Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Motions

Budget papers 2024–25

Debate resumed.

Katie HALL (Footscray) (18:01): I am absolutely delighted to make a contribution on this year’s take-note motion on the budget. I am excited about what is to come in Footscray in the next year, because 2025 is going to be a huge year in Footscray, where we will see the delivery of budget commitments from the past come to fruition. I will get to this year’s budget in a moment, but I cannot overstate how exciting next year is going to be in the electorate of Footscray because our $1.5 billion new Footscray Hospital project will be opening in 2025. Footscray Hospital of course has a proud history in my community. It was funded through philanthropy and through volunteer fundraising, and we have wonderful staff at Footscray Hospital. The new Footscray Hospital, which many people in this place have commented on to me, is a remarkable-looking building. The facade has just been completed and the fit-out is well underway. The new Footscray Hospital will have 200 extra beds. It will have a village green running through the centre of the hospital. It is going to have childcare facilities and of course that all-important connection to Victoria University via a footbridge across to the Footscray Park campus of the university. Victoria University will be moving a whole range of its allied health courses to Footscray Park so that they can maximise the ability for the students to benefit from having a tertiary teaching hospital right across the road at the new Footscray Hospital site. I am enormously excited about seeing that beautiful facility for my community come into fruition.

When you are visiting the new Footscray Hospital you will be able to get there on a next-generation tram, because we are rolling out next-generation trams in Footscray and in Melbourne’s inner west with a brand new tram stabling facility in Maidstone. There will be a tram stop right near the hospital on Droop Street for people to catch public transport to this beautiful new hospital. It is not just trams you will be able to catch in 2025 in Footscray, the Metro Tunnel will also be opening next year, and Footscray of course will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this extraordinary infrastructure project.

The Sunbury line will have a 60 per cent increase in capacity, and I know for residents in West Footscray, Middle Footscray and Tottenham that is very exciting news. Also the Werribee and Williamstown lines will see major benefits from the Metro Tunnel opening. For the Footscray health precinct – and we are developing a health precinct in Footscray – residents, patients, people working there and students will also have a direct connection to Parkville through the Metro Tunnel project. That is a very exciting development.

I feel like I am on one of those late-night infomercials: ‘But wait, there’s more happening next year, in 2025.’ The opening of the West Gate Tunnel is just going to be extraordinary for our community. I would like to acknowledge that it has been a challenging time for the residents of the inner west as the West Gate Tunnel Project has been taking shape, but what will happen when the West Gate Tunnel opens is that we will have 9000 trucks every day being taken off streets in the inner west. This is something that my community has campaigned for for decades through the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group, and this year in our budget we delivered $10 million to provide truck enforcement cameras on those streets that are going to be getting truck bans as part of the West Gate Tunnel Project. This budget announcement was so well received in my community and by residents who live on these truck routes, because of our proximity to the port. The port is growing and getting busier. But the streets of Footscray and Yarraville were not designed for the container trucks that are coming through so close to houses and schools, and we have done what we can with curfews and with data cameras.

I really want to give a shout-out and express my gratitude to Minister Horne because she worked really hard to help me deliver this commitment. The truck enforcement cameras – and you will see all across the inner west people have signs up saying ‘Enforce curfews now’ – will mean that residents can have the confidence that the truck bans that we are going to be delivering in 2025 will be effective. Certainly that was the feedback I heard from residents. I ran a campaign to get the funding for this important budget commitment and was thrilled to see it delivered in full in this year’s budget. Again, I would like to thank the member for Williamstown for her advocacy and support as someone in the inner west ‍– someone whose electorate is also impacted by the movement of trucks from the port. So that has been an exciting development.

Next year, 2025, we have got our truck bans and our truck enforcement cameras coming, the new Footscray hospital of course, the West Gate Tunnel delivering that crucial second river crossing, the Metro Tunnel and the new next-generation trams. Another budget commitment from a couple of years ago will be delivered next year, and that is the upgrade to the Footscray Community Arts Centre. Footscray Community Arts is a much-loved arts centre in Melbourne’s inner west. It is Australia’s finest community arts centre, and it has a remarkable history in our community. The building itself was saved by local activists and the meatworkers union. It was an old piggery, and it was saved as a place for working people of the western suburbs to have access to the arts.

Since that time Footscray Community Arts has delivered that in spades, and it is now a very highly regarded community arts facility. In fact I think it is Australia’s only NDIS provider of arts services, and it is a wonderful thing. I was really pleased to take Minister Brooks down to Footscray Community Arts to meet with some of the NDIS participants recently. That beautiful new facility, which is a $9 million commitment, will be opening, and that puts a roof on Footscray’s famous amphitheatre out by the Maribyrnong River. Many people have been married there, with school plays, music festivals, concerts and multicultural arts events, but of course it is always exposed to the weather. Footscray Community Arts as an old piggery was not designed for large music festivals, and having to bring in the infrastructure every single time we had a Laneway Festival or another comparable event down there by the river has been expensive. Delivering this budget commitment next year is just another wonderful thing happening in 2025 in Melbourne’s inner west.

In addition to the truck enforcement cameras, the $10 million commitment, one of the things I am so excited about is the 20 kilometres of new bike lanes that are going to be delivered as part of the West Gate Tunnel Project, including the magnificent veloway that will be taking cyclists from Footscray and Yarraville directly into the city. I had the opportunity last week to stand on the veloway, and it is a really remarkable piece of infrastructure. I know that Footscray is a place that people should commute to the city for work from, and lots of people do want to ride their bikes. But of course navigating the traffic around the port has always been a challenge, so having it fully separated, with 24-hour CCTV and entry and exit points as well as being wide enough for an ambulance to travel along the veloway is a really impressive piece of infrastructure. That is an exciting thing that is coming on line next year that complements the wonderful budget commitment we had this year with the enforcement cameras to make sure that our streets are safer, because the truck movements have been increasing in recent years as the port gets busier.

In my inaugural speech in this place I spoke about Footscray and the inner west being a place that was designed for factories and freight. As the factories have increasingly closed and been turned into apartments there has been a lot of change happening in the inner west, and getting trucks off our roads is one of my highest priorities and certainly something that in my community people are very passionate about. I would like to acknowledge the work of the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group, who have campaigned for enforcement cameras to complement the West Gate Tunnel Project. As I said, 9000 trucks being taken off roads in my community every day will be huge. For the students at Kingsville Primary School on Somerville Road and St Augustine’s to know that there are enforcement cameras I think will give the parents a lot of comfort, because unfortunately we know from the data cameras that we have installed in recent years that some truck drivers whether deliberately or by accident have been breaking the curfews. I know that having this $10 million commitment this year means that we will be ready, when the West Gate Tunnel opens, to enforce those curfews. I know that Martin Wurt from the Maribyrnong Truck Action Group was absolutely delighted to hear about that.

With the time I have remaining I just want to speak a little bit about food security. The magnificent Foodbank is located in my electorate in Yarraville. The school breakfast program is something I am really passionate about, and just last week I visited the volunteers who were packing the boxes for the school breakfast program, who were thrilled with the budget commitment for the school breakfast program expansion in addition to the $400 payment that families will receive to support them with cost-of-living expenses. Camps are expensive, but we are doing a lot with the glasses program, with the camps fund and with the school breakfast program to make sure our little learners have enough food in their tummies to concentrate at school. It is really important stuff. So they were delighted at Foodbank with the expansion of this program, as am I, and I know I will be encouraging every school in my electorate to sign up to the program and make sure that they can have their own school breakfast program at school. It has been a great outcome for Footscray to have the expansion of school breakfast programs, the $400 payments and of course our $10 million enforcement cameras to support the West Gate Tunnel opening in 2025.

Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (18:16): I rise today to speak on the 2024–25 Victorian state budget, a budget filled with funding cuts, broken promises and taxes that quite simply are the result of a government that cannot manage money and cannot manage a project, and regional Victorians are paying the price.

When it comes to our state’s healthcare system the cuts have been brutal and significant. More than $207 million has been cut from public health to go along with the millions being cut from dental services, aged care, ambulance services, health workforce training and maternal and child health. These cuts are coming at a time when our healthcare providers and patients can least afford it. We have significantly delayed ambulance response times, out-of-control GP and surgery waitlists, forced mergers of regional hospitals and a general lack of resourcing.

Our regional hospitals have not been given a chance to succeed, with Labor consistently cutting their funding to compensate for their own financial mismanagement. Years of waste and underinvestment in our health services have resulted in too many Victorians suffering tragic health outcomes. Nurses and employees at hospitals across the region remain concerned and disappointed about the forced mergers of local health services. A petition has been calling for hospital amalgamations to be cancelled and for local jobs and services to be protected. 15,000 people across three petitions have told the Allan Labor government to keep their hands off our hospitals. For too long this government has exploited our regional health services as a cash cow to bolster its financial mismanagement of Melbourne projects, of which we have now learned nearly $40 million in cost blowouts is largely due to widespread corruption by CFMEU executives and has been enabled and protected by this government.

Labor has painted a picture that local hospitals are losing money due to inefficiencies and a poor allocation of resources and that hospital operations are to blame. This could not be further from the truth. The reality is the Labor government has never provided enough funding for hospitals to succeed, because we know it cannot manage money. Towns like Benalla still do not have a dialysis unit despite consistent calls for funding to this government. Wangaratta is left without a PET scan machine, and services like Nexus health have had to cancel their counselling program, a crucial mental health service for the Kilmore and wider Mitchell shire community. This is the only mental health service in the southern Hume region, cut because this government cannot manage money.

Mental health has had a brutal impact, cruelly ignored in this year’s bleak budget, with some of Victoria’s most vulnerable people being left without crucial support. The Allan Labor government deferred the establishment of 35 local mental health and wellbeing hubs, and so many of these are in regional Victoria. This decision makes a mockery of the mental health levy, which was supposed to fix our failed system. Year after year Labor make promises to support Victorians, only to quietly turn their backs, allowing our mental health system to decline further.

The Allan Labor government must prioritise consultation with the mental health sector rather than relying on political rhetoric. Having spoken with the sector at length, I was told of closures, long waitlists, an inability to make referrals and no handover between services for patients. When a local service in Broadford was forced to close its doors, nearby options were unable to take on its referrals. It left vulnerable locals without a single low-cost option for counselling in the region. With a lack of bulk-billing options many were simply unable to find mental health care that they could afford. This is entirely unacceptable. It is time for concrete action, not empty words and false hope, to address the critical issues in our mental health system.

The current hospital funding level is just barely enough to cover wages and basic expenses, such as food and medicine, and has suffocated hospitals and left them unable to replace equipment that has reached its end of life or to recruit more staff. Other towns have been unable to keep their emergency department doors open, leaving locals at severe risk. We are already seeing the impact of these proposed mergers before many of them have even begun, including job losses for long-term cleaning, catering and support staff as well as nurses. These mergers are punishing local health services that by all accounts are running better than the state’s major health providers they are being merged with. This government is hell-bent on destroying Victoria’s health services, which were once regarded by the prestigious King’s Fund in 2015 as hospitals which had a culture of innovation, the freedom to govern, excellent services, and all underpinned by a culture of organisational stability. This is the real-world consequence of Labor’s mismanagement of our health system.

Our hospitals are a source of pride for our communities. They are major employers and ensure that locals get high-quality treatment without having to travel long distances. Instead, we are hearing of specialised medical facilities replacing existing services in our towns, meaning each of our regional communities will have far less health services available to them locally. This plan might make sense from an office in the city, but when there are no public transport options, you are forced to travel hours for simple health care. It will not work. If all health specialists are moved to centralised locations outside of our towns, how are patients meant to get to appointments? Regional taxi fares are expensive. Our overcrowded trains leave most of our towns just three times per day. Ambulances are left ramping at our hospitals, and volunteer options like the Royal Flying Doctor Service community transport team are not being supported with sufficient government funding.

We do not want to have a health system like the US, where only the wealthy and those that can travel freely have access to crucial health services. It is clear that funding effective local health services is not prioritised by this government, as seen by this budget and their consistent push to merge local hospitals. I wholeheartedly oppose these mergers and support the right of our local hospitals to operate independently and not lose their local skill, local knowledge, local care and local voice. As things stand, people living in regional areas already are 1.8 times more likely to die from potentially avoidable causes compared to people in major cities.

Much like health, child care is another area set to suffer as a result of this year’s budget. We are already seeing the consequences: $79 million has been cut from early childhood sector supports, while funding for Labor’s new kindergarten and childcare rollout is set to take a back seat. The failed childcare rollout will have a profound impact on not only my electorate but the entire state, particularly regional Victoria. Seymour’s childcare centre was announced as one of 50 initially planned by the state, yet it seems that it has just ended up being another broken promise. It was bad enough when Labor said it would take until 2028 for the new centre to open, and now it has been delayed beyond 2032. When it comes to voting, Victorian mothers will not forget the brutal cuts this government imposed on their families. At the earliest, it will now be 2032 before Seymour receives a childcare facility, which it so badly needed when it was announced in early 2022. Regional Victoria has been suffering due to the lack of accessible and available child care for such a long time. Labor’s inability to successfully deliver childcare facilities is making this so much more difficult.

Towns like Avenel, Seymour, Nagambie, Broadford and more are struggling with outrageous waitlists caused by a lack of childcare and early learning facilities. The Seymour announcement deterred three not-for-profit and private investments from coming to our community, leaving only a broken promise by this government. Labor’s attempted rollout of new childcare centres across the state has been a disaster, with our region only going backwards in this sector and the government single-handedly compounding this crisis. This government time and time again have shown they cannot manage money, they cannot manage a project and they cannot deliver accessible child care for our regional communities.

The same can be said of education – another area of concern for this budget. Upgrades to Broadford Primary School were among 29 education projects across the state that Labor committed to during the 2022 election – yet another broken promise by Labor will now remain unfunded. Labor committed nearly $14 million for Broadford Primary’s redevelopment during the 2022 election. However, this school will no longer receive the funding any time soon as it was left off the budget. But let me reiterate: we mothers do not forget easily. We will not forget when a government impacts our families with poor policy, broken promises and corruption. Parents, students and staff are rightly concerned that the school’s redevelopment has been cancelled. When the commitment was initially announced Labor representatives said Broadford Primary School’s funding would be life-changing for these students. This life-changing promise is no longer important to the Labor government, who instead will continue to blow hundreds of millions of dollars on unnecessary Melbourne projects and remain under the thumb of the corrupt CFMEU executives. Failing to uphold this commitment jeopardises the academic success of the local children and undermines their overall wellbeing and future opportunities. This is yet another direct consequence of Labor’s financial mismanagement, and local students and the education system have paid the ultimate price.

This year’s budget is full of tax changes that are set to have a pretty devastating impact on the state as a whole, but in particular on communities like my electorate of Euroa. One of the major changes is an increase to the fire service levy. The announcement means Victorians will pay nearly $200 million more in fire taxes in the next year. Despite this sizeable increase our CFA brigades are unlikely to see much benefit at all. Like last year, the vast majority of funds raised through this fire service levy will not reach the brigades. We are seeing regional residents and farm owners saddled with significantly higher fees. These are fees that will see at least an extra $1000 added to bills for farmers – all just to cover the demands of city-based brigades. Much of this levy increase will go towards the United Firefighters Union and not our dedicated volunteer firefighters, who put their lives at risk to protect their own communities. All our brigades want is simple; they want vehicles that are safe, appliances and facilities that are fit for purpose. I do not think that is too much to ask. These brigades want to be able to effectively keep our communities safe.

Labor has decided to delay 83 per cent of existing CFA capital projects by another year. The delay to these critical projects highlights Labor’s long-term neglect of our tireless volunteer firefighters. On our side of the house we stand with our volunteer CFA firefighters. The CFA is still waiting on the delivery of 28 of the 48 critical new heavy tankers that were originally promised by a Labor government back in 2021, with only 15 currently active. These are years overdue, with many of our regional communities in desperate need of new vehicles as their existing ones are unsafe and not fit for service. Documents from Fire Rescue Victoria were made public earlier this year. It was revealed 193 vehicles in the CFA’s 2322-strong fleet are over 30 years old, while 430 are more than 25 years old. Having met with brigade captains and several volunteers, there are serious concerns about these ageing vehicles as well as the culture of the CFA as it deals with a lack of funding and support. We have witnessed the disastrous decisions by this government regarding fire management – a lack of planned burns, the closure of the sustainable native timber industry, failure to replace ageing vehicles and the loss of more than 6500 operational CFA volunteers.

I put forward questions to the Treasurer to ask how our CFA brigades will benefit from these ludicrous tax changes, and I am yet to have a response. This government’s lack of support is death by a thousand cuts to our selfless volunteer firefighters, and it fails those who risk their lives to protect our regional communities. This budget has also seen cuts made to crime prevention programs, representing a wider issue this government fails to address: keeping our communities safe. People in my region have expressed how they are feeling more vulnerable to crime at the moment in town, at their places of business and on farm. A recent community safety forum held in my electorate heard of the incredible efforts of households, farmers and businesses and what they are doing to keep safe. Many are reinvigorating their Neighbourhood Watch programs because they feel unsafe under this government. While my community is always inspiring, this is a temporary solution. This government must step up and address the increasing crime rates and keep our communities safe.

Another issue that we have to raise is those that are not being funded outside the public school system. Those that have been discriminated against who are at Catholic and independent schools were failed and were ineligible for the $400 payment – another example that this government cannot manage money and cannot manage projects, and Victorians are paying the price.

Ros SPENCE (Kalkallo – Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Community Sport, Minister for Carers and Volunteers) (18:31): I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.