department, every single government agency and every function of government that requires a transaction can be outsourced to a private company. They are on a hit list to the point where we could just have a shell of a government.

This is a neoliberal dream, no doubt, but this will be a nightmare, an absolute nightmare, for Victorians, who will have had their government hand over control of critical functions of governments for decades to come. It is Victorians who are going to pay higher prices for lower quality services, and it is going to be workers who will have less jobs, get paid less and have worse conditions. This policy of this government to underfund public services and to run down public assets and then sell them off to the highest bidder is neoliberal economics at its worst, and it is all being undertaken by the Andrews–Allan Labor government here in Victoria.

The Greens want to see an end to privatisation here in Victoria and put an end to a state completely controlled by the interests of corporate profits and not being run for the public good. The privatisations that Labor are undertaking now will have consequences for decades and for generations to come. This government is handing over control of public housing land, essential services, tolling rights on major roads and public assets for a decade. They are creating massive private monopolies for investment funds and for private asset managers to profiteer from. How much more do we have to hear of the damaging consequences of privatisation before this government stops handing over government assets and services to private corporations trying to make a profit off essential services? These are supposed to be delivered for everyone in our society.

Labor are creating what has been described by economists as a rentier capitalist state where the government, and ultimately the Victorian public, are bankrolling private companies to extract profits from public assets and public services, instead of being focused on delivering public services for the public good and making sure that everyone gets access to the services they need. Why is this government doing it? What are the so-called benefits, the reasons why they might be privatising nearly our entire state? Is it for the benefit of competition – putting things out to the private market to lower the cost or deliver services better or more efficiently? Well, no, because the government are handing over public monopolies where there is no competition. They are creating a private monopoly where there is still no competition. There is no competition on the port and no competition on VicRoads. There will not be any competition for births, deaths and marriages or on the train or tram network. There is no motivation to improve services, no motivation to lower prices and no motivation to increase efficiency. The only incentive for these private companies is to extract profit. We have seen what the supermarkets are doing with a duopoly – what they are doing with prices. Now the government is literally creating a private monopoly.

The Essential Services Commission found that the privatised Port of Melbourne overstated the revenue it needed to operate by as much as $650 million and warned consumers could be forced to pay prices that are higher than they should be for imported products because the private operator has run the port in a way that is not consistent with prudent or efficient service provision.

It is extraordinary that just recently we had the Minister for Transport Infrastructure out there, without a hint of irony, complaining loudly that a private operator of Melbourne Airport was blocking airport rail. You would have thought that that might have just provided a hint – a bit of a hint – as to why handing over massively important strategic assets and services to private companies for decades would be problematic. But this government is going full steam ahead, potentially privatising every single government agency in Victoria. Is this because of financial management – getting the billions of dollars up-front? Again, no, it means that the government’s financial position is worse off, because once the asset goes into private hands, the revenue and the dividend no longer go to government. On top of that, we have got the increasingly large subsidies the government and the public pay to private operators. This is what makes these sorts of privatisations bad financial deals all round.

Is it about the private company taking the risk while the community gets the benefit? Well, in fact, the reverse is true. Whether it is an essential service or a major infrastructure project, it is always the government that bears the risk. It is always the public that is on the hook if things go wrong, and private companies know this. Just look at what happened with the public–private partnership under the West Gate Tunnel or the North East Link, where the government is taking over the tolling before it sells it off because the private companies will not bear the risk that the traffic modelling just does not stack up. We are told that under PPPs risk will now be shared. Well, if that is the case, why on earth are we continuing on with these generous availability payments that are far more expensive than taking on extra debt? Look what happened when the public transport operator walked away. The same thing would happen if a private company walked away from VicRoads or births, deaths and marriages or whatever agency the government wants to privatise. It is always the public that takes the risk while the profits are privatised.

Is it because this government believes that private companies run essential services better than government? We have heard this from Labor before. They have said that the state is a terrible housing manager, to justify their public housing policies. We heard the Premier say it was common sense to have private services involved in running government across a wide range of government areas. What an extraordinary right-wing ideological position to take. If they genuinely believe that, I tell you what, Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman I am sure could not agree more. I was quite bemused actually when I read a recent article that mentioned that privatisation was once an article of faith for Labor, as if this was some sort of recent thing. Well, I can tell you that was a very, very long time ago. That ship sailed the best part of 30 years ago. Labor is now well and truly a pro-privatisation party. The debate now between the Labor and Liberal parties is not whether or not to privatise but rather how to privatise public services: should the asset be sold, or should it be leased for decades? These are two wings on the same plane when it comes to privatisation, and it is only the Greens who are standing up against privatisation. It is only the Greens who are on the side of public services being run in the public interest for the public good.

Labor understands the politics of privatisation. They know it is unpopular. I have heard them rail against energy privatisation. They had the former Premier out there with the SEC logo on his hat and on his clothes. Well, that promise was not going to be the old SEC, which controlled and owned all the energy generation it had. Suddenly it shrank to a 51 per cent share in them. Then they realised, no, the private investors were not going to cop that. Now they have shrunk it to around a third of the project that they are investing in. We have heard that they also claim that just because they are not selling assets, they are only leasing them, it is not privatisation. It is a joint venture or it is asset recycling or it is the ground lease model – all these new terms they have come up with for what is part and parcel privatisation. Private companies running, operating, leasing and profiting from public assets and public services is privatisation every step of the way, and from economists to workers, everyone knows it. If you honestly think that is not the case, well, you are drinking the Kool Aid, and if you stand up in this place and actually say that it is not privatisation, you are mixing the Kool Aid as well.

Just to give you an idea of where Labor’s ideology now sits when it comes to privatisation, I will take you back to 30 years ago. Yes, they had already started privatisations at the state and federal level, but when Kennett got in, there was a flicker of hope. There was a rush by the Kennett government to rush through the State Owned Enterprises Act 1992, which would give the government unfettered powers to privatise public assets. Labor railed against the bill. The shadow minister called it a disgraceful example of Parliament being asked to surrender its position as the custodian of state-owned assets. They went on in that debate to list a number of bodies that potentially could be privatised under the bill, one of which was the Port of Melbourne. Does that sound familiar? Another one of them was the roads corporation, aka VicRoads. Now some decades later, not only did this government privatise the Port of Melbourne, but they threatened to use the provisions in that very act to bypass Parliament if Parliament did not vote in favour of privatising the port. Then of course later on they did privatise VicRoads, the roads corporation, something that they warned about in 1992, but it came to fruition under a Victorian Labor government. Labor has well and truly adopted and is implementing the neoliberal economic policies of the Liberal Party. It is well and truly a neoliberal pro-privatisation party.

Just look at their treatment of public housing estates. This is a prime example: abandoning the principle that it is the government’s job to provide housing for people, underfunding existing public housing estates from basic maintenance upgrades to security, claiming then that the only way to actually fix the problem is to privatise estates, and then to cap it all off an edict from the top, from the Premier, that all estates had to be demolished – a gift to the property industry. There are clear alternatives to this. We could be retaining, reinvesting in and renewing the estates without the need to displace communities – not some sort of convoluted privatisation deal but actual direct investment in public housing.

This extraordinary far-reaching right-wing privatisation agenda will impact the lives of Victorians for generations to come. Every time someone in a public housing estate pays the rent; every time you need a birth certificate, death certificate or marriage certificate; every time you catch a train or tram; every time you drive on a toll road; every time you pay your car rego; every time you need to register a property or search for property information; and every time there is a need for maintenance at a school, a hospital or on a road a private company is extracting profit. When the government needs policy advice, when someone enters the justice system or when a ship comes into port, a private company is extracting a profit. When there is excess public land, it is being sold on the private market, not being used for public housing. The government even tried to sell off parts of Federation Square. Nothing is sacred under this government.

There is an alternative: a government with strong public services it invests in, not privatises, that keeps its natural monopolies in public hands, runs them for the public good and invests in them to make them better. The Greens are the only party standing on the side of people, the only party to stand against privatisation – corporate profiteering from people’s daily lives and essential government services – and stand for public services being run in the public interest and for the public good. It is time to turn the page on the error of neoliberalism and end Labor and the Liberals’ privatisation agenda once and for all.

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (16:16): I thank the member for Prahran for what could almost be considered a bit of a Dorothy Dixer. Far from delivering some perceived blow against the Allan Labor government, this question actually affords us multiple opportunities to extol the many – indeed the countless – ways in which our government supports Victorians through public spending.

This side of the house completely rejects the assertions of the Greens political party, and I do wonder if sometimes there may be some confusion as well as to what is public and what is private, noting that the member for Richmond was befuddled by the status of the iconic Puffing Billy railway, which lies completely within my electorate of Monbulk. I do note that the member for Richmond on social media complained that the Victorian government actually covers the insurance costs for Puffing Billy – may I say the beloved Puffing Billy – but that we were not doing the same for privately owned live music venues. The member had actually stated that it was ‘a private coal-fired tourist train’. Well, I know that the member for Richmond did have many, many train enthusiasts let her know quite strongly that it is a statutory authority that the state of Victoria proudly supports. It is incredibly loved. That is the reason why the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority actually covers Puffing Billy, because it is a statutory authority that runs it. I just thought I would clarify that in terms of private and public and let the good people of Monbulk know that I have corrected the record here for them.

It is a prime example of the Greens political party not doing their homework properly sometimes – shooting from the hip and using social media platforms to make inaccurate claims. Having listened to today’s contribution from the member for Prahran, I would also like to make it very clear that when it comes to V/Line it was actually during the time of the Andrews Labor government that we brought V/Line back into public hands. I know that our regional colleagues in this room on many sides of the chamber would be quite pleased to hear that – and the fact too that we have even dropped the cost of train travel to make it equitable for people living in the regions to access V/Line without having to fork out countless amounts of money. It used to be incredibly expensive to travel along V/Line, and now you pay the same on those trains as you do on Metro Trains. We can thank our government for doing that, and I am really proud to be able to stand up here and say that we have done it.

There is a holier-than-thou attitude that comes from those sitting in the Greens corner of the chamber, and you know what, from a political party that famously set back our country’s climate targets by 15 ‍years by failing to support federal Labor’s carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2009. What an abject failure by a party that consistently lets perfect get in the way of good and prides its ideology as reigning supreme above practical and pragmatic policies which actually work in the interests of people. It was the one time that they could truly have had a positive tangible impact on the country, and it was squandered – absolutely squandered.

There is a lot for me to say here, and I will go on. I do actually think if we are going to talk about privatisation, dare I say it, those concerns are probably best aimed at the opposition, the Liberal–Nationals, when it comes to privatisation. We will revisit Kennett and the time of Kennett, because the privatisation was widespread and profound. We do have to go back there, because not much happened between 2010 and 2014. That was a wasteland of decisions. Not much happened in that time, so we have got to go back a bit in the time machine. But let us have a look at what happened during those times.

Under Jeff Kennett’s leadership the then state Liberal government between 1992 and 1999 privatised a record number of services, including our public transport network and electricity, gas and water distribution. The Kennett government also privatised a number of essential human services, like prisons, hospitals and the ambulance service. When we look at the Latrobe, Austin and Mildura hospitals, the Kennett government, as it stated back then, planned to privatise 3000 public beds throughout the state and had tendered off 485 beds before it lost power. Thank heavens they did lose power; all those beds would have been gone.

Do you know what we have done in this term of government? We bought two private hospitals, one of which is connected to Eastern Health, and that is Bellbird in Blackburn. That is delivering surgery for people on waiting lists, and those waiting lists are falling. They are falling because we have invested. We bought those hospitals, making sure that we are doing something positive. We are actually undoing some of the terrible work which had been done by previous governments. I am really proud to speak about that here. I think some facts being introduced into the chamber is always a very helpful thing.

If we look at Latrobe Regional Hospital and Mildura base hospital, the Latrobe privatisation was one of the clearest examples of the failure of Kennett’s privatisation policies. Australian Hospital Care rapidly turned its $1.2 million operating surplus into a $1.6 million deficit. What an abject failure that was, which in turn resulted in cuts to services and staffing. So here we are buying back some private hospitals to make sure that we can deal with surgery. We have got those opposite claiming that we are just the worst party in the world, pretty much, and that they are the only party that puts people first – talk about hyperbolic. It is a bit disappointing to hear, to be quite honest.

If we go on, we can have a look too at electricity, gas and water under Kennett’s privatisation. We have spoken in here many times about the SEC and why it is so well received amongst the public that we are bringing it back. It will not be the same iteration it was, because that has gone. We have to innovate, and we have to see a new future for it, and that is exactly what we are doing in the renewable space, which I also note we do not get credit for from those opposite either, sitting in the Greens corner of the room. There is no credit given where it is due. It is really, really hard to extract positive things. It always comes couched in terms where there is a negative barb that accompanies it. If we look at what happened during the Kennett era, the SEC generated and sold power to consumers from 1926 to 1998 – that was 72 proud years – and in every single year it reduced the real price of power to customers. Since privatisation, however, electricity prices to the consumer have gone up 50 per cent; this is taken from an article in ‘Economic affairs’. We lost 8000 jobs overnight when that happened. We do not want to see that, and we are not going to see that. That is not what we are doing here. Let me make that incredibly clear.

When we look at public transport and what happened under the Kennett government, even the IPA – their friends in the Institute of Public Affairs – in their 2007 report Victoria’s Public Transport: Assessing the Results of Privatisation found that:

For taxpayers it has not delivered the expected gains, instead producing a break-even outcome.

So even they had to begrudgingly admit that it was not the raging success that the Kennett government hoped it would be.

An analysis by the Age using government figures revealed that taxpayers handed over more than $7.5 billion – this is in 2010 dollars – in quarterly payments to commercial train and tram operators after Kennett’s government privatised the system in 1999. That is extraordinary. They had forecast that it would be $169 million, and it ended up being $7.5 billion.

We saw savage cuts during the Kennett era. It destroyed our health, education and public transport systems in Victoria, it cut thousands of jobs and it ruined the state. It is a bit galling to stand here and be lectured by the Greens party about privatisation when really we have got a long and proud list of where we have been investing in areas where state government has never had to go into.

Look at our priority primary care centres. That is GP land. That is federal government territory. We stepped in, and they have actually been a great success. They are taking pressure off emergency departments, and that is helping tangibly. State government never had to worry about GPs, but because bulk-billing is so hard to come by after quite a long time of federal coalition governments basically neglecting Medicare and hoping it would reduce itself to nothing and eventually just fall apart, we stepped in because we saw the need for Victorians. Even though, really, we could have said, ‘Federal government issue – not our problem,’ and wiped our hands of it, we did not. We took it on. We opened these PPCCs. They have been a wonderful success. I know because I have been speaking with our local health provider, who attested that they are really helpful. So I do encourage people to use them. If you do not need lights and sirens, go to a priority primary care centre if you have one by you, and hopefully you do, because they make a real difference. I took my daughter there when she broke her arm. They were fabulous. We did not wait 4 hours, 6 hours, in emergency, to be triaged; we went straight in. Her arm was secured. First thing in the morning we went off for the X-ray – we had a script for that – and she was sorted. It was wonderful, and we did not have to sit there for hours and hours at midnight.

Lauren Kathage interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: An absolutely wonderful outcome, member for Yan Yean, thank you. And I know that other members here have also had firsthand experience of how good they are. So that is just one example of many where we have stepped in.

We are providing free dental health checks for kids at school. Again, this is an area that the state government is not required to go into and has not traditionally been in, but we are doing it. We are providing free glasses for children as well. We are providing free TAFE. We are providing free kinder for three- to four-year-olds. Free kinder is incredible. What a wonderful start to life for kids.

I can tell you now that I was at three kinders the other week, which may probably explain why I have a cold, but it was a delight to go and visit them anyway. I was at three kinders, and I spoke with one of the parents there, who said to me, ‘We’ve just had three new enrolments in the middle of the year.’ And I said, ‘Oh, is that usual?’ And she said no, they had not realised that free kinder was available. They could not have afforded it otherwise. As soon as they found out that their children could attend at no cost to themselves, they enrolled them. These are three children of many who would have otherwise not been experiencing critical and crucial early childhood education, which prepares them best for primary school. There is nothing like kinder kids who walk in on their first day of prep – or foundation as some call it, but I am a bit old school – and have some confidence because they know what it feels like to be in that kind of area. Their kinder has done great work connecting them with their school, and off they go. That has been this government’s investment, again ensuring that Victorians get tangible, real results that matter for them. It is about practical solutions to support people.

I just want to really clarify too, and I am going to go to this, the difference between privatisation and joint ventures. I would like to put it here, so hopefully the member Prahran will be listening with an open mind. A joint venture with a private enterprise has been proved to improve service delivery for local communities. It is not the same as privatisation. Under a joint venture model we retain ownership. We, the state, retain ownership of the asset and control over regulatory and policy functions. We retain ownership and control over the regulation of data and the pricing of fees for customers. In true privatisation that has gone. They are pretty much doing whatever they want; they are running with it on their own. But, for example, when the government reached the deal to modernise VicRoads in 2021, we retained ownership of all registration and licence data, and as we continue to own VicRoads we also ensure we retain control over regulation and policy, as I say, data and privacy provisions and pricing of essential fees, with the information remaining secure and stored here in Australia. It is not going offshore; it is not going somewhere where it is not under our jurisdiction. That is really critical. Under a joint venture arrangement the assets are returned at the end of the service concession arrangement, which maintains our long-term ownership of that asset. They come back to us once it is over. It is a 40-year concession agreement, and it will come back to the state at the end of that. Do you know, it has actually been quite successful.

I note the member for Prahran claimed that prices go up and services go down, but with joint ventures we can actually attest that we have now got free licensing for P-platers and L-platers. They can sit their tests for free. My daughter is so excited; that is her in two months. And my son got his Ps for free as well, so they are both lucky recipients of this. I promise it was not organised that way. Probationary drivers are saving up to $133.30 in probationary licence and online hazard perception testing fees, so prices are coming down there.

I have to say I know the clock is running down and I do not want to be caught in the middle of a sentence, but I do want to reiterate one more time that this is not privatisation. Joint ventures are not privatisation; they are vastly different. There is nuance in these things. I know the Greens like to see things in black and white, but there is nuance in a lot of this and I would recommend that they turn their attention to that.

Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (16:31): Well, well – a bit of left-on-left political violence. I was not sure where to go. I really was not. I like the member for Prahran; I think he is not a bad bloke. I like the member for Monbulk; I think she is very good. So I cannot come up and start yelling at anyone. I thought: well, what am I going to say? What am I going to say, except that this motion kind of reminds me of the 2003 movie Good Bye, Lenin!, where they are living in East Germany in the DDR –

A member interjected.

Matthew GUY: It is very worthwhile; you listen. The mother unfortunately has a stroke and goes into a coma. She is a committed socialist. By the time she wakes up the wall is down, but they have to kind of convince her that the DDR still exists by buying her the same pickles and replacing the curtains and explaining the Coca-Cola adverts are not real. And sometimes I wonder if that is where the Greens are, if they are caught in the movie Good Bye, Lenin!, if they are caught pre-1989. And I can say that. My mum’s family is from the Soviet Union. They are not ‘maybe’; they are from the Soviet Union. We used to send food parcels back to the Soviet Union. We used to write letters to the Soviet Union.

Danny O’Brien interjected.

Matthew GUY: The member for Gippsland South is quite right. I bizarrely can sing the Greens the Soviet national anthem, if they would like, гимн Союза Советских:

Союз нерушимый …

I can sing it for you if you like. You can learn it. And I can tell you, socialism does not work. There is a reason you can involve the private sector: because in many aspects of government they do it better, cheaper and more efficiently. On this side of the house – and it is apt I am standing next to the member for Kew, who is pregnant, and we are looking forward to her and her husband’s imminent new family arrival – we are not half pregnant when it comes to privatisation. Labor might be. The Greens are not. But we support it. We think that it is a useful act for government to consider the involvement of the private sector, and we do not demonise it.

But I do wonder, and I say it again: where are the Greens nowadays to bring this motion into this Parliament? I watched on Netflix the other night the series The Giants. Actually it was not a series, it was an episode. It was very good, and it was about Bob Brown and the environmental movement. I did think to myself: how could such a dedicated and focused environmental movement morph into these – and I am sorry to use this term – rabid socialists? They are replete, they are just full of artists and councillors and all these types that have never been outside governance. And I thought to myself: how can this be? They go to branch meetings and they talk about privatisation. They usually have an image of a politician, a Liberal one, usually with big eyes, possibly me, saying ‘Privatisation’ – you know, the evils and how awful it is. And they probably put their kids to bed and go and get an Ovaltine and shut the windows and worry about it.

But it is not privatisation; it is involving the private sector in the way of doing government. It is not a bad thing to do. I hear the member for Essendon come in here, and he talks about greedy companies and greedy power companies. I think to myself: this is the guy that invests in these companies; doesn’t he have shares in these companies? Ironically, I think one is CommBank, which the Labor government sold off. That is quite fascinating.

We believe that the involvement of the private sector in operations of government can be a very good thing. Rail freight, for example, in my portfolio – are the Greens or even those in Labor seriously suggesting that rail freight, the movement of freight across our country, could possibly be done by a government department better than by Qube, than by SCT, than by Linfox? I mean, come on. What a ridiculous concept. Of course it cannot, and that is why we support their involvement in rail freight.

On one hand, you cannot boast about saying, ‘Oh, well, we didn’t sell off V/Line,’ but you sold off the trains. Joan Kirner sold off the actual trains. We leased them back from a Japanese consortium in the late 1980s. That was part of the apparently socialist Kirner government. You cannot be, dare I use the term again, half pregnant on this. You either do it or you do not; you either are or you are not. We think the involvement of private firms and the private sector in the delivery of a service when it is indeed regulated is a good thing, and we encourage it. It is not for every part of government, but we believe on a case-by-case basis on this side of the house that it should be considered.

If all these things that members and the former Premier and others come in and say are so awful are terrible, well, you can wind them back. Not you personally, Speaker – the government can. Maybe the party or the government that before your term as impartial Speaker you were part of could have. But you can do all these things from government. We constantly hear this: ‘Oh, we never waste a minute.’ Well, if you do not waste a minute, why don’t you go and wind it back? You can. You can pass a bill. If you come and demonise it, well, come and wind it back. We do not think you should wind it back, because we think a lot of those changes have been very good for Victoria – exceptionally good. I would argue the privatisation of Qantas has been very good. I would argue so has the Commonwealth Bank been very good. They were done by Labor governments. The ultimate was the privatisation of Australia’s currency, the floating of the dollar in the early 1980s – that was the ultimate privatisation. I think it was a great idea. I think Paul Keating did a tremendous thing for the economy. It should have been done earlier by the Fraser government, but it was done in I think 1983, and it was done for the right reasons. It has been very good for Australia and very good for our export industries. Are we honestly saying we want to go back to a regulated economy which controls the means of production? I cannot believe I am saying this in 2024. I feel like I am back in student politics in university talking about controlling the means of production, talking about government delivering housing.

A member interjected.

Matthew GUY: You reckon the government is going to build 80,000 houses, mate? I have got a newsflash for you. Go to Eastern Europe. Have a look at the variety of houses beyond the nice, lovely UNESCO-listed old cities, and that is what you get when you ask governments to deliver mass housing. There is a reason that a lot of Western European cities are UNESCO-listed and Kharkiv is not. I am sorry, my mum is from there, but it is not a very attractive city. They are concrete blocks. They live in these apartments because they were delivered en masse by a government, a socialist one, that used to buy means of production as cheap as they could. But when you open up to the private sector and you say, ‘These are the targets; we’ll lower tax, we’ll provide incentives,’ then you actually get a better product and a better outcome and it looks better. And the state benefits – the state being the people that actually benefit from it. In fact when you put more competitors into a private market, like we did when we were last in government, in the development sector, you stabilise price, because then they compete against each other. You cannot do that when the government regulates, pays the lowest – if they pay at all – and actually you get a lower quality of product for the consumer. I mean, it is economics 101. Here we are back in the chamber, but this is it. This is where we have got to in 2024 with the left in Australian politics, who are obsessed with wars of the past.

I find it stunning again for the current government to talk about greedy corporates and privatisation, yet the single biggest privatisation in Victorian history was the sale of the Port of Melbourne. That was not by the Brumby government or the Bracks government, it was not even by Kennett – it was not even Kennett. The single biggest privatisation was by the socialist Andrews government. I cannot believe it. And now apparently privatisation is something that is, you know, maybe this, maybe that; maybe it is good, maybe it is bad. Well, we would say it can be very useful when properly regulated and done well and can provide great benefit for the people of Victoria. Nothing is perfect – of course it is not – but if you regulate it well it can be much better than what the government can deliver, particularly in housing, particularly in rail transport – that is, freight transport – particularly in mining and particularly in the delivery of some roads. I mean, the state does not have the money to pay for some of these projects. If you empower the private sector, they can.

In short, this side of the house does not have a problem with the concept of privatisation done well and done in a regulated environment. We believe, unlike the government, that you do not have a foot either side of the barbed wire fence – you actually embrace something and you do it properly. And we certainly do not believe the Greens’ argument on socialism – and I will teach them the Soviet national anthem.

Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (16:41): It is always an absolute pleasure to follow the member for Bulleen in any contribution, and it is an absolute pleasure to be able to do so this evening. There is no doubt he is still the best that they have got; there is no doubt about that. We have gone on a bit of a journey with the member for Bulleen. We now know his Netflix preferences – thanks for that; we know what we are going to see pop up when we go into his Netflix account. What we did not need education on from the member for Bulleen was that the Liberal Party and the member for Bulleen absolutely – lock, stock and barrel – support privatisation. They support privatisation of our commercial rail and they support privatisation of our energy systems, and we have seen that time and time and time again from Liberal governments in this state.

Members interjecting.

Dylan WIGHT: I will get to that. What I would also like to address today and to firmly reject are the assertions made by the political sideshow over in the corner, the Greens political party here in Victoria, that the Labor government is pursuing a privatisation agenda. I think these claims are not only unfounded but also in stark contrast to the actions and commitments of this government. We will go through that a little bit throughout this debate and clarify our stance. We will talk about public transport and we will talk about energy policy, and if we have got time we will talk about worker protections within those industries as well, which is incredibly important.

The Greens sort of preen themselves, I guess, on what they think are their economic and environmental credentials. It will come as no surprise to anyone, certainly on this side of the house, that there is only one party in this state that has made significant investment in social and affordable homes for those that most need them, and that is the Victorian Labor Party – and that is the Victorian Labor Party in the most recent of times through the Allan Labor government. There is only one party in this state that has made significant investment as well as changed policy settings within the environmental and renewable sector to drive investment in renewables in this state, and not just drive investment in renewables but also own a piece of each of those projects – and that is the Victorian Labor Party. Our track record on investment in both housing and renewable energy and public housing and public renewable energy is unmatched in this state.

As I said, following the member for Bulleen is always a pleasure. It was a fantastic contribution. He went through all the different policy settings and all the different areas where he believes and the Victorian Liberal Party believes that privatisation has been fantastic for this state. I think everybody during this debate is going to talk about Jeff Kennett and his privatisation agenda from 1992 to 1999. During that period we saw the public transport network in this state privatised, so the selling off of V/Line and the selling off of that sector and those assets.

We also saw the privatisation of electricity and gas – the privatisation of Victoria’s energy and energy sector. Water distribution was also heavily privatised. I do not disagree that at certain times in certain parts of the economy the private sector can play a role. That is very different to privatisation, and we can point to VicRoads and to public–private partnerships in housing et cetera as to where the private sector can play a role. That does not mean that it is privatisation, it just means you are using the private sector to play a role.

The impact of Kennett’s privatisation agenda was absolutely devastating. It was devastating to this state, and it is something that Victorians continue to pay the price for to this day. Taxpayers ended up subsidising private operators in public transport to the tune of over $7.5 billion while the promised efficiency gains never materialised. Let us look at electricity prices. Within a period of less than 20 ‍years from 1995 electricity prices had outpaced CPI with an increase of 170 per cent as opposed to a 60 per cent increase in CPI. As I said, I do not think it takes Einstein to really know and to understand that the Liberals under Jeff Kennett, under the member for Bulleen and indeed under the member for Hawthorn support privatisation and will continue to pursue a privatisation agenda.

I think this member probably disproportionately gets spoken about on the side of the house during contributions, but the member for Brighton, funnily enough, is one of Jeff Kennett’s biggest cheerleaders in the chamber today. In 2020 the member for Brighton said:

The Liberal Party is the party of responsible economic management –

we can pick that apart –

the party of Jeff Kennett …

I think it is a pretty bold move to sit here and say you are the party of the person that has cost millions and millions of Victorians millions and millions of dollars since his privatisation agenda in the early to mid 1990s.

We look at his track record and we can agree that Kennett is not the gold standard for effective economic management – I think anybody can agree with that – but we on this side of the house learned from the mistakes of the Kennett government and we take a more balanced approach to the economic management of this state to deliver better outcomes for the Victorian public. Our government transformed relationships within the public sector in 2021. We established joint ventures, not privatisations, which maintain state ownership whilst leveraging private sector efficiencies. That is the most important part of those partnerships. We can lean on some of those private sector efficiencies whilst continuing to own the asset, and that is something that is incredibly important to this government.

I spoke about VicRoads very briefly earlier in my contribution. The VicRoads modernisation is testament to that approach. They are an example of a 40-year concession agreement which will be returned to the state at the end of the agreement. It is not privatisation, it is not selling the asset. You do not lose the asset – you keep it. We retain ownership of all registration and licensing data, ensuring regulatory control and data privacy, and the results have been fantastic. There are enhanced services for Victorians and significant financial gains reinvested into the state’s future. Furthermore, this partnership generated a financial gain of $7.9 billion in up-front proceeds, which have been invested into the Victorian Future Fund to help manage pandemic-related debts. This has resulted in better financial outcomes not only for the state but for families too as this process has meant not only that existing VicRoads jobs were protected but that 120 new jobs have been created and added to VicRoads to oversee the partnership, support the IT modernisation process and bolster the government’s road safety role.

Indeed another fantastic example of this government’s commitment to public assets and to public–private partnerships is of course the SEC. We know back in the 1990s – 1994 – Jeff Kennett privatised the SEC. We have spoken about that a fair bit. During the 2022 election we brought it back, and if those opposite have not realised yet, it was pretty popular with the Victorian electorate, which is why we take up half your side of the Parliament. That is a testament to public–private partnerships. We have started construction on the very first of those projects, a big battery out near Tarneit, out near Melton, which will be able to power 200,000 homes with renewable energy. This government does not have a privatisation agenda, but we know that those opposite in the Liberals do and always will.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:51): I am pleased to rise on this matter of public importance, because I have said before that I love a bit of argy-bargy here, and there is no better argy-bargy than Labor versus the Greens, the brother and the sister, the two brothers, the sisters, whoever you want to call it, the family members, the siblings – they love each other and they hate each other, and it is really good. I am actually disappointed, with due respect to the member for Monbulk and the member for Tarneit, but I hope someone over there is actually going to get up and have a crack. The member for Mordialloc, I hope he is next on the agenda because he might actually have a good go at the Greens.

I am pleased to have this debate, because it actually is a genuine philosophical, ideological debate. Sometimes people say that the political parties are all the same – they are not. As the member for Bulleen has pointed out, we know where we stand on this side when it comes to privatisation. We are not afraid of it. We support it in some areas. There are some areas we would not go to, but we are not afraid of it. We know where the Greens stand. We think they are wrong, but we know where they stand at least: they are just dead against it. But the government, the Labor Party, are just the biggest hypocrites when it comes to privatisation. They will be standing up here now, but they actually do not know how to handle this matter of public importance, because they were apparently told that they have got a privatisation agenda according to this MPI. Are they going to argue against it or are they going to argue that they would like a little bit of privatisation but not a lot? We heard the member for Tarneit turning himself in circles, saying that even though we went into a joint arrangement with the private sector and they now run it, that is not privatisation. I have had great pleasure in hearing this over the years, particularly from the member for Essendon, the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, because we like to mention it whenever those opposite – and the member for Tarneit went there again – talk about how Jeff Kennett privatised the SEC. Now, does anyone remember who actually began the privatisation?

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Members on the front bench who are not in their seats will cease interjecting.

Danny O’BRIEN: I will ask the question again: does anyone remember who began the privatisation of the SEC? Wayne Farnham, the member for Narracan, is not allowed to talk, according to the Speaker, so I will not invite an interjection from him. But for the benefit of the house it was Joan Kirner, and we have got the media release from the government of the time in 1991 celebrating the decision of the Parliament under a Labor government to pass legislation for the partial privatisation of Loy Yang B. We have the Minister for Transport Infrastructure constantly – and I am really disappointed he is not in here for this – trying to tell us that that was a ‘co-investment’. So that is another word that they use to avoid ‘privatisation’ – it was a co-investment, even though the private company owns 51 per cent of Loy Yang B, and it is astounding. We could go on. So there is Joan Kirner and the Treasurer at the time and David White with Loy Yang B. With this government we have had the Port of Melbourne, the Land Titles Office, the VicRoads licensing division. Now, apparently, we are going to do Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria. Well, I have some issues and some support for that, because births, deaths and marriages is absolutely horrible at the moment in terms of providing a public service, and the private sector might do better, but at the same time it is pretty sensitive information so I hope that the Treasurer and his colleagues have a good, hard think about that and put some serious fences around it if they do do it.

We can talk about the federal government; the member for Bulleen did that. It was of course Paul Keating that actually privatised Qantas. It was Paul Keating and Bob Hawke that began the privatisation and completed the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank. There are a few others. I know that those opposite are not responsible for their interstate colleagues, but you could go to Queensland, where it was the Bligh government that privatised Queensland Motorways, the Port of Brisbane, Forestry Plantations Queensland, the Abbot Point coal terminal and coal rail lines owned by Queensland Rail. In New South Wales it was Kristina Keneally that began the privatisation of the electricity system.

The Labor Party, as the member for Bulleen said, is completely trying to be half pregnant on this issue. They say one thing and they do another. More particularly, what they say is privatisation done by the Liberals and Nationals is bad; privatisation done by them is not privatisation at all. Co-investment, joint venture, joint partnership – anything other than to say privatisation, because they know if they accept that what they are doing is privatisation, they are going to get whacked by their mates the Greens, just like they are today.

I think this is where I need to turn my attention to the Greens. Unlike the member for Bulleen, I am not able to sing the Soviet Union national anthem, but I think it is important that the Greens understand that some of the things that they promote in this place go very close to communism. We have actually had some evidence of that in the last century. Some of the members of the Parliament these days are pretty young and they probably do not remember what happened last century, but communism did not actually work out that well. I hear laughter from behind me, but the Greens not only want price caps on rentals and all those sorts of things but actually now want us to regulate prices of groceries. That is what happens under communism. You might have worked out that it has not worked.

That goes to my next point, which is about the extremes of this debate. You can go from one extreme to the other. One extreme is complete laissez-faire – no government, no regulation, no laws – which would be ridiculous. No-one supports that. At the other extreme is total socialist government control of all the means of production, the operation of society and everything. That is the bit that actually did not work. For the record and for the Greens who might not have picked up on it, the communists themselves actually said, ‘Hey, this hasn’t worked, so we’re going to wind it all back.’ That is how the Berlin Wall fell and that is how the Soviet Union fell. There are a few places that have not worked it out. The Chinese have got a very good model. It is complete capitalism, but they still call it communism. They just do not let anyone vote for the government, but that is how that works.

This brings me to a point. I do not want to get into the current geopolitical issues, but I did find it quite ironic a couple of weeks ago when our colleagues in the Greens came into this place wearing watermelon badges. I thought at first they were taking the mickey out of themselves of being green on the outside and red on the inside, but it turned out it was not actually about that at all. It was something altogether different, and I am not going to go there. I do not know whether they might have picked up the irony of that, but I will let them know about it.

The reality is, when it comes to the private sector, government does not get it all right. Private sector does not get it all right. Capitalism does not work ad infinitum, but certainly the government sector does not. I hate to get technical like the member for Essendon, but you can go back to Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations. He introduced the concept of the invisible hand, and basically the invisible hand is that the self-interest of humans will drive the needs of society. That is exactly what happens in the private sector.

I know that the Labor government loves to talk about the SEC. I grew up in the valley, as did the member for Narracan and the member for Morwell. We remember what happened to the SEC, and I know it is not particularly popular in some quarters. Indeed I have got a brother-in-law that says that privatisation was terrible and essential services must be kept in government hands. I remind him that he lives in Sale, home of the oil and gas industry, and that for 50 years the private sector – Esso–BHP and now Esso–Woodside – has delivered gas to this state entirely without government assistance.

I go back to the issue of food and supermarkets and groceries that the Greens want to regulate. Who produces the food? Is it governments? Is the most critical thing that we have after water left to governments? No, it is the private sector. It is farms – it is family farms, it is corporate farms. Electricity is delivered by both, and I just want to pick up the point made by the member for Tarneit, which is entirely wrong. In 2015 ABC Fact Check fact-checked the question: has privatisation increased electricity prices? It was a claim made by a then Labor member of the opposition, and the answer was no, it was spin, and they gave a couple of examples. There was a report done for New South Wales Treasury by Ernst & Young that found since privatisation electricity bills had increased less in the privatised states of Victoria and South Australia than they had in the publicly owned areas of New South Wales and Queensland. The University of Sydney researchers found exactly the same thing. So it is actually not privatisation that has seen electricity prices rise, it has been other factors. We could talk about that, but let us not go there.

We could also talk about petrol. That is a pretty essential service. Operated by the government – no, it is operated by the private sector, because generally the private sector does better. At least the Greens are pure on this. The government does not know whether it is Arthur or Martha.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (17:01): I would like to reassure the Greens political party that there is no secret agenda to privatise, cut and sell off. We should just have a little bit of a look back in history to the former Liberal–National government who put the state on the chopping block after all, and specifically under Jeff Kennett’s leadership. The then state Liberal government 1992 to 1999 privatised a record number of services, including Victoria’s public transport network, electricity, gas and water distribution. They also privatised a number of essential human services like prisons, hospitals and the ambulance service. Most of the private investors that bought assets have subsequently struggled to generate an acceptable return on them too.

I am going to speak firstly about energy, a topic that has been bandied about today for good reason. It is a very, very important element in survival to be honest, particularly at this time. I woke this morning, and it was 2 degrees on the mobile phone. I was like, ‘Oof, that is pretty’ –

A member interjected.

Nina TAYLOR: Outside, I mean, not inside. I have double glazing in my apartment. Anyway, I diverge. Rest assured that energy of course is vital, and it can certainly be inequitable when you are looking at the cost. But it also can have a very significant effect and has had to date when we are talking about global emissions, which is why we have so many strong emissions reduction targets. But anyway, I will come back to that in a minute.

We know that the Liberals sold off Victoria’s energy supply to private multinationals, and what has that resulted in? Those private multinationals increased prices and sacked workers, and now it is Victorian families who are paying the price – $23 billion in profits going overseas and counting. It should never have happened. Hence the imperative to bring back the SEC.

I know at the last state election we were very up-front and transparent – no secrets et cetera there. We were very up-front with the community. I remember actually standing on top of the Melbourne Museum and looking at this sea of solar panels – already installed – because we know that measures are well and truly underway in this state. We believe in climate change and we understand the impacts are real, but we also believe in reducing the cost of living and the impacts of energy prices on community. Renewables are the obvious way forward, which is why we are investing so heavily. Actually it is an incentive to be driving forth the SEC, because it is actually a mechanism to accelerate the investment in renewables, because we know if we leave it to the market it just will not happen quickly enough. Having said that, we know that the market is part of what is actually driving investment in renewables because they are the cheapest form of electricity generation, even when you factor in storage and whether it is wind or solar and the like.

We have committed to bringing back the SEC as a publicly owned, 100 per cent renewable, active energy market participant, and we have delivered. We are making sure Victorians can rely on publicly owned energy, jobs and emissions reduction for decades to come. We know if it was left to the Liberals, they would just sell it off in a heartbeat. We know that on 25 October 2023, just to be really precise on this, the SEC Victoria Pty Ltd was registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission as a proprietary limited company under the Corporations Act 2001. So if anyone is suggesting otherwise, I am just speaking to that. And the SEC’s first project is under construction – isn’t that absolutely fantastic? It is good news for bills and cost-of-living pressures, and it will also increase the amount of energy and competition in the market by investing in new, renewable energy and storage, and this will actually push more energy into the system, putting downward pressure on wholesale power prices and delivering benefits for all Victorians.

In terms of getting on with and building the SEC, putting power back in the hands of Victorians and accelerating our transition to cheaper, more reliable and renewable energy, I must say construction has already begun on the SEC’s first project, a 1.6-gigawatt battery in Melton. How about that? Fantastic. That is pretty close to Melbourne too. Hear, hear. We actually have the member for Melton in here, and I am sure he is very pleased with that. And, guess what, it is going to power over 200,000 homes. That is absolutely fantastic. By storing excess, cheap renewable energy in batteries, homes and businesses will use more cheap renewable energy. By powering the state through more renewables more often, we avoid the reliance on expensive coal and gas, which causes the high bills that we pay. So you can see the holistic mechanism here.

We need more renewable energy. Of course we need to keep on with this because if we are going to get to our very strong emissions reduction target – 75 to 80 per cent by 2035 – that is why we have to accelerate. That is the imperative, and Victorians have voted for it emphatically as well. However, the construction rate of new storage needs to increase – and this is further to the point I am making – tenfold to provide the stability in the system we need. As I was saying before, currently the market is simply not providing the investment at the scale that we need. Hence the role of government. Those opposite have had a running commentary on this project, saying it would have happened anyway. That is absolutely not true. The project would not have happened today without the SEC – that is a fact. And because of the SEC the project is happening sooner, is bigger and enables more renewables to come into the system.

Members interjecting.

Nina TAYLOR: I can never get over the fact of how much opposition and how much raucous noise et cetera comes up whenever you talk about renewables in front of the Liberals and Nationals. It is like, ‘Yes, yes, we really support renewable energy,’ but the minute you mention the words ‘solar’ or ‘wind’ they go off. I do question their conviction when it –

A member interjected.

Nina TAYLOR: Welcome it. Welcome it.

A member: Oh, you’d welcome it.

Nina TAYLOR: Absolutely, if there was the space. We do not have the space. However, that being said, you never know, we might find ways and mechanisms. Anyway, I am going off on a tangent.

I know there are some querying the SEC but let me be sure – the managing director of Equis, the SEC’s partner in delivering the project, said that the partnership had delivered results quicker than they had anticipated and said:

… if the Premier and the minister would allow me I’d patent –

the partnership –

… and apply it right across the region.

Fancy that. That is a testament to the fact that this is the real deal, and we are very serious when it comes to accelerating the transition to clean and renewable energy in this state. With over 100 ‍companies lining up to partner with the SEC, there is plenty more to come, delivering more affordable, more reliable, renewable energy, owned by Victorians, with every cent of profit being reinvested back into the SEC.

I did want to go off on a little tangent, because when Labor is investing in energy or whether it is early childhood education – whatever it is – we always look at the whole solution. We look at jobs, of course the sustainability of the industry et cetera. Just the other day I actually accompanied Minister Lily D’Ambrosio, the Minister for Climate Action and Minister for Energy and Resources, for the launch of the renewable homes construction program, because when we are delivering projects we have to make sure that those who are going to deliver them actually know how to better design et cetera and support that. We are training builders, electricians and plumbers so they can build more energy-efficient homes, helping Victorians slash their emissions and cut their energy bills, because funnily enough transitioning energy is not just about a little social media post or holding up something saying ‘No this, no that’. You have to put mechanisms in place, you have to invest government money and you have to train up the sector so that they know how to design and build the programs.

Rest assured, the Greens political party will always come on board to thank themselves for everything that Labor delivers, so we thank them for thanking themselves for that, but at the end of the day it is only Labor that will deliver on these reforms. We have proven that to date. You can see it. We stand on our record, and we do it because it is the right thing to do. This is about Labor values. It is about supporting our community, making sure that we put downward pressure on energy prices but also that we are delivering a cleaner future not only for this generation but for generations to come because we have to leave the planet a better place than it was when we were born – is that not right? I think collectively we all want to improve it. That is why we are working so hard. That is why we have invested in the SEC. That is why we are accelerating the transition to renewables. That is why we have set such strong emissions reduction targets with a specific end point in mind, and we are doing it.

Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (17:11): The neoliberal project has failed. Ours is the first generation since the Great Depression to be worse off than our parents. We are in the grip of multiple crises – climate, housing, economic inequality – and it is the government’s job to use the levers that are available to them to shape our future, to curb climate catastrophe, to make housing fair, to bridge the widening gap between the rich and the poor. They do that – we hope – by choosing carefully how they spend our tax money and what they regulate. But at a time of global unrest, of housing inequality, of looming climate catastrophe, this Labor government is subsidising Israeli weapons manufacturers. This Labor government is subsidising private property investors and fossil fuel companies. They are funnelling money into private prisons, they are cutting WorkSafe for injured workers and they are capping wages, but they will not cap rents. They are refusing to make food affordable by regulating the supermarket duopoly. They are missing in action when it comes to making renting affordable. They are refusing to crack down on Airbnb property investors taking homes away from renters. They turn a blind eye to the crimes of the big banks and the gambling lobby.

For anyone who shudders when they hear the name Kennett, it is much more chilling to realise that it is not just Liberal governments that we need to be worried about – full-scale privatisation is every bit on the Labor agenda too. The Port of Melbourne, the Land Titles Office and VicRoads licensing and registration have all been privatised. Labor has continued the Liberals’ privatisation of trains and trams, of infrastructure, prisons and tolling, and now Labor is privatising births, deaths and marriages. The department that deals with our most intimate and vital information is on the chopping block in a government review of all the state’s assets for potential privatisation. Guess who is doing the review? Is it the government? No, it is a private investment bank. This Labor government wants to outsource solving all of its problems to the private market. They seek short-term cash injections to cover their own hides and leave future governments way down the road to deal with the repercussions.

When a government privatises its services, whether it is selling them off completely or under the guise of a joint venture, a co-investment, asset recycling or a public–private partnership – whatever you want to call it – the functions of those services shift from being in the interests of the public good to being a profit-making project, and, to that end, corners are cut, staff are sacked, accountability plummets and Victorians are left paying more for less. We cannot keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. Leaving it to the market does not work. Trickle-down economics is a scam, and privatisation has benefited only a wealthy few.

We need real solutions. We need a vision. The Greens vision for solving these crises includes accessible public housing for anyone who needs it, built by a public builder and powered by 100 per cent renewable energy from a publicly owned energy retailer or your local community battery and connected to an energy grid that is back in public hands; a good secure public job for anyone who wants it; and tens of thousands more well-paid public jobs in Victoria in renewable energy, building homes, restoring nature, health care and education. Many of these things we have had before, but they have been sold off by past governments, and last year Labor lifted the last bit of their facade and came right out and told us that they intended to demolish and privatise all 44 remaining public housing towers in the state. Any plan that starts with the demolition of almost 7000 public homes and the displacement of more than 10,000 people in the middle of the worst housing crisis in living memory is not a housing plan, it is a housing disaster. But it gets worse. Labor plans to give up all of this land for private property developers to build majority expensive private apartments – prime inner-city locations. Where we see community, they just see dollars for their property investor donors.

But this is not new. For years this Labor government has been privatising public housing, handing out public land to private developer mates to turn a mega profit on, and in the process tearing communities apart and decimating our housing ecosystem. Because when we have plentiful, secure, affordable public housing this helps keep the private market in check. It drives down the cost of renting and buying, and it sets the scene for universal housing affordability. And it is not like they do not have the public land or the opportunity to build public housing. This government has sold off hundreds of hectares of public land to private developers in recent years. In Fitzroy right now, in my electorate, there is one of the biggest opportunities in the inner city for new public housing: almost 3 hectares of public land at the Fitzroy Gasworks site. That is being sold off for 100 per cent private housing, when this Labor government went to two elections promising public housing. The government has not only stopped funding more public housing, but they have even stopped saying the words ‘public housing’, as if the words alone would be a betrayal of their ideology. Instead, they have legislated a new umbrella term, ‘social housing’, which intentionally blurs the line between public and private to distract from their plan to end public housing. Or worse, they refer to ‘affordable housing’, the definition of which, under Labor, is more or less left up to the private developer.

Economic policy is social policy. Let me tell you now: you cannot be socially progressive and economically conservative. Decades of failed privatisation has proven to us that the market has no ethical driver. Its only language is profit, so it is no wonder that when it is left to set what we pay and who has access to the most fundamental of human needs – food, housing, energy – the result could only ever have been the crises that we are seeing unfold today. Rampant inequality, a struggling workforce, poverty manufactured by political choices and a decimated environment – what is even the point of Labor? We can hardly tell the difference anymore between Labor governments and Liberal governments. So what is Labor’s vision? A state run by corporate interests? More homelessness? Housing stress? Is it underfunded, crumbling public schools? Offshore drilling? Is that what it is? Because that is what we have got under Labor.

Or is it just power with no purpose, whatever funds Labor’s next election? Our vision, the Greens’ vision, is one that winds back Labor’s and Liberals’ neoliberalism, invests in robust public services and creates a climate-safe future where everyone has what they need to live a decent life.

Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (17:20): It just works out perfectly that I follow on from the member for Richmond, because what I would like to speak about today is the Greens’ fearmongering about privatisation and the repeated false statements that they make. In preparing for my contribution today I did a quick go through of Hansard to understand more about the views and perspectives that have been put forward by the Greens on this matter, in particular around housing. In doing so I noted that the member for Richmond was the most common person across the way to speak about that, although there were some others. In going through each of the contributions made by the member for Richmond, the falsehood that we are giving land to private developers is repeated again and again. It is not right, and what makes it worse is that people are not listening in here but when you have members of this place going door to door to people’s homes, to public tenants’ homes, and repeating that falsehood, what is that but fearmongering?

We know that this land is not being handed over to developers. Some of the quotes here are just blatantly that way, and there was a repetition. I note that they like to make comments about our election campaigns as though we are being funded by developers –

Gabrielle de Vietri interjected.

Lauren KATHAGE: Oh, really? Introduce me to your developer mates, please. You are welcome to review my register. I would like to speak back to the Greens the words from the member for Richmond, and I would like to speak her words back to her:

Imagine having the power to fix the housing crisis and instead spending your time spinning bad-faith messages to shift the blame onto others and whip up public division.

Well, doesn’t that sound familiar? Does that strategy sound like something we have seen by those opposite here? So I genuinely ask those opposite not to create concern and fear for residents where they need not. That is really troubling to me.

What they are targeting and what they are zeroing in on is the ground lease model, and they take offence at the ground lease model. They state that we are giving land away to developers, that we are palming off land, funnelling profits et cetera, when the fact is that the land remains with the government. The Allan Labor government and Homes Victoria have partnered with the not-for-profit Building Communities Consortium to deliver new housing across sites at Brighton; Flemington; Bangs Street, Prahran; South Yarra; Essex Street, Prahran; Port Melbourne; and Hampton East as part of these ground lease models 1 and 2.

To clear up any doubt that the members of the Greens may have and to prevent them from repeating these falsehoods, I will just explain how it works for their benefit. Homes Victoria leases the land to building communities, who will design, build, finance, manage and maintain the housing for 40 years, enabling all land to remain in public ownership, and at the end of the 40-year concession period all dwellings return to Homes Victoria’s management. Through the ground lease model we increase the amount of social and affordable housing that is available and we increase the private market stock of housing – and we know that housing supply is a really important issue for the whole nation at the moment – so the ground lease model contributes to multiple social issues that we are facing. We know that with ground lease model project 1 we have already delivered over 1000 all-electric homes across three sites.

Something that I want to really zero in on here that I am particularly proud of is that the ground lease models include specialist disability rental homes. This is something that is really important to me personally, with my brother in a specialist disability rental home, but I also know it is for many people in my community. These rental homes are managed by Community Housing Limited, a fantastic community housing provider, and the change in people’s lives that they create through providing specialist disability accommodation just cannot be underestimated, cannot be understated. It is through this ground lease model that we are doing that we are increasing these specialist disability rental homes that are of a fantastic, modern standard that people with disabilities deserve. People with disabilities deserve lovely new homes to live in, and I include my brother in that, and I am so proud to be a member of a government that works to deliver such things.

I mentioned Community Housing Limited, which is a community housing provider, and as we have heard from the Greens, there seems to be this disparaging of community housing providers as part of social housing. I recently had Community Housing Limited state manager Grant McNeill and their coordinator in tenancy management Mel Kearney and Jason Roper visit my electorate at my invitation to view a social community housing property that had been developed by them. This was a piece of land well located near shops and public transport that was a very narrow block, so it was not so very attractive to a traditional developer, but for community housing they saw an opportunity, and they were not building for a profit. What they have done has meant that in my community and in Mernda there are units available for people who need somewhere to live that is cheap and with additional support, so through the caring tenancy management of Jason they are supported into services that can assist them in different ways. For the young children that live there, they are just across the road from a great primary school.

At that visit we had Sarah Toohey there. She is the CEO of Community Housing Industry Association Victoria. As someone who has established these ground lease models in my former work, setting out managing tenancies on behalf of government to support disadvantaged people in accommodation who were at risk of falling afoul of public housing rules and being evicted, they looked to us in the community services sector to provide that wraparound support, provide that additional support which governments cannot always do – literally helping people clean their homes and keep them in their homes. So I have great respect for community housing providers, and the way that they are spoken of sometimes in this place as being second-rate somehow is offensive. It is offensive to –

Kathleen Matthews-Ward interjected.

Lauren KATHAGE: Yes, member for Broadmeadows, we have fantastic Aboriginal housing providers in Victoria, and to think that they are somehow rated lowly compared to a government one is just sad, because we know that the wraparound support, the appropriate kin relations and the sense of community that is provided by community housing providers cannot be beaten. As a homelessness worker supporting women who had interviews with community housing providers, I felt confident that they were going to be transitioning into accommodation that was going to be successful and supportive for them. So I ask those opposite to stop misstating the facts, to stop fearmongering and to show support for people who need it.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (17:30): I am delighted to rise on this matter of public importance (MPI) today, although I feel like the opposition could almost sit it out and let the government and the Greens fight it out and fight each other. Where to even start on the debate that has been had in this place today? I note that the member for Richmond finished her contribution. She is not in the chamber anymore. She has probably knocked off, to be honest, for the day. She finished her contribution by asking: what is the point of the Labor Party anymore? This is a rare moment, so bear with me, but while the philosophical question is there let me just defend the major parties for a moment. The major parties, the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party, do have to form government. We therefore have to have responsibility when we come into this place and we put forward issues and agendas, unlike the Greens, who want to live in some sort of socialist utopia and come in here with their ideological points, their ideological views and do not deal in the practical realities of modern-day Victorian society. So I think it is very rich for the Greens to come in here. We know that they hold up progress all the time.

Paul Edbrooke: Some of them come in here.

Jess WILSON: Indeed. Half of them have probably gone home for the day. But it is very rich for them to come in here and put forward this MPI today. I will now finish my defence of the Labor Party and point to the strong record indeed of privatisation from the Andrews and now Allan Labor government.

Let us step back in time. I know that those opposite are keen to point back to the Kennett era and talk about the privatisation during the Kennett government. If we reflect back on why there was a need for the Kennett government to privatise many of the assets at that time, we only have to look to the Cain and Kirner legacy that was left to the state of Victoria. We had in question time today the Premier stand up and say she was incredibly proud of the Cain government’s legacy. I am not sure that the former Premier Joan Kirner would be proud of the Cain government’s legacy – the hospital pass that she was handed at that time which put Victoria into the worst recession in the state’s history. But during the Kirner years, when she was trying to reverse some of the terrible decision-making that led to that record debt at the time – only to be outdone by the Andrews–Allan governments – we saw Joan Kirner actually begin the privatisation of Victoria’s power assets.

It was in fact the Kirner government that sold 51 per cent of Loy Yang B power station in 1992. The member for Gippsland South mentioned the press release that was put out at the time. Let me quote from it. This is from 11 June 1992 about the legislation that the Kirner government had passed in the Parliament:

Legislation paving the way for an historic partnership between the Victorian Government and U.S. power company Mission Energy passed through State Parliament late last night.

And here is the kicker:

The Victorian Government’s decision to involve private investment in this new project is essential to our energy future.

That was directly from the press release from the Kirner government at the time. And at the time the then SEC Chairman Mr Jim Smith said:

… the rapid introduction of competition is the best way to quickly reform the electricity supply industry …

… That is a key reason why SECV board and general management want to sell Loy Yang B power station and have it privately operated …

Let us be very, very clear: we have heard from those opposite today that it was the Kennett government that started the privatisation of energy in this state, but in 1992 under the leadership of Joan Kirner the energy privatisation began. It was also the Kirner government who sold the state bank to the Commonwealth, and then it was the Keating government that flogged it off to the Commonwealth Bank. It was the Gillard government, I believe, that sold the last of the Telstra shares in 2011. I think, if we step back in time, in fact the Greens fought hard, tooth and nail, against the privatisation of telecommunications in this country. Can you only imagine the telecommunications network we would have today if the government still operated it? The brick phones, the Nokia 3310, would be something we would hand up. There would be no iPhone that we would see in this state.

But of course, if we then turn to the Andrews government, we have heard from those opposite today that it is not really privatisation, it is every other name possible. It is partial privatisation. It is a lease agreement. It is a joint venture. It is a public–private venture – consolidation. In fact the member for Tarneit did concede that sometimes the private sector can do it better, that there are efficiencies when working with the private sector. We on this side of the house would not disagree with that. Of course the private sector brings efficiencies, and there are many aspects of government control that can be better done by the private sector; we know that. As the member for Gippsland South pointed to, the ABC Fact Check itself has said that the increased competition in the electricity sector in this state has led to lower power prices.

But under the Andrews government of course they entered into the $9.7 billion privatisation of the Port of Melbourne in 2016 to pay for their level crossings. It was the Andrews government that sold the land titles and registry office in 2018. We have heard a lot about renewable energy here today, particularly from the member for Albert Park, who is building wind farms in her own electorate, that it was actually the Andrews government that sold the Victorian share of the Snowy Hydro scheme to the Commonwealth. Then of course we saw at the last election the Andrews government privatise VicRoads.

Now we are seeing the Allan government enter discussions about the privatisation of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria. This is an agency that has not delivered for the people of Victoria over recent years. It has many, many issues – I think their doors are still closed; people cannot actually access births, deaths and marriages – and it also deals with very sensitive information. Privatising VicRoads; now privatising births, deaths and marriages; there is concern about the security that will be put around Victorians’ private and sensitive information.

But what it does show, from the Andrews through to the Allan government, is that privatisation is at the very core of what they do. I might accept they do not believe in it necessarily – it is not an ideological approach to government – but it is necessary because they have run out of money. It is a revenue grab at every single opportunity, and you do not need to wonder why when you think about the fact that there is $188 billion of debt in this state, that this government cannot manage money and anything that it does touch blows out. $40 billion of blowouts in the Big Build – $40 billion of taxpayer money wasted on the Big Build projects. If you consider the private sector when they have to put together long-term investment strategies, when they have to think about their own strategies and their own budgets when it comes to their own projects, a 10 per cent contingency fund at best would be placed on those projects. Yet the Allan Labor government – $40 billion of cost blowouts the Victorian taxpayer is paying, and we are seeing the consequences of that. We are now seeing the privatisation of births, deaths and marriages. We have seen the privatisation of VicRoads under this government. We have seen the selling off of Snowy Hydro, and of course we saw the privatisation of the Port of Melbourne.

I think the member for Bulleen pointed to the fact that while the Greens are pure and ideological when it comes to this issue, while we all may take issue with their lack of pragmatism when it comes to actually putting in place policies that will deliver for the state of Victoria, we have from the Allan Labor government an approach speaking out of their one mouth in terms of ‘We don’t like to privatise. We believe the state should do everything,’ but on the other hand looking for any opportunity they can to sell off government assets, to sell off government agencies, to pay down their record debt.

Gary MAAS (Narre Warren South) (17:40): It gives me great pleasure to rise and to speak to the matter of public importance (MPI) which was put forward by the member for Prahran. To that end we on this side absolutely reject the assertions of the Greens political party. Through almost 10 years of governing – can you believe it has nearly been 10 years of governing here – there has been absolutely no agenda whatsoever to privatise, to cut and to sell off. In fact this government has a history of stepping in when the private market has failed or decided to not meet government regulatory standards. We simply point to the SEC, bringing hospitals back from our regions into government control and of course public assets and putting such basic things as trains back onto train lines. The government also have a history of stepping up when Victorians have needed us to step up to the feds or to other areas such as aged care and child care when the private sector could not deliver.

An area I will be focusing on is the area of industrial relations improvements, because we do have a very proud history of protecting Victorians from exploitation by non-government interests. Like the member for Kew, I too will pick up on the statement of the member for Richmond: what is the point of Labor? The point of Labor –

Members interjecting.

Gary MAAS: Well, you know what, member for Melbourne, you have done very, very well out of having Labor governments in this state under the Cain–Kirner years and also the Hawke–Keating governments. You probably had a tertiary education that you paid back at fair levels too. You might not have got that tertiary spot in the first place had there not been –

Members interjecting.

Gary MAAS: Yes, but we all paid it back, right? But it was at an affordable level, and it created spaces for extra people, such as people who do not live on the red maps, people who grew up in the outer suburbs, to come in and to actually get a university education and, you know what, to maybe end up in a place like this, because what is wrong with aspiration? Nothing is wrong with aspiration. Labor gives people that aspiration. Labor allows you to do that. When Labor puts money into education, it means that everyone has opportunity. Everyone gets a chance. Everyone gets their shot. Labor is the only party in this place that will allow people from whatever background they come from to move up the rungs of the ladder. It does not take the ladder away; it does not destroy the rungs on the ladder. It keeps the rungs of the ladder in place so that you can step up and you can get there. Ironically, it is the Greens political party, the members in this place, who probably benefited from those things, not only in education, not only in health, but probably in welfare as well. Yet they come to this place and say that this government is moving towards privatisation, which we all know, and history shows us this especially, is so far from the truth.

When people are working towards reaching that opportunity, they are doing so in an industrial relations system that has given workers the best opportunity possible to not be overrun by private interests, and this government itself has a very proud history when it comes to managing industrial relations. We did introduce, under the Andrews government, the industrial manslaughter legislation. We also established an independent labour hire licensing regulator following a landmark inquiry into dodgy and exploitative labour hire practices in Victoria, and we did so in consultation with our very good friends in the broader labour movement. I do understand that the ambulance union at the time and the National Union of Workers – the secretaries of both of those unions – were heavily involved in helping to develop that inquiry into labour hire practices and to now have the established Labour Hire Authority, ensuring that we have fair work practices for all workers across the state.

We were also the government that helped introduce criminal wage theft laws in the country and even developed the language ‘wage theft’, because that is in fact what it was. We introduced that, and the first standalone regulator we have in this state is a result of that. We led the country in relation to the growing on-demand economy and with another groundbreaking inquiry on the establishment of fair conduct and accountability standards as well. We have just recently commenced an inquiry in this place in relation to workplace surveillance regulation. In our public sector we are committed to principles of consultation, cooperation and good-faith bargaining, underpinned by a safety net of fair employment conditions.

As well as being a model employer, the government is committed to ensuring that enterprise agreements are negotiated respectfully and in good faith and are conducted in a timely manner. The very nature of industrial relations means that negotiations do sometimes get robust, but with the good-faith architecture that is in place this government has been able to deliver the fair enterprise agreements that exist across the public sector. We also recognise that Victoria’s public sector provides services that are essential to the community. As the state’s largest employer, the government sets the example for all Victorians by recognising, valuing and regarding the work of the Victorian public sector agencies.

The government also considers it important that an equitable and consistent approach to public sector industrial relations is adopted by departments and agencies. That is a culture that is firmly embedded in our industrial policies – that public sector employers must consult with their employees about proposed major changes to employment circumstances. We also expect departments and agencies to abide by their consultation obligations in enterprise agreements in relation to any major change initiative and to consult regularly with affected employees and their representatives to ensure that change initiatives are implemented with the involvement of all relevant parties. When those big workplace projects, including the Big Build, involve the private sector taking over certain services or functions currently performed by employees in the public sector, the expectation is that a new employer will do everything practicable to attract and retain existing public sector employees.

I have already covered the education piece, which helps people move through those employment opportunities and up that ladder of opportunity. Once you get through that education and you are in the workplace, it is only Labor that will, through the industrial relations paradigm, help you get the wages and conditions to enable you to afford proper housing, either through rent or through purchase, in this state.

The last thing I want to cover in the last minute or so I have is that there is of course a difference between privatisation and joint ventures. A joint venture is just that – a legal structure that enables two or more entities to have a division of labour and different practices between them, and it is an ownership structure. A joint venture is absolutely not privatisation. You cannot have privatisation when the government still owns the asset.

A member interjected.

Gary MAAS: By definition, it is not. It is absolutely not privatisation. We know that the Greens are happy to mislead this place, and there is absolutely no way I support the member for Prahran’s MPI.

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (17:50): It is my great pleasure to rise to speak on this matter of great importance to many, many Victorians, a matter that was of course put forward by the member for Prahran, and there is a little pronunciation lesson for the member for Yan Yean, or do you pronounce it Yarn Yean? Is that how it is pronounced?

Members interjecting.

Ellen SANDELL: Okay, there we go. I actually think it has been quite an entertaining debate, one of the more entertaining debates we have had in a long time in this place. I have got my bingo card here. I have got a few things that I have already ticked off. I have got the Nats and the Libs calling the Greens rabid socialists who want to live in a socialist utopia – lol, you have got us. Secondly, I have got the Nats mocking us for wanting people to be able to afford food and rents. I have ticked that one off. I have got Labor tying themselves in knots trying to defend their privatisation record. Yes, I have ticked that one. I have got that one. Something I did not have on my bingo card was the member for Bulleen singing the socialist national anthem, but there you go. I did not expect that today, but that is what we got.

We raised this matter today because the Age reported earlier this month that the Treasurer is in talks with private firms to gauge interest in running Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, creating profit motives for birth registrations and selling Victorians’ data to a private company for profit. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? What is more, Labor have also sought advice from investment banks for a review of all government agencies to find out how much short-term cash they could get from selling our few remaining public assets.

Now, looking at this debate, if people have been paying attention to this debate, we have had Labor bend over backwards to call privatisation anything except that word ‘privatisation’. What have we had? Well, we have had a lot of talk about socialism and communism today, but if we want to talk about doublespeak, we have also had asset recycling, we have had improving services, we have had joint venture arrangements and we have had public–private partnerships. These are essentially privatisation or pseudo-privatisation. Labor will use these weasel words for their privatisation of public housing. They have privatised the Port of Melbourne and the VicRoads licensing and registration division. We have had private toll roads. We have had the land titles office and on and on.

Let us just be clear: the reason that Labor have to use these weasel words is because they know deep down that privatisation is inherently very unpopular and that the community does not want our governments to make a quick buck from selling assets that should belong to all of us and then losing them for decades, if not forever. They try and convince Victorians it is something else, right? But the other thing we know that is bad about privatisation is it is not just unpopular, it actually delivers higher prices and worse outcomes for the community in the long term. Labor admitted this much last year when they decided to bring back the SEC to attempt to undo the privatisation of the energy market.

Privatisation turns human rights into commodities. It turns taxpayers into consumers, and it turns good protected public sector jobs into roles that only exist at the whim of capital profit. The same arguments that Labor rightly used last year against Kennett’s and the Liberals’ history of privatising our assets, including energy, actually hold true with Labor’s history of selling off public housing land, ports, roads and now their plan for births, deaths and marriages.

I think we need to talk a little bit about housing, because we are following a very similar playbook to the past. The playbook of governments when privatising assets and services is essentially to run something into the ground, manage it very poorly, create very, very low expectations from the community and then say, ‘Oh, look, this is not working. This is not going well. You’re not getting a good service. We must give it to the private sector to run because they are the only ones who can do it better.’ We have seen this with VicRoads, where there was some big problem with the data and the database and they could not deliver the digital registration. Only the private sector could do that, so give it to them. We are seeing that now with births, deaths and marriages. I do not know about everybody else, but I am getting constant messages from constituents who just cannot access births, deaths and marriages. Since COVID it has been a complete shambles, and people are not getting what they need – ‘Oh, well, therefore that’s a good reason to privatise it.’

We see this with public housing, as probably the most egregious example. We have seen governments run public housing into the ground, not maintain it, provide terrible service to residents, manage it very poorly and then say the only option is to give it to non-profits or the community sector – but essentially private organisations – to run. Again, Labor do not call it privatisation – they call it the ground lease model – but what it is actually is allowing private development for profit on public housing land. And let us be clear: we are not getting that land back for the public. We are not getting that land back once it has got private homes on it. Labor says that they will rebuild existing public housing on these sites, that it will be better for residents, but the truth is that when it is rebuilt it will not be public housing at all. In the 44 towers that Labor has said that they will demolish, there has not been a commitment to one single unit of public housing being rebuilt. What will be there is two-thirds of that land given for private housing, private homes, and then we will have some housing that is managed by private organisations. Yes, some of them are non-profit, but they are still private.

There is a difference between community housing and public housing. They both have their place, but one should not replace the other, because we have community housing that can charge higher rents, that has less secure tenure for residents. It is a different thing, and it has its place. In particular it has its place in Aboriginal housing. It has its place in specialist disability housing. It has its place for certain segments of the community that need those specialist services, but it should not whole-scale replace public housing, as this government wants to do.

I think we need to look at what has happened in history, because in my electorate we have a couple of very bad examples of privatising public housing. Look at what happened in Carlton. The government said they had to redevelopment the Carlton public housing to create more of a social mix for the community. What they did was sell public land blocks in Carlton to private developers for a fraction of their worth. The developers made $300 million, and they built a literal wall between the private housing and the public housing so the private residents did not have to interact with the public tenants. Then in 2012 the government repeated these mistakes in Kensington. They sold the land for 5 per cent of its true value to developers. The developers made $45 million, and they destroyed 265 public housing properties for good. During that process they also locked the local community out of the consultation process, disbanding the local group that was supposed to be consulted – I guess because they asked too many inconvenient questions.

And now we are seeing a similar process being rolled out across 44 public housing towers right across Melbourne, starting in my electorate, in North Melbourne, where the community is very worried because they are not being promised any public housing. The community come to me and they say, ‘Maybe someone else could do this better, maybe we do want to move somewhere else,’ but the number one thing they want is to stay in public housing in their local community where they are connected to the hospitals and the schools and their local families and their local neighbours. They say, ‘But the number one thing I want is that I just want to stay in public housing,’ because people are not silly. They know the difference between public housing and other forms of housing, and they know the value of it and the security and the protections that it provides. And yet the government cannot promise that one single public home will be built on that North Melbourne estate once their homes are demolished.

So let us call this what it is: Labor has a privatisation agenda. It is a privatisation agenda where anything that Kennett did not nail down – and even some things he did – is being sold off to the highest bidder because we have a financial problem in this state and the Labor government feels that the best way to deal with that is to get a short-term sugar hit from selling assets to the private market. But the loser in the long term is going to be the community, not just in paying higher prices but also in worse services, and our state should simply not be for sale.

Tim READ (Brunswick) (18:00): In the 47 seconds remaining, my job is to prescribe the cure. We have heard comprehensively the diagnosis, which is that Labor has a privatisation problem, and the first thing to do when you want to treat a problem like this is – and I am looking at you, member for Mulgrave – to admit that you have got a problem. And where to start? Well, the first thing I would do in my socialist utopia is not privatise Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria – hands off births, deaths and marriages. The second thing is have a look at the public hospitals, where there is a lot of creeping privatisation by stealth – private radiology, private pathology. I even had to get an ABN at the Royal Melbourne. I reckon my time is just about up, so I will call it there.