Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Grievance debate

Government performance

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn – Leader of the Opposition) (16:01): I grieve this afternoon for the people of Victoria. I grieve for our people because we live in a state with a government that has racked up the dubious honour of being the most incompetent government in the country. On just about every measure you can identify the Allan Labor government is a bumbling circus, a circus that is not only an embarrassment to our state, not only a humiliation to our state but a government that is actually ruining people’s lives and putting people in harm’s way because of the magnitude of the incompetence.

We can look at areas like health. We can look at areas like ambulance services, with the hardest working staff on the frontline but a government that will not back them, a government that lets them down. We have an education system overseen by the Deputy Premier, a hopeless minister who has overseen three years of utter, utter incompetence that will put at risk the future of hundreds of thousands of young Victorians and their families. Has the Deputy Premier taken responsibility for that? No. We have a government that is so financially delinquent, so financially illiterate, embodied in the obvious limitations of the Premier, Ms Allan, who could not answer basic questions about the budget yesterday, a government that is actually leaving our road network wholly unsafe for passengers and drivers around the –

Danny O’Brien interjected.

John PESUTTO: Yes. As the new Leader of the Nationals points out, holey unsafe – literally and figuratively. Our state has become an embarrassment under Labor. For the people watching, I want to tell you: we reached the two-year mark this week, and we reached the 10-year mark – 10 years of hard Labor incompetence. For all Victorians, you can ask yourselves today and tomorrow and for the next two years: are you better off after 10 years of Labor? The answer is obviously no.

And I say to all Victorians that time for change is coming. It is coming. We cannot deal with this level of dysfunction under this government. People are suffering. People are doing it hard. People are leaving our state for the first time that I can remember since the Cain–Kirner disaster, when I was a much younger person – it has taken that amount of time to reach a government that has exceeded their level of ineptitude and their level of indifference. It is the arrogance of a group of people on that side of the house who do not understand how hard it is to meet household bills. They do not understand how hard it is to run a business where you have to make the payroll every week, where you have to meet the burdens of your business and overdraft every week, where you have to deal and contend with a growing list of compliance obligations that just grind your business into the ground.

How cruel is it for a government that were advised last year, nearly two years ago, on how they could introduce the better part of $2 billion of red-tape reforms and that have been sitting on their backsides for two years while businesses are fleeing.

I guess the most savage indictment of just how bad things have become under Premier Jacinta Allan and her incompetent band of fools is the Auditor-General’s report last week. What an indictment: a report which among so many things points out for Victorians that when you look at the state of Victoria gross debt is not going to be $188 billion in 2028; it is not even going to be $228 billion in June 2028. All of the state of Victoria will have a debt burden – wait for it, Victorians – as at 30 June 2028 of $268 billion. That is what the Auditor-General pointed out in his report on Friday.

You know what is worse? He pointed out that the government does not have any kind of strategy, whether it is a net debt to GSP or gross debt to GSP. It does not have a debt ceiling – none of that. So we have the worst debt in the country and growing. Whether it is net debt or gross debt, it is growing, and it will continue to grow. What is worse, the government is hiding how bad that debt will get when the true costs of the Suburban Rail Loop are factored into our debt profile as a state. And who is going to pay for this? Sadly, Victorians, it is all of us who are going to pay for Labor’s debt in this state now and well into the future. When we get to that next election we can change things, Victorians. But things are going to get worse over the next two years.

Interestingly, when we announced our policy recently to introduce a debt cap in Victoria because things are just out of control and spiralling to nearly $300 billion in gross debt terms, the government said, ‘Well, we don’t need a debt ceiling.’ They maligned the idea of a debt ceiling, saying it was a US-style debt ceiling. Well, let us just note a couple of things. Labor did like to debt ceiling until it did not. It actually removed the debt ceiling. If I remember, the member for Bulleen, it was in 2018. Just before they were going to get the credit card out and whack it full of debt, they did that. Interestingly, even the Auditor-General supports our vision and our policy for a debt ceiling to get order and responsibility back into the state’s books. The Auditor-General says – and for those of you on the other side who never read Auditor-General reports, page 27; you can go to it.

The SPEAKER: Through the Chair.

John PESUTTO: The Auditor-General looks for, in the state budget, either a net debt to GSP ratio which is similar or a very direct debt ceiling. He will not find it, and he has not found it. So the net impact in the Auditor-General’s report is that debt will continue to rise. What does that mean? It means that we are all going to continue to pay high taxes in this state, higher than the rest of the country. Whether it is business taxes or property taxes, you name it, taxes and charges will continue to go up in this state. It is a sorry story.

When you ask yourself about a group of people confronted with what is indisputable evidence of financial delinquency and harm – direct harm to households and businesses – you would think the Premier would stop and pause and say, ‘We can’t sign up to contracts on the Suburban Rail Loop.’ We know it cannot be afforded. The Victorian people know it cannot be afforded. S&P, one of our leading credit rating agencies, know it cannot be afforded. John Manning from Moody’s, the other credit rating agency, said earlier this week that the costs of the SRL – wait for this, colleagues – in the view of Moody’s stated publicly on Monday, have probably tripled. So that would mean, if you factor in what the Auditor-General has already identified by way of blowouts on the Suburban Rail Loop, that goes from around about $41 billion, $42 billion and that the first stage of the Suburban Rail Loop would cost, from Moody’s comments on Monday, around about $120 billion.

I mean, are we living in a parallel universe under this government? They think that money grows on some fairytale tree. How is this going to be funded? And does Prime Minister Anthony Albanese understand this? I wrote to the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago and I asked the Prime Minister to indicate, ‘Are you going to chip in your third of the Suburban Rail Loop?’ I say to the Prime Minister this afternoon, and I hope he gets the message: understand that you are not signing up to $9.6 billion on top of the $2.2 billion you have floated, none of which is committed at this point. What the Commonwealth has been asked to commit to, if Moody’s is to be believed, is something in the order of $35 billion to $40 billion by way of a Commonwealth commitment just for the first stage if they are still going to cut it up in thirds. What a complete joke.

What is even sadder is that the Premier is papering over the divisions in her own caucus. In her own caucus MPs know this project does not stack up. MPs in the caucus know – although they will bend over backwards to deny it, they know – that the Suburban Rail Loop means there is nothing. There is nothing for Ballarat, nothing for Lara, nothing for Eureka, nothing for Narre Warren North and South, nothing for Bass, nothing for Hastings, nothing for Bayswater, nothing for Mordialloc, nothing for Kororoit, if you have ever been there, nothing for Bellarine – all of you – and nothing, I should say to the Minister for Community Sport, who is at the table, for Kalkallo.

The SPEAKER: Order! Leader of the Opposition, through the Chair.

John PESUTTO: There is nothing for any of the Labor members in their seats today, and they know it. They know it is true. Even they know. When you make all sorts of allowances for how irresponsible Labor is when it comes to managing people’s money, the members opposite know you cannot fund a $120 billion Suburban Rail Loop first stage – if Moody’s is to be believed – and still have money for the schools and the roads and the hospitals and the community facilities in your seats. You should be ashamed.

The SPEAKER: Through the Chair, Leader of the Opposition!

John PESUTTO: You should stand up for your people, but you will not stand up for them.

The SPEAKER: Through the Chair!

John PESUTTO: You will not stand up for them, so they will suffer. People will suffer because of this. Harm will be done. What will the Premier do? The Premier will continue to stonewall. The Premier will continue to front up and pretend she’s got this. Well, the Premier don’t got this. This is way out of the Premier’s league. She does not understand, with all due respect, what she is committing this state to. Can you think of anything not just financially delinquent but financially irresponsible and reckless for a government than to sign contracts when you do not have the funding, when you have not developed and provided a fully and comprehensively formed business case for this project? It is nothing short of outrageous. Victorians, if you live in Melton, if you live in Dandenong, if you live in the regions – Geelong, Shepparton, Latrobe Valley, Ballarat, Bendigo – we will get nothing under this government. All of that money will go into a deep, dark tunnel where you cannot build hospitals, you cannot build schools.

On top of this will be all the taxes that are supposed to fill up the other third. The government has not told us despite the Premier being asked in this chamber many times, ‘How will you fund both the state government share and the private share?’ We know that land tax surcharges are coming. For Victorians, if you live anywhere near this proposed Suburban Rail Loop or any station around the Suburban Rail Loop, please understand that Premier Jacinta Allan and her Labor government are going to tax you. They are going to tax you big. You are going to be paying for generations. This is not fair on Victorians, and Victorians across our state deserve their fair share.

Our state is heaving under the strain of Labor’s neglect. Labor has not invested in our growth corridors. That is why they have not released any precinct structure plans. That housing statement, so-called, was a joke. There was nothing. They did not even release any PSPs, and they do not release any PSPs because they do not have the money for the infrastructure to support them. There are members in this house on the other side who know just what I mean, who see the two-lane roads that are banked up at all hours of the day, they see the clubs that are trying to meet demand, they see the schools that are overflowing with enrolments. They know it and they see it, and they do not have the guts to stand up to the Premier and correct their course.

But what is the government proposing for Victorians in terms of those value capture taxes? They can mean nothing else. They are going to tax your family home. If not directly, they going to tax your family home to fund this loop, if that is what it can be called. It is certainly loopy to do this without a business case and without the funding, but Victorians are going to pay for this. As for the debt that is going to be incurred, as the Auditor-General pointed out in his report on Friday, all of this is posing enormous risk to not only future prosperity, his words, but also the economic stability, his words, of our great state.

As the Auditor-General points out, when it comes to population growth the government is not responding. When it comes to the savage cuts to services that come under Labor when they mismanage the books, we are seeing savage cuts to health and we are seeing savage cuts in education. We have had an 18-month-long dispute with police officers. We had a long dispute with paramedics, as the member for Melton knows. And why are these disputes so protracted and so acrimonious? It is because Labor has run out of money.

I say to Victorians: there is a time for change. In two years time we will have a chance to put our state on the correct course, rebuild our state and build the prosperity all Victorians deserve.