Wednesday, 19 June 2024

Motions

Budget papers 2024–25

Debate resumed.

Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (18:01): I have been waiting eagerly for my opportunity to respond to the 2024–25 budget, and patience is a virtue that I seldom possess, so I am very glad that I get the opportunity now before it completely runs out, because the patience of people in the state’s great north-west has run out. As I was reading through the Treasurer’s budget speech I found myself having a bit of a laugh, a bit of a cry and a lot of anger. It was like being in a glass case of emotion, so I thought I would actually go through it. You can join me, Acting Speaker, and everyone can join me in this glass case of emotion trying to understand why those who live out in the regions feel like they are living and existing in District 12. The only reason that is is because Labor cannot manage money, and regional Victorians are paying the price by being left out of any of the government priorities.

This could take me a lot longer than 15 minutes – in fact I could go up until we adjourn tonight, no doubt – but I will give it a crack to get in everything I need to say in 15 minutes. I know that is not a surprise to anyone in this place. We will start on page 1 of the Treasurer’s speech. Like I said, I was reading through this, and on the first page the Treasurer says:

… the cost of groceries, petrol and bills continues to rise.

Yes, including power bills. And how many times have we heard the minister responsible say that they are going down, down, down when in fact they are going up, up, up, and the Treasurer confirms that. So I was actually not too –

A member interjected.

Jade BENHAM: Yes. I mean, I agree with that sentence, and I agree that everything is going up because of Labor policy and because Labor cannot manage money. The Treasurer went on to say that the budget is focused on ‘helping families’ – no. The budget is focused on inequity – if you live beyond the freeways, that is – and hypocrisy. And it says:

From help with the cost of living, to investments in education, health care, road and rail – we want to make life easier.

You jest. Surely, Treasurer, you jest. We have got inequity in education. The state schools in my region are literally being held together by craft wood in some cases. We cannot get any investment there. And shall I bring up the school bonus and the inequity there? There are low-cost Catholic schools and independent schools in the region where they have payment plans so that low-income families can send their children there, and to be excluded from the school bonus, which these families need, is unfair.

Let us talk about health care, and we are still only on the first sentence that I am analysing. My goodness, I could do 15 minutes just on this. We have board members, we have staff and we have CEOs being told to claw back their budgets from their own cash reserves, if they have any, not to mention the continued lack of specialist services in the bush. You cannot get an angiogram in Mildura, a town of 40,000 people and with a catchment of around 100,000 people over three states. You cannot get an angiogram. There is no cath lab. We are told by the minister that it is okay because the Loddon Mallee – we are not the Loddon; we are a long way from the Loddon – has two in Bendigo. Bendigo is harder to get to than it is to get to Melbourne. It is absolutely ridiculous. Again, investment into health care – please, show us where it is hitting the ground. People are worried about health care in the bush at the moment.

The third point was roads and rail. We know about roads. Over 90 per cent are in poor or very poor condition. We know that because we travel on them every day. We do not travel on the left of the road anymore, we travel on what is left of the road. Let us talk about rail, though, because this seems to be very popular with the government. We know that they are investing in rail, in big holes underneath the city. That is where that investment is going that could and should have gone to making this state far more efficient in rail freight so we could actually get the food that we produce up in the state’s great north-west to Melbourne and to port far more efficiently, rather than having to go via Ararat rather than taking a straight line. It defies logic. It absolutely defies logic.

Shall I start on the passenger train? In Mildura we talk about V/Line and public transport. I am sorry, if you live out in district 12, there is no such thing. It has been 30 years. I know that members in here like to say Kennett shut it down. That was 30 years ago. The windscreen is bigger than the rear-view mirror for a reason. I like to focus forward, because that is where we are heading. We cannot go back in time; we can only go forward in time. There has been ample opportunity to bring back the Mildura passenger rail, and there has been no appetite to even entertain the idea.

That is page 1. Page 2 is headed ‘Sensible decisions’. Sensible decisions? This was the section that gave me the first giggle, with the heading. This is from this document, the speech:

Rising prices of materials, labour and transportation have pushed up construction costs by around 22 per cent since 2021.

I guess that should have been a flag. It is cost blowouts, but it should have also been a flag about why the incredible new enterprise bargaining agreement of 20 per cent, I think it is, has been struck with the government and why our regional tradies are more than happy to leave their homes in the regions and head to the city to work on union sites rather than build the homes we need in the regions. Common sense would tell you that to make sure there is equity across the construction sector you should not be ruled by the union overlords so that you can make sure that their apprentices are driving around in Raptors. I think that was a quote I heard in the media over the weekend. It makes no sense. Meanwhile, there is rental stock of zero per cent in regional Victoria and people living in backyards and in tents and sleeping in cars by the river. This is the anger part of reading through this emotional journey. To get anywhere near that ridiculous housing target that the government has set, you would think that you would be incentivising tradies to stay in the domestic and the private sectors, because how are we going to solve a housing crisis without incentivising the private sector?

But I will get back to that. That comes on a later page. Further down, still on page 2, it says:

This worker shortage is hitting our construction projects –

it is really hitting the small domestic ones too –

but it’s also hurting our caring and social sectors.

No kidding. Riddle me this: why would you go into aged or child care or early childhood learning at the rates of pay that they get when you can stand there with no qualifications, hold a stop sign and get $120K a year?

A member interjected.

Jade BENHAM: Or $150K. It varies. It continues:

Early childhood worker vacancies are three times higher than in 2019.

It is no surprise. It takes training. Our early childhood educators go through loads of training. They are highly qualified. They are not just babysitters. They are educators, and we are paying them peanuts. The Victorian public and our educators are not monkeys, Treasurer. You cannot pay them peanuts and expect them to do the work. Is it any wonder that that workforce are struggling more than they ever have, when they can avoid all of the valuable training and go hold a stop sign for three or four times the take-home pay of a very, very valuable educator? Then we wonder why we have got childcare deserts out in the bush. The childcare centre in Hopetoun, which is a very small town the Treasurer has probably never heard of, has been without child care now for months. There are families that moved there during the pandemic for a tree change. They have work-from-home positions that allow them to keep their city-based jobs. They now cannot get child care, so what are they doing? They are considering moving back to the city – which they do not want to do, by the way. They are paying the price, and why is this? It is because Labor cannot manage money, and regional Victorians, particularly in small towns like Hopetoun, are paying that price.

Where are we? The biggest challenges. Workforce – we are still only on page 2, and I have got 5 ‍minutes left, so I had better scoot through these. ‘A sensible decision’ – that is right. We are on this section. A little bit of common sense would tell you that these are not sensible decisions. The government have got their priorities wrong. We will go to page 3, and we will continue the hilarity that is this budget – at least it would be funny if it was not so dire. The Treasurer says:

Right now, we’re delivering a number of city- and suburb-shaping projects …

How do you think that goes down with someone sitting in Patchewollock, for example? They are nowhere near the city or any suburbs but cannot get their grain onto a train to get it to port. Instead they are having to invest in more trucks and bigger trucks, putting their drivers and families at risk on roads that are not fit for trucks. They are barely fit for a horse and cart, let alone their families and their truck drivers and their grain – which produces the food. We could talk about the Murray Basin rail project that was started and then it was stopped and then it ran out of money. And then apparently the money went into those big holes under the city and over the city, and it just kind of disappeared. At the moment, and I have said it before, our train has to go via Ararat, rather than that freight corridor. It is not efficient, so it is not being used in the best way it can be. It is absolutely insane. I am sorry, the Treasurer needs to think about where his food comes from. In fact everybody does. The next time you are having an almond or an oat latte, it does not come out of the fridge. The next time you are having your avo on toast, it would not happen without food producers. Fresh OJ – it is citrus season at the moment, and they are delicious – is coming from regional Victoria. We are feeding you, we are clothing you and we are being left out of this government’s agenda simply because Labor cannot manage money.

With the 3 minutes left, I was going to say ding the page, we will go to page 4, but we will not. I am going to skip forward. I will continue on my anger journey. On, I think, page 5, we get back to V/Line, but there was also, while we are on food and fibre production, one line about agriculture. It is for $85 million into biosecurity. We are seeing at the moment bird flu. There is a new crisis and a new biosecurity risk in agriculture every day. The Minister for Agriculture is working very, very hard on that, and it is obviously a baptism by fire because there are risks every day. We have got bird flu at the moment. $85 million is not going to go far when that continues into the next financial year, because it does not just stop at 30 June. You are going to have issues with varroa mite, because bees can swim across a river. You are going to have issues with lumpy skin. You will eventually have issues with foot-and-mouth. There are all of these crises just waiting to happen. $85 million? That is a drop in the ocean. It is absolutely insane.

And while I am on ag, and the one line that has been given in the Treasurer’s speech, let us talk about the wild dog program and what kinds of deals are being done to be absolutely thrown out the door in the north-west of the state where there is a wild dog population. These are not dingoes. It is not like Pumbah coming into Parliament. These are feral dogs, and with the 2 minutes I have got left let me be a little bit graphic in what they do. I am going to illustrate this to you so you know why the funding of this program and the reinstating of this program is a much more sensible decision than a $4 million scoreboard at pork-barrel stadium. Feral dogs kill lambs, and it has been lambing season. It is hard enough to keep lambs alive in the coldest winter we have had for a long time without wild dogs stalking the perimeter, playing with them, sending them into shock and mauling them on the hindquarters. Then, once they have got them, sometimes they will just leave them; sometimes they will strip their rib cage and rip their insides out, and they will just discard them. They are not hunting for food, they are hunting for sport. We have been just thrown to the dogs.

While we are talking about lambs, let us talk about the malleefowl. Now, I do not know, Acting Speaker, whether you have ever seen a malleefowl. I have lived in the Mallee for most of my life and I have never actually seen one because they are quite elusive, but we know they have been starting to come back, because this wild dog program actually helped to protect them too. They are an endangered species. I would hate to think what the wild dogs, now that they just have reign over the landscape, are doing to the endangered malleefowl. It just makes no sense. I would love to know why on earth the Minister for Environment is throwing the malleefowl to the dogs.

This budget just reeks of lazy policy; it reeks of cheap retail policy. And it is not full – it is not helping families at all. It is making life harder for families. Families can manage money, but it is very apparent in this budget and in all the budget documents that Labor cannot manage money, and it is vulnerable Victorian regional families that are paying the price.

Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (18:16): I rise to speak in support of the 2024–25 Labor state budget. It is a budget that has Labor values at its core, values that as a government we have always stood by and always will stand by: camaraderie, helping each other out, not leaving anyone behind and backing one another – backing one another to drive progress and prosperity in our state. Our budget, just like the one before it, continues to address the challenges that Victorians right across the state and indeed Australia are facing: cost of living and workforce shortages. It continues to take responsible, sensible steps to strengthen our economy and ensure that not only are we supporting Victorians at a time of great need but we are taking the necessary steps to set our state up for the future.

We know that families and households are under pressure right now. Across our communities, across the country and indeed the globe, people are facing cost-of-living pressures that feel much more acute than they have in a long time. Whether it is the power bill we find in our mailbox, the rates notice, the rent due, the mortgage repayments, the tally of your bag of groceries at the checkout, the kids needing a new school uniform or the car needing another tank of petrol, it is all adding up and it is causing people right across our suburbs to have to make difficult decisions – decisions that perhaps they did not ever think they would have to make. That is why front and centre of this budget is unashamedly a plan to ease the cost of living, to support more Victorians into secure homes, to back our health and education systems and to invest in the workforces we absolutely need to deliver the care, services and infrastructure that make life easier and safer for Victorians.

I will not have time to outline every single one of the initiatives that will save Victorian household budgets, but I would like to make mention of a few of them. We know that growing a family increases household budgets dramatically. Raising kids costs money – simple as that. They are little humans and they require many different things to survive and to thrive. That is why a substantial part of our cost-of-living support is directed towards alleviating some of these rising costs for families.

This budget delivers a one-off $400 school saving bonus that families can use to cover the cost of uniforms, camps, excursions and other extracurricular activities through the year. It is available for every child at a government school as well as eligible concession card holders at non-government schools. On top of this, we are also tripling our Glasses for Kids program, benefiting an extra 74,000 ‍young Victorians, providing free vision testing and prescription glasses for prep to year 3 students. For the first time ever, we are expanding the school breakfast clubs program to every government school. That means an additional 150 schools will be invited to join the program, providing healthy breakfasts for students right across our communities. Breakfast clubs have already been such a huge success, giving students that nutritional boost to set them up for their day of learning, and expanding this to more students is immensely valuable. These are tangible cost-of-living measures which not only create savings in the family budget but deliver equity into our education system for children who might otherwise feel on the outer simply by virtue of their circumstances. No child should go to school hungry, no child should miss out on sports and excursions, and no child should have to put off getting the extra care they need to learn. I know these measures will make a real difference to families across my community and to students’ sense of wellbeing and their confidence.

Indeed just last month my heart was bursting full visiting Thornbury High with the Minister for Multicultural Affairs and the member for Cranbourne, where we got to see students participating in a homework club after hours at the school as part of the Victorian African Communities Action Plan. This program has been funded with another $17 million in the budget to continue to deliver hands-on tutoring and support and has already helped over 1350 students in the last three years. I can say the students at Thornbury are absolutely thriving, and it was a joy to see their enthusiasm for learning. Sticking with schools for a moment, I want to mention that this budget also makes some very important investments into health care and social support within schools. We are investing a further $21.8 million for psychologists, speech pathologists and social workers, $6.3 million for the primary school nursing program and $13.9 million to deliver mental health care in our schools – that is critically important.

Of course I cannot speak to education without sharing the incredibly exciting news that Thornbury Primary School in my electorate has secured $17.6 million in this budget for a major modernisation – an election promise I was proud to take to my community in 2022. It was an absolute delight to share this news with principal David Wells, with the school and with the many families who have worked closely with me over the last two years to bring that vision to life. In last year’s budget we secured critical funding to undertake the initial planning and design work, and this phase saw close collaboration and consultation with the whole school community, including with students, to embed their needs and values directly into the design. The results speak for themselves, and the designs are absolutely spectacular. With the rest of the funding allocated, we can move ahead and get construction going, and I was very happy to have the Minister for Education drop in last week to congratulate the school in person.

I have spoken many times in my role as the member for Northcote about schools and my mission to upgrade our local schools across the inner north. In recent months across our suburbs in the inner north am very proud to say that we have seen Westgarth Primary turn the sod on its major upgrade, Northcote High has almost finished work on a new STEM centre and Bell Primary will soon open its new gym, building on the recently completed projects at Croxton School, Thornbury High and Preston South Primary. There is certainly more to do; we have some pretty old infrastructure in Northcote. But I am committed to keeping the momentum going, and this announcement for Thornbury Primary is part of that whole-of-community work to uplift our suburbs and set them up for the future.

Another aspect of the state budget I want to highlight today is what we are doing to help Victorians into safe and secure housing. This is something I will always fight for. I will always back in local housing projects in the inner north and our Labor government’s work to build more social and affordable homes to support first home buyers and to make renting fairer. I am pleased to say this budget continues to deliver on our landmark reforms in housing, with our $5.3 billion Big Housing Build. The budget continues that with $700 million to extend the Victorian Homebuyer Fund, another $107 million to progress our ambitious housing agenda and a further $19 million to improve response times for repairs and maintenance in public housing.

On the ground in Northcote we are realising the tangible benefits of the government’s investment into social and affordable homes. Just last month I joined the Premier and the Minister for Housing to open 99 new social homes on Oakover Road in Preston, which will house up to 140 people in the heart of the inner north. The project has replaced 26 single-storey dwellings that were no longer fit for purpose with 296 homes in total, which includes the social homes, affordable Nightingale homes and market homes which were made available to first home buyers in an exclusive access period. These homes are exactly what Victoria needs right now, minutes away from the Mernda train line and the number ‍11 tramline straight to the CBD and close to shops, schools and parks.

The new homes meet the gold livable housing design standards. They are all electric, with 5-star Green Star and 7-star average nationwide house energy rating scheme ratings, making the homes more efficient to keep cool in summer and warm in winter. There is a rooftop terrace and a community gallery, and there are open spaces. I am proud to have supported this project despite the petty and misguided opposition from Darebin council during the planning stages, which actually delayed the construction significantly. The Greens do like to talk a big game about housing, but they sure as heck continue to do everything in their power to prevent it from being built. It is hypocrisy of the highest order as they try to continuously gaslight Victorians about their values. The truth is that they do not have a skerrick of empathy for people doing it tough. Instead they will use some of the most disadvantaged members of our community for their political gain, and they would rather keep people in miserable states of being to stand atop their misery so that they can have a pedestal to sing from rather than do the actual work to lift people up. It is not just woeful, it is sinister. But it will not deter us from getting on with our work to build more homes and offer Victorians the dignity they deserve and the stable foundation they need for opportunity and aspiration, because we back Victorians. We do not wallow in pessimism and cynicism and hatred like so many of those opposite do; we get on and do the work, and we back Victorians in.

We heard a lot of catastrophising from the other side during the budget speeches, but I think it is important to recall the facts are not the rhetoric. In 2014 the newly elected Labor government inherited the highest unemployment on mainland Australia. Unemployment had risen to 6.8 per cent, robbing far too many Victorians of the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to their state and economy. In contrast, since Labor came into government, we have created more than 800,000 new jobs, 560,000 of them in the last four years. Compare this to the four years of the Liberal–National coalition. When they sat on those government benches between 2010 and 2014, only 39,000 new jobs were created in Victoria – a dismal amount. Despite every attempt they make to skew the narrative, the facts are clear: Victoria’s economy is doing well. Businesses want to be here, jobs growth is strong and debt is going down. There is no doubt that our state budget absorbed the blow of the pandemic in order to save lives, protect jobs and businesses and support communities. We did that because it was the right thing to do and the only thing to do, and God knows how many families, households and businesses would have suffered had those opposite been making those decisions between debt and lives.

I want to move on to talk a little bit about the investments made in health, and in particular women’s health, which is my role as parliamentary secretary. Our Labor government has truly hit the ground running when it comes to driving health equity and addressing the gaps in knowledge and care that have for far too long marginalised and trivialised women and girls in the health system. Earlier this year I joined the Premier and the Minister for Health at the Northern Hospital to announce the first five of our network of women’s health clinics. These clinics will ultimately expand to 20 and remove the barriers women face in trying to access specialist care, and they will allow women that safe affirming space to see specialists like gynaecologists, urologists, specialist nurses and allied health nurses. They will cover a whole gamut of conditions, like endometriosis, pelvic pain, polycystic ovary syndrome, perimenopause and menopause. At the same time our inquiry into women’s pain is having a ripple effect through communities. At forums right across the state I am hearing from women about the importance of that work and how much it will mean to women’s lives – our daily lives. What comes out of those conversations, alongside the sense of relief and hope and determination, is the inextricable link between health equity and gender equity, which is why I am immensely pleased to see that this budget also delivers $18 million to our 12 outstanding women’s health organisations to continue their vital work. These organisations, including Women's Health in the North in my electorate, empower women to take charge of their own health. They provide a range of services to promote gender equality, women’s rights and the prevention of violence, and they build capacity across our communities.

This initiative is just one pinpoint in our broader work to help to keep women safe and deliver a world-class health system. On the former I must mention that this budget also delivers an additional $269 million to prevent family violence and support women’s safety, and that is something that is at the forefront of many conversations in my own community.

On the broader health system, I am immensely pleased to see that our budget invests a record $13 billion in our public health system, so all Victorians can get the right care in the right place at the right time. That includes upgrades to our busiest hospitals, the Austin and the Northern, both of which service constituents in my electorate of Northcote. At the Austin this investment will refurbish the existing emergency department, expand its capacity and make things more comfortable for both patients and staff.

Closer to home there is a very important but perhaps less well-known service called the trans and gender-diverse health program run by Your Community Health, which has also received funding for an additional four years. Our community legal services, who do an incredible job, have also received a combined $28.8 million to continue their services, including the Fitzroy Legal Service in the inner north.

Unfortunately I am running out of time, but from big projects to small projects this budget is delivering tangible impact to our communities, and it continues our momentum to deliver real action for all Victorians. I do commend it to the house.

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (18:31): I am pleased that I get an opportunity to rise this evening to talk about the effect of this year’s state budget on the people of Polwarth and generally south-western Victoria, but at the same time I am, as I speak, again just filled with disappointment at the way this budget has so let down people that do not live in the inner city of Melbourne and who are not the beneficiaries of what is not the Big Build but the big, dragged-out, union-pork-barrelled infrastructure waste that has gone on here in Melbourne. That is the view that so many people in country Victoria have, because not only are we just failing to keep up with the basic infrastructure – the roads, updates to our schools. In fact with great disappointment the people at Colac West Primary School and Lismore Primary School learned in this budget that they would have to lose their long-awaited upgrades, because this state is running out of money and it is funnelling resources back into the city. This government has made it an absolute die-in-the-ditch priority that it will spend as much as it can on a tunnel from Cheltenham to Box Hill at the expense of all other Victorians.

How does that play out in a seat like Polwarth? Well, Polwarth has three local government areas, the Surf Coast shire, the Colac Otway shire and Corangamite shire. Between Colac Otway and Corangamite in particular it has been recognised now in study after study that they have some of the poorest quality roads in the poorest condition. They have bridges and roadways desperate for upgrade, and in fact it has almost become a joke. Even on the Princes Highway, the number one highway for Australia, which runs through Surf Coast, Colac Otway and Corangamite, there are segments of road down endlessly, month after month, to 60 kilometres an hour because they just cannot maintain the roads there.

Disappointingly in recent years and despite much fanfare, the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority, which was designed to streamline management and look after one of not only Victoria’s greatest assets but the nation’s greatest assets in the Great Ocean Road region – we have seen this state government let its bureaucracy creep out and take over that region and then not proceed to fund it properly. It is disappointing that again in this budget there have been no extra funds to get projects that have been identified now since 2019. We are talking about the Apollo Bay harbour; we are talking about the upgrade at Point Grey and the beautiful pier precinct at Lorne; we are talking about the cancelled Skenes Creek to Apollo Bay walk. The funds have been taken from that completely; that is now a project gathering dust somewhere. It has been sidelined. We have got desperate upgrades at the Apollo Bay caravan park at Marengo and at the footy recreation reserve in Apollo Bay. We have got walking and access tracks, particularly, say, at the Twelve Apostles, the arch access, down to the Loch Ard Gorge, where the steps have been closed. They had a temporary close for a time on the Port Campbell pier. Then because they realised that they were never going to have funds and it became a safety issue, they have actually opened up parts of the pier that were closed for safety reasons but they are now determined to keep a bit longer.

We have got the historic Colac train station, a beautiful old weatherboard building that is probably 80 ‍per cent derelict. It has had a demolition order put on it, and this government has again got engineers back in. It was unsafe until the end of last year, but it is now deemed safe for another couple of years until they try and scratch up some funding to make that building safe. It is project after project, infrastructure asset after infrastructure asset, that are just being left to rot and decay in regional Victoria and Polwarth in particular.

What is the consequence of that for the people of Polwarth? One of the consequences is the people living today being burdened and shackled with an amazing debt figure, something that is eye-watering. It is in excess of a million dollars an hour. $24 million to $25 million a day is being funnelled out of our community to pay for these excessive, overrun projects in Melbourne, and there has just been nothing delivered to regional Victoria and Polwarth in particular. That million dollars an hour that this government is wasting on blown-out projects is coming at the expense of people having to pay more tax and people in Polwarth in particular.

What this budget delivered to an electorate like Polwarth is they lowered the thresholds on land tax. Most mum-and-dad properties throughout Polwarth were fairly exempt from land tax. Yes, some of the larger, more expensive properties along the coast pay their fair share of tax, but communities like Colac, Cobden, Camperdown, Lismore and Winchelsea – smaller communities that provided low-cost affordable housing for people – are now carrying the burden of massive land tax increases. In fact our office has been inundated with calls about increases in tax from people that did not pay tax and were tax exempt. They are now paying $1000, $2000 and even $3000 on property, which has just been passed on as a cost-of-living increase. That money is not going into improved roads or infrastructure or schools or health services. Instead, that money is being sent straight to Melbourne to pay for tunnels, level crossing removals and other things in Melbourne at the expense of country communities.

While we are talking about the lack of funding for health, of course this budget has also flagged the fact that this government is looking to amalgamate, close or severely restrict health services in regional areas. The Polwarth electorate has around 10 health services. Timboon, Colac, Camperdown, Apollo Bay, Lorne, Winchelsea – all these communities have relied on good, locally controlled health services that are now hugely at risk. We saw only a couple weeks ago the Timboon community come together, 300-odd people, to make it really clear that they want to keep local governance and local control in the health services that their community needs. This government now is so short of cash it really has not been able to manage the finances and provide stability that the health system needs.

These are now the issues we are dealing with. We heard from some of the paramedics that cover that at-times remote area. If we do not have the full gamut of services that Timboon, Camperdown, Colac and others have been offering, ambulance coverage, for example, could plummet. At the moment, because of improved local governance and management in Timboon in recent times, they have been able to rely a lot more heavily on the Timboon hospital, for example. If the Timboon hospital is forced to take away its capacity to deal with ambulance services, then the Timboon community on one call-out alone could see an ambulance taken from the region for many, many more hours at each event. That just leaves people at risk. These are some of the costs that our community is having to bear because this government simply cannot manage its funds.

It is that important infrastructure – health and roads and rail infrastructure. The Premier came out and secretly made a visit to the south-west a couple of weeks ago, where she promised new VLocity trains, which I might remind you were promised back in 2018 and are still not delivered. They said, ‘Oh, we’ll have them going by spring. You’ll be able to go to the footy finals in Melbourne on the new VLocitys.’ Guess what, two weeks after the Premier’s visit, she has just dropped a little message: ‘No, things aren’t going to be ready this year.’ We know that is code for, ‘Sorry, we haven’t got the money to pay for it, and we’re going to push the timelines out even further. You country people can just continue to wait for the services that you have been promised.’ It will be close to nearly 10 years since that promise was made, and it is still not delivered on. We have got those big-ticket infrastructure items, but it goes down to the micro level, down to the community clubs, sporting facilities and others.

One of the ones that is most galling is our surf lifesaving clubs along the Great Ocean Road. They have been treated well in the past, and some clubs have been able to get the funding required to upgrade services. But we have still got clubs at Kennett River and at Apollo Bay, who are expected to pick up the slack on an area of the world that both the state government and the national government advertise and promote. We are bringing millions of people a year into this region, and we are relying 100 per cent on the generosity of volunteer surf lifesavers to come out and man those in the most appalling conditions – steps, stairs, lack of disability access, facilities that can no longer be used. For heaven’s sake. Particularly the one at Apollo Bay, for example, they are not allowed to even prune trees and have proper visibility of the beach anymore. There is a complete lack of good, transparent funding and ability for those clubs to maintain those services. In a year where we had record drownings on our public beaches and in our public waterways, the least that this government could do is return some of that increase in taxes that people are paying back into the regions to provide basic emergency services.

While we are speaking of emergency services, we do not mean to do what this government also did by increasing the fire services levy. It was a great reform brought in by this side of the house back in 2010–2014 where we said that everyone has a responsibility to help make sure we have state-of-the-art fire services in one of the most fire-prone regions in Australia. What did we get? Well, we got a tax that everyone paid as part of their rates and that seemed to be a pretty fair system. But what is not fair, what is absolutely not fair, is when this government increases that tax by $188 million in one year. I guess the CFA volunteers and the SES volunteers and other emergency services might say, ‘Well if that $188 million was poured in for the catch-up on our CFA trucks, our SES services and our fire sheds – all the critical infrastructure that so many volunteers fundraise for on an annual basis – we would probably almost forgive the government for the tax increase.’ But no, not the $188 million. They gave in this budget allocation the miserly sum of $106,000 out of $188 million. That equates to 0.05 per cent of the tax increase for fire services actually going back to those services; 99.95 per cent of that increase in tax is being siphoned off by this irresponsible, lazy government, and is most likely paying for cost overruns and hiked up, poorly managed projects here in Melbourne at the expense of community safety and fire safety in the regions.

With only a few minutes left to address the myriad of faults in this year’s budget, I would also like to just point to the disaster of public housing allegedly called the Big Housing Build. I will refer specifically just to a couple of measures. This is not opposition rhetoric. This is the government’s own words. I will just quote a couple of points here. This government is allegedly spending the most of any state. That is what they keep rolling out in their hard hats and fluoro vests when they turn up to press conferences. But here in black and white is their own determinant, and it is page 47 of the performance document. How many clients are they going to assist in this next year with all the money they have spent? Well, last year, they allegedly helped 103,000 people. They are not helping one extra person. Exactly the same amount of people that they helped last year, they are helping this year. Not one extra family is to be assisted by this budget. Number of clients provided with accommodation – we helped 30,000 people last year. We are not helping any more people this year. This is in a time where every year this government has been in, the waiting list for homes has increased. It has gone from 9900 back in 2014, and it now spends most of its time in excess of 60,000 families.

And the one that is most distressing – this government talks about the billions it has spent on housing. The government predicted last year a target of 91,248 social housing dwellings. This year, member for Evelyn, guess how many homes they are budgeting for, after $4.5 billion to $5 billion spent on housing? 91,148. They are budgeting in this budget to have 100 fewer homes available for homeless people in Victoria. So that is why we are not helping any more homeless people, we are not helping any more families escaping domestic violence and we are not helping any more marginalised Indigenous or multicultural communities. None of those groups are getting any more help out of a budget that called itself ‘a budget for all Victorians’. No-one is being assisted, because this government has so poorly managed its housing stock that it has actually been forced into printing in its own budget that it is going to have fewer homes available, and that is something that is quite beyond belief. The other concern is – with what housing stock we do have – this budget is also predicting that last year they assisted around 2000 homes in getting upgraded, and despite the rhetoric around the loss of the Commonwealth Games where more money was supposed to go to housing, they are actually unable to improve any more housing; we are seeing a decrease in the amount of homes that are going to be fixed up in Victoria.

In conclusion, this budget is a disappointment for Victorians, whether you live in Polwarth or whether you rely on our emergency services or housing.

Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (18:46): I rise to support the 2024–25 Victorian state budget take-note motion currently before the Parliament and to support the real investments and the real actions contained in this year’s state Labor budget that will help us continue building a better, fairer Victoria and indeed better and fairer local community across my suburbs of Pascoe Vale, Coburg and Brunswick West. In doing so I would like to begin by acknowledging of course the Premier, the Treasurer and indeed all cabinet ministers and their respective teams for their work in putting together this year’s budget. This is a budget that builds on Labor’s positive work, since forming government in 2014 and subsequently following the 2018 and 2022 elections, to continue delivering for the people of Victoria and indeed my local community and to help Victorian families through real cost-of-living relief measures. It is a budget that is all about taking that real action on the things that matter through ongoing investments to support jobs, education, transport, health, wellbeing, environmental and social justice outcomes.

But it is a budget that has also been developed and delivered in a challenging international and national economic environment. Along with the ongoing impacts following on from the COVID-19 pandemic, which required us to invest record amounts to protect businesses, jobs and livelihoods, the ongoing effects of international conflicts, tensions and events are also impacting a myriad of other supply chain, inflationary, energy and cost-of-living challenges. As the Treasurer said in his Appropriation (2024–2025) Bill 2024 second-reading speech, two of the biggest economic challenges in particular that have confronted the 2024 state budget have included high inflation and workforce shortages. That is why, along with responding to those cost-of-living challenges for families, the 2024 budget also focuses on fiscal discipline – making sensible decisions that respond to the challenges ahead, mainly around jobs and skills and workforce shortages – whilst also continuing to sensibly invest in kinders, schools, transport services, hospitals, wellbeing services, community sporting clubs, climate and environmental action and of course social justice initiatives, including housing.

When it comes to jobs, skills and workforce shortages, this budget at its heart seeks to continue growing economic and employment and training opportunities for all Victorians by continuing to invest in the things that matter, including via our game-changing Big Build infrastructure agenda. We are continuing to support our growing economy for workers and businesses. Since coming to office in 2014 it has been this Victorian Labor government that has created almost 840,000 new jobs – 840,000 ‍– driving unemployment down to a low 4.4 per cent as of June 2024. After a period of state Liberal–National government that left behind almost a 7 per cent unemployment rate on their watch, it has proudly been our government that has continued to place job creation at the heart of its approach to governing and economic management of this state.

But it is also business investment that has continued to grow, with a 13 per cent increase in business investment last year, outpacing the rest of the country by nearly 6 percentage points, with Victoria’s economy growing by 9.1 per cent over the past two years, outpacing New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania. Deloitte Access Economics predicts Victoria will continue to spearhead economic growth among all other states over the next five years, and that is contrary to the false claims by the Liberal–National opposition. These economic indicators clearly show that our government’s approach to protecting and creating new jobs as the economic priority is working – because we know fundamentally the important role that job creation plays in not only the state’s prosperity but the prosperity of every household, family and individual.

A job is more than just a pay cheque. It provides a sense of purpose, achievement and certainty for every family, very much underpinning the socio-economic wellbeing of our community. It is for this reason that in this budget we are investing in a $580 million package designed to help create even more jobs and respond to those workforce shortages for businesses across key sectors, including introducing strict local content requirements on our strategic projects – 330-odd – to the value of $170 billion to engage and prioritise Victorian businesses and workers. We are continuing to support the rollout of free TAFE through over 80 free TAFE courses, and there is over $31 million towards our Skills First initiative and more funding to grow and support apprentices, traineeships and cadets via the Major Projects Skills Guarantee.

There are ongoing investments and support of course to support our local small businesses, including via a range of services, supports and resources that can support small businesses to grow and become more resilient, including through the Small Business Bus, which has visited central Coburg on at least two occasions, because it is central Coburg that is at the heart of my community’s local small business, jobs and revitalisation efforts.

Through the 2024 budget I am very pleased to report that it still by and large remains the record investments of this Victorian Labor government that continue to drive and lead local central Coburg, Sydney Road and Upfield corridor revitalisation efforts with two new world-class stations at Coburg and Moreland; the removal of four dangerous level crossings of course at Moreland Road, Reynard Street, Munro Street and Bell Street; the delivery of a landmark new active transport cycling, walking and recreational open space corridor along the Upfield line in Coburg, with new open space – two MCGs worth – and the planting of over 3000 trees and shrubs; the recent opening for term 2 of the new $22.5 million Coburg Special Developmental School; the ongoing design and delivery of the future $17.8 million Coburg High technology hub; the $6 million redevelopment of the Coburg City Oval to help the mighty Coburg Lions but which recently also welcomed and accommodated the Bachar Houli Foundation and Islamic College of Sport; over $600,000 to revitalise and restore local creeks through Coburg, including the Merri Creek and Edgars Creek; and over $500,000 to support other local social and wellbeing services in central Coburg, including the Reynard Street Neighbourhood House, the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria, VICSEG and many other organisations who are working to build a more resilient and vibrant local community.

These and several other key government-led initiatives – including the reforms to remove up-front stamp duty on commercial and industrial land, which will help unlock under-utilised land parcels; the state’s new housing statement and work through the updated Plan Melbourne to become Plan Victoria; and the future opportunities associated with the two former Kangan Batman TAFE sites in Coburg North and Coburg South, which I have continued to advocate very strongly for on behalf of my local community – will all when combined continue to help drive central Coburg revitalisation efforts, attract new investment and position Coburg as that future jobs, skills and cultural hub for Melbourne’s north.

It is this state Labor government’s investment that is already being leveraged to attract new private and non-government investments. In this regard, 26 years ago to the day after Pentridge Prison was formally closed and decommissioned as a prison on 1 May 1997, I was honoured and humbled to have officially opened that newest chapter in the story of central Coburg’s evolution last year through the new Pentridge visitor and entertainment cultural precinct. Just one year on, as featured on Getaway and Postcards, via a plethora of online pages and in traditional media outlets, the precinct is very much becoming that game changer for Coburg and Melbourne’s greater north when it comes to new tourism, visitation and cultural experiences, with the last 12 months recording – get this – an average of 90,000 ‍visitors each month to the new Pentridge precinct. That is over 1 million visitors since it officially opened – way more visitors, dare I say, than those who were originally housed there under the governor’s stewardship. The National Trust of Australia’s incredible immersive and must-see heritage tours have hosted almost 39,000 guests since commencing, who have included international, interstate, intrastate and local visitors. I have been working very closely with many local stakeholders but also a number of ministers who I have welcomed to the precinct and who I look forward to progressing plans on the ongoing revitalisation with.

Also, real action on local education is the future for socio-economic prosperity, which this year’s budget very much continues to deliver on for my area. Beginning with early childhood and kindergartens, it is the Victorian Labor government that is continuing to invest those record amounts through our Best Start, Best Life initiative as we continue the rollout of our game-changing free kinder program for three- and four-year-olds, saving families $2500 per year. We are working to also continue upgrading local kinders to create that extra capacity, and that is why the 2024–25 state budget does continue to support these local upgrades via our landmark $10.7 million Building Blocks partnership with Merri-bek council to upgrade 11 local kinders and create 329 additional kinder spaces. These have included – as facilitated previously and currently funded – up to $1.5 million to deliver a virtually brand new Derby Street Children’s Centre, which on 6 June I visited with the Minister for Children Minister Blandthorn to turn the sod officially on the project, which will create at least 20 more spaces for children and increase overall capacity to 75 spaces.

There is $1.35 million for the new Doris Blackburn Preschool in Pascoe Vale South, which we opened in September 2023, and $1 million towards a major redevelopment of Dunstan Reserve kinder on Everett Street in Brunswick West, which we announced on 6 June with the minister. It will provide for an upgrade of the two-year-olds room modernisation of the kinder building and overall centre layout, along with upgrades to the kitchen and staff and amenity spaces, creating an extra 22 spaces across the three- and four-year-old rooms. It was a pleasure to recently visit the centre with the minister and to meet with centre leader Daniela Theocharides, educators and parents to celebrate that excellent news. There is $500,000 towards the Turner Street redevelopment in Pascoe Vale, which we also visited a couple of weeks ago with the minister to inspect the completed works, which include a new learning space and new foyer, verandah, staffrooms and restrooms, and to say thank you to the educators, Aradnah, Anna, Pina, Alyssa and all the others who do such a fabulous job and were teaching my two daughters not too long ago. There is $493,000 to upgrade St Linus in North Coburg and $154,000 for the Shirley Robertson Children’s Centre to install those new verandahs for their three- and four-year-old kinder rooms, which I just recently visited with Peter Khalil, the federal member, to catch up with director Tina Papa.

Yesterday I was delighted to announce even more funding for local kinder upgrades, including $59,000 for the Anne Sgro Children’s Centre in May Street, Coburg, to install long overdue and much-needed sun shades. A short story there: Anne Sgro was my old Italian teacher at Coburg West Primary School, so it is great to support her back via that investment. There is $56,000 for St Linus playgroup to install new solar panels and insulation. There is $23,000 of additional funding to Shirley Robertson for new acoustic ceiling panels. Also there is funding for a number of other kinder administration, IT and tech upgrades at Newlands Preschool, Moreland kinder, Kids on the Avenue in Coburg, Lake Park kinder in Coburg and Kent Road Uniting kinder in Pascoe Vale.

It is also across our primary schools that this year’s budget very much continues to deliver. The brand new $7.7 million indoor gymnasium and basketball court at Pascoe Vale Primary School is currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2025 as part of the school’s overall $18 million redevelopment – a massive project, an incredible project. The brand new $20 million facilities and upgrades being delivered at Newlands Primary School on Elizabeth Street in Coburg include an indoor gym, basketball court, new classrooms and admin facilities. I acknowledge the member for Preston’s work in that regard as we share that boundary and that school in terms of a catchment area. These investments also build on the many other record investments we have delivered for local primary schools since 2014.

In terms of high schools, I am very happy to see that this budget continues to help us progress the $17.8 million new technology hub at Coburg High, with the designs and the project scope out in the tender process for further consideration. I look forward to catching up with Brent Houghton, the principal, next week to get an update on how that is all tracking, but so far, so good. The community is very excited. The $14.5 million facilities at Pascoe Vale Girls College include a new library and a tech and creative building. I had the pleasure of visiting just a couple of months ago with the member for Broadmeadows. I acknowledge the member for Greenvale in that regard too, because Pascoe Vale Girls very much stretches across the northern suburbs in terms of catchment. Those new facilities are now being utilised for the first time, as of this term. Funding is also included in this budget to progress design and development at John Fawkner’s tech hub, and that is through the $14.5 million commitment that we have made.

We understand local families value the quality of our local high schools. That is why we have continued to invest in all of them since 2014, including $1 million at Mercy College, $21.1 million at Strathmore Secondary and almost $10 million at Glenroy Secondary. That is why we have also committed to the very first Merri-bek education plan for the area. It is a first, and I am very much looking forward to that being finalised and released in due course, because it will provide the pathway in terms of how we as a government and the community can continue working together to improve outcomes across all of our local high schools in Merri-bek North.

It is also students with special and additional learning needs that we continue to invest in through this budget. We continue to embed those new resources via mental health and wellbeing initiatives through schools to support students with a range of neurodiversity needs across our community. This budget also did provide final funding to acquit that magnificent $22.5 million project, the Coburg Special Development School on Urquhart Street.

Also, in terms of transport, we are delivering through this budget transport infrastructure, roads and public and active transport of course. There is $233 million to get the Metro Tunnel project ready for day one as well.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.