Wednesday, 14 August 2024

Government performance

Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (16:40): It is a pleasure to rise on this grievance debate today, and I will leave my colleague the Shadow Minister for Police to respond to a few of those comments from the member for Bayswater. Today I grieve not only for the Victorian people but for a lot of you up there who will not have your seats after the next election, because of the state’s mismanagement. I will not go into predicting exactly what the election result will be, because we are too far away from that, but I can guarantee you there is going to be a major swing away from some of those sitting on the other side. The polls currently show this even this far out, and things are not going to get any better for members of the government because there is very, very good reason for it. A number of you are going to lose your seats at the next election, and not necessarily to people over on this side. Some of you will lose your seats to the Greens. The reality of it is you have a millstone hanging around your neck, and that is the state debt.

A member interjected.

Tim BULL: I am aware of that.

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Gippsland East, through the Chair.

Tim BULL: Yes, I apologise, Speaker. The state debt that is hanging around this government’s neck is the millstone. We are hitting $178 billion – that is indeed the forecast – and the commitment to the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) is the reason why a lot of your pre-election commitments have been kicked down the road. It is the reason why we are facing –

Danny Pearson: On a point of order, Speaker, perhaps if the member for Gippsland East could, rather than say ‘you’, just say ‘members of the government’. So delete ‘you’ –

The SPEAKER: Order! I have directed the member for Gippsland East to direct his commentary through the Chair, not at the Chair or at members opposite.

Tim BULL: Thank you, Speaker. I was just trying to make a point, and I apologise for not abiding by your ruling.

As the member for Bulleen pointed out in this chamber yesterday, with the situation that this government finds itself in, somebody has to pay, and unfortunately it will be members of the backbench who are not sitting in the cabinet room making these decisions that will pay the price. And the commitment on top of our state debt to stage 1 of the Suburban Rail Loop of $35 billion is simply sucking all of the state’s finances down the drain and not allowing the projects that we want on this side of the chamber for our electorates and that a lot of the backbenchers on that side want for their electorates to happen.

Unless you are in a seat that had Commonwealth Games funding committed to it, you got very, very little out of the most recent budget, and Victorians know we cannot afford the SRL. We on this side know that we cannot, and I know that a number on the other side of the chamber are aware that we cannot. Some indeed, we are aware, have spoken up. We had the Deputy Premier raising concerns about the SRL before the Premier came out the following day and psychologically realigned him and he had to wind back his comments. But because of the state debt and the commitment to SRL a number of the issues that this state is facing cannot be resolved. Let us talk about a few of them.

We talk about health. Where do you start? We saw the screenshots of the departmental PowerPoints to establish local health service networks – code for board and CEO mergers. We have read the emails that went to our hospital CEOs about reducing budgets. We saw them – hospitals asked to reduce frontline services, asked to reduce back-of-office services. There are not people walking around our hospitals with nothing to do or jobs that can just go. All of those jobs are part of our health service network. CEOs said we simply cannot have these savings that the government is asking for without impacting on frontline services.

We had the announcement of some increased funding, but then the Treasurer came out today and put a big question mark over that. If we are going to have increased funding for our health services, we really need to know where that money is coming from and where that money is going. The issue is that if we have boards that have had heavy-duty Labor appointments made to them over recent years making recommendations about amalgamations, our communities will simply not accept that and those members who are representing those areas with health services will suffer the consequences.

I can tell you, if we go through with mergers in Gippsland of hospital boards and have them operating under one CEO, I would not like to be in Ms Shing’s number 2 spot on the upper house ticket in Gippsland. That will not go well, and you can duplicate that all around the state.

We have an ambulance crisis in this state. A 2015 media release quoted the then Parliamentary Secretary for Health – now Minister for Health – as saying Labor’s reforms will result in ‘better, faster responses’. Well, how is that going? Ambulances are ramped. Hospitals are unable to cope. Ambulances are pulling up at hospitals and they cannot get their patients into these hospitals. The minister has overseen a complete mess in our health sector.

In Bairnsdale on I think it was 19 July we had six ambulances ramped at the Bairnsdale hospital and staff shortages at the hospital, and the hospital was full. The CEO had to put out a statement in the local media the next day apologising because they did not have the staff to get people off the ambulances and the hospital was full. To those on that side: free up the money from the SRL, invest it into our health services and help yourselves. On our bush nursing centres, the nurses deserve their pay rise, but with a 28 per cent pay increase over five years where are our bush nursing centres going to get that money from?

In housing we recently had the Minister for Housing in the other place saying on ABC radio there are 30 new public housing homes in eastern Victoria, giving herself a good old pat on the back. The trouble is we have had more than 30 either sold off or demolished. In the local government areas of East Gippsland, Wellington and Latrobe we have had a net loss of public housing homes since 2015. There is a housing crisis, and since 2015 we have had a net loss. Then we have the rental market in crisis. What is the government’s response to our rental crisis? ‘Let’s put additional land taxes on landlords.’ It exacerbates the problem. It is astounding that that could be the answer to the rental problem that we have. It is going to work in the opposite direction.

Then we had the recent housing summit. Members of the government walked out of that. The Treasurer was accused of having a ‘tin ear’. People who attended that housing summit, industry participants, described it as being vacuous.

To those on that side: you need a new approach. You need to make some change. I am not talking about the member for Essendon here, I am talking about the person who normally sits there, who needs to change to save some of these seats up the back, and they know it. I know that they know it.

On roads, our roads are falling to bits. I have been in this place for 14 years, and it is the first time I have heard metropolitan members standing up in most sitting weeks complaining about our roads. I can assure you, in country Victoria they have not got much better. I had one truckie come into my office last week, and he made the comment that the Monaro Highway looked like a battlefield. He referenced it as looking something like the Somme battlefield. We have the National Transport Research Organisation saying 91 per cent of our roads in Victoria are either very poor or poor – 91 ‍per cent, the worst state. What is this government’s response to our poor roads? Its response is to have less roads maintenance funding – 16 per cent less – than it had in 2015. How are the roads going to get better when we have got less funding going in? I say again to members on the other side: get rid of the SRL, invest in health, invest in housing, invest in roads, where our constituents want it to go. If I was sitting in a western suburbs Labor seat at the moment or a country Labor seat, I do not think I would be too happy about this money going into the SRL and sucking all the investment out of my electorate, unless I was in a cancelled Commonwealth Games electorate of course. It is a problem. They know they need change down here or they are on a pathway to disaster.

We have then got a push to increase national parks. We are not looking after the parks we have got. I try and get a road graded in one of my national parks and I get an answer back that we have not got the funds to do it. Talk to any Parks Victoria employee around the state and they simply say that they do not have the resources to do the work that needs to be done. And yet we are looking at increasing our national parks and making the network bigger. I mean, it is just ludicrous decision-making to even be considering that.

I move on to education. A few years ago we were calling ourselves the Education State. Well, the NAPLAN results that came out today are incredibly concerning. They found that one in three Victorian students are failing to meet the basic standards of maths and English and that one-third of students in year 3 are finding it very challenging to count to 20 – in year 3. We have massive, massive teacher shortages across the state – massive teacher shortages. This is in the so-called Education State. I noticed we have stopped using that term on the other side of the chamber so much recently. We started the year with 800 teacher vacancies; we now have 1600 teacher vacancies. Teachers do a great job, but they need support. They absolutely need support. We actually had the minister come out and say he was going to reintroduce phonics into the education curriculum, which was good. But then a letter came out from the union to say ‘Don’t take any notice of it’. We saw that letter. We saw that email that came out. Is the tail wagging the dog or the dog wagging the tail? We are also falling behind other states in relation to our educational outcomes. We are no longer the Education State.

I say to those on the other side: scrap the SRL and invest it in education, invest it in health, invest it in mental health and invest it in roads. Invest that money in the areas that our community members want it invested in. It is critically important.

They know on the other side that they need to make a change if they are going to survive. I will have a look at some of these. I mean, I would not like to be in the seat of Bass, sitting on 50.2 per cent. The member for Bayswater in the chamber, on 54 per cent, you are in trouble. I reckon you might not be here next time around. The member for Box Hill –

Danny Pearson: Through the Chair, mate.

Tim BULL: Yes, I know that. The member for Footscray –

A member interjected.

Tim BULL: I am hearing you every time – 13.9 per cent. When it comes down to the Greens – you are in trouble with the Greens – I am on the side of the government. I do not want them surviving. I would much rather have people on this side of the chamber in here than people who are sitting up there. But we have a number of people – Footscray, Northcote, Pascoe Vale, Preston – who are going to lose their seats to the Greens. It is a shame. I do not want that to happen. I do not like them – less than you do. But we have a lot of others who are really going to struggle, and by making a simple change you will give yourselves a chance to survive.

I will wind that up. I do note that I may have used the term ‘you’ a little bit too often in this speech, but it may not have all been accidental, because I have been trying to get a point across that it is their political futures that are at risk because of decisions within the cabinet room. Unless they make a change, they are going to be in dire straits. I know there has been a bit of unrest. I know there has been a bit of talk. We heard a bit about a discussion in the caucus room this week. But unless there is change made, there are going to be a lot of people on that side who will not be here after 2026, and that is a fact. For the betterment of the state we need to get rid of the SRL. We need to start winding down our debt and we need to start spending money in the state where it should be spent, and that is in those key areas of health, roads, education, and mental health is another one that I have not covered off on today. Unless that happens, it is bye-bye to a lot of people from their seats on the other side. We look forward to getting into government and spending money in the right places.