Wednesday, 27 November 2024

Regional Victoria

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:32): I rise to grieve for the people of regional Victoria, who have to put up with one of the worst governments this state has ever seen – a government that cannot manage money, cannot manage projects, and it is regional Victorians that are paying the price.

We have seen this ad infinitum for the last 10 years, but I have got to say it seems to have gathered pace in the last four or five years. We now have a debt disaster heading for $187.8 billion. What was it when this government came to power? What was the state’s debt then? It was $22.3 billion. If anyone on the other side would like to do the maths, they could find out that is a 742 per cent increase in the state’s debt, and that is because that mob opposite are economic vandals. They are profligate. They cannot help themselves. When they have got their hands on someone else’s money, they spend it. But most particularly, they do not just spend it; they waste it. No-one has a problem with the government spending on infrastructure or services to improve the lives of Victorians, but when it is wasted, that is the cost that regional Victorians in particular are paying. Debt on its own is not bad. Debt is not a bad thing if it is investing in infrastructure. But that debt is paying $41 billion of cost overruns on the megaprojects, and let us be clear, 99 per cent of them are in the city, and regional Victorians are paying for them.

Those cost overruns are just extraordinary, and what it leads to is the increase in the interest bill. We are heading for $25 million a day in interest. If you can think about what that would do, every member of this Parliament would be able to find something in about 2½ seconds that they could spend $25 million on in their electorate. For me it would be Sale College. We would get a new Sale College built in two days with the interest that this government is paying on debt. I think the Leader of the Opposition highlighted earlier today that the Auditor-General has made the point that when you are paying that much in interest, it comes at the expense of services for the Victorian people. To have the government try to suggest that they are building for the future – well, they are building for someone, but they are certainly wasting so much money on these massive projects. They cannot control anything.

It is an absolute fact that that waste is 99 per cent tied to the Premier of this state. Even before she was the Premier, as the Minister for Transport Infrastructure, everything she touched turned to a blowout.

Every time –

Sam Groth: Commonwealth Games.

Danny O’BRIEN: The Commonwealth Games is another one. Thank you, member for Nepean. Everything that there is. What does this lead to? It leads to in our case – and as the Shadow Minister for Roads and Road Safety – $41 billion being wasted on megaprojects while we cannot even get $1 billion spent to fix our roads. The government like to say all sorts of things about the wonderful things they are doing, but go out and actually drive on our roads and listen to the people. Those opposite are very quiet at the moment, but they know because they must be getting the complaints the same as we are. I know that the government does like to look after its own and not actually put any money into coalition electorates, but it is not in Labor electorates that the roads are paved with gold. They are just as bad over there too. Government members must be aware that the roads are in an absolutely appalling condition. Indeed the government did its own survey last year of 8000 kilometres of the 23,000 kilometres of roads that the Victorian government owns, and 91 per cent of them were in poor or very poor condition. Nearly all of them – 91 per cent.

I loved it in question time today when I asked the Premier about the RACV’s comments, which were that basically to blame the floods is just bunkum. The RACV has called out the government and said it is not true. The Premier started interjecting, ‘The roads in my electorate and the Goulburn Valley Highway were flooded. Princes Highway was flooded,’ and I got to St Kilda Road. It was St Kilda Road that the RACV had talked about and how bad the potholes were there.

Sam Groth interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: Well, it has been very wet for about the last hour, member for Nepean, so we better go out, because that is going to give the government an excuse for at least another two years.

Sam Groth interjected.

The SPEAKER: Member for Nepean, this is your last warning.

Danny O’BRIEN: Our roads are in a terrible state. It is absolutely appalling that we are now looking like a Third World country because of the way the government has neglected our roads. The lack of spending – a 95 per cent reduction last year in the area rehabilitated or resurfaced. They basically did nothing on our roads last year, and that is to the great shame of this government.

On energy prices, the member for Mordialloc would have us believe that it is only the Reserve Bank that is causing anyone any cost-of-living problems. Of course the Reserve Bank is doing its job to get down inflation. What is one of the big things that is causing inflation? Energy prices. I can go back. There are many things we could talk about when it comes to energy. We could talk about the government’s gas ban, its ideological war against gas. The attempts of the minister now to sort of walk herself back from the fossil gas ban is quite amazing gymnastics to watch. But I can go back a bit earlier than that.

Some of us will remember the 2016 budget, when the government tripled the royalty on coal. What happened after that? ENGIE Hazelwood said, ‘We’re out of here.’ Hazelwood was always going to close. We know that. We know that Hazelwood was always going to close, but the government then said, ‘It had nothing to do with the tripling of the coal. That had nothing to do with that.’ What did Daniel Andrews say at the time? I cannot remember the figure, so this is not 100 per cent accurate, but I think he said that they expected a 3 cent increase in the average bill because of Hazelwood closing. Do you reckon that happened? Does anyone think that happened? No. They went up. The power prices went up, and they have been going up ever since.

Michael O’Brien interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: Thank you, member for Malvern. The wholesale increase was 85 per cent. I do not like to use the wholesale price necessarily, because the minister loves to talk about the wholesale price being lower than every other state. No-one in Victoria pays the wholesale price. People get a bill from a retailer, and those retail bills have been going through the roof for the last 10 years under this government. Not only did the people of the Latrobe Valley, the member for Morwell’s electorate, lose their jobs, the 600-odd jobs directly at Hazelwood, they saw their power prices increase.

Now we have got the Yallourn station being brought forward. I get sick of hearing media reports about how ageing coal-fired power stations are going to have to close down. Loy Yang A and Loy Yang B were not scheduled to close until 2048, but under the policies of this government they have both been brought forward. Loy Yang A has been brought forward to 2035, and whatever Alinta wants to do with Loy Yang B, the government has actually made a policy that we will be 95 per cent renewables by 2035.

That means that goes as well. What is going to happen when that happens? More price increases, and for the people of the Latrobe Valley, no jobs. When Hazelwood closed we rushed in with the Latrobe Valley Authority, another great government quango that was going to save the world. We have still got three power stations to close. We have shut down the timber industry. We have shut down, under this government, our last white paper manufacturing at the mill. What has happened? The Latrobe Valley Authority? We do not need that anymore; we have obviously fixed everything. But we have got the SEC. We have got the SEC, and we have got how many jobs in Morwell? When the former Premier went down and announced it, he said they would create 59,000 jobs.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Member for Polwarth, this is your last warning.

Danny O’BRIEN: I do not know what my colleagues behind me know, but can anyone tell me how many jobs there are at the SEC in Morwell at the moment? One. There is one person working at the SEC. What an absolute scam this is. It is in energy and in the Latrobe Valley and in Gippsland that we have borne the brunt of this government’s policies.

Do not get me started – actually let me get started on the timber industry. The timber industry decision is, I would have to say in my 10 years in state Parliament and my 20-odd years in politics, the worst public policy decision I have ever seen. Fancy shutting down a sustainable, renewable industry that actually captures carbon. Instead we have got a government that would rather listen to the Greens up the back and worry about how their vote is going and where their preferences are going than listen to the IPCC, for example, which has made it clear that a sustainable forestry industry will abate carbon better than not having one. To shut down the industry for no reason other than base politics is an absolute disgrace and an absolute reflection on this government.

Talking about base politics, the Wellington Shire Council put in an FOI request for the facts and the research that the government made its decision on. They went for a fight for three years and they did not get anything because there was nothing there. They did not have a research or scientific basis to make that decision. They did it for base political reasons, again to the detriment of the people of rural and regional Victoria.

We have a stay when it comes to health, because we all know that this government wants to merge our hospitals. It wants megamergers of all our regional hospitals, indeed all our hospitals. The member for Lowan can tell us about it because it has happened in her neck of the woods – to the deep disappointment and despite the opposition of all the members of her community, the government has gone and merged her hospitals. Now we have got this government saying, ‘Oh, we’re not going to merge them, we’re just going to have these network plans.’ But talk to anyone in health system – they know what is happening. These are health mergers by stealth, and that will come at a great detriment to the people of rural Victoria in particular, because I am sure the services and the existence of our smaller hospitals will be diminished.

We have got a broken ambulance system. Every one of us in this Parliament – certainly every one of us on this side – could tell a story of a constituent that has been left hanging, that has been told, ‘Drive yourself to hospital’ or, ‘Get a taxi, because there’s simply not an ambulance available.’ The chaos in Ambulance Victoria continues forever.

It is apposite that I have got the Shadow Minister for Police beside me, because I can talk about community safety. In my electorate the crime rate in South Gippsland shire, which started the 10-year period of this government as one of the safest, has risen 66 per cent – 66 per cent in South Gippsland shire. Now I emphasise that it is still a relatively low-crime area, but the increase is unbelievable. We have got an issue there at the moment with a particular youth – more than one, but one in particular – who is just constantly committing crimes. They are getting arrested, as the police know who it is every time, and getting bailed – bail after bail after bail. We heard the story of a kid in the south-eastern suburbs recently – 50 times bailed. This is government that is soft on crime, and again it is the people of Victoria that are suffering and the people of regional Victoria.

On the issue of regional infrastructure, the Parliamentary Budget Office –

John Pesutto: Is there any?

Danny O’BRIEN: Well, that is a very good question, Leader of the Opposition – there is not much. Because despite the fact that we are 25 per cent of the state’s population in regional Victoria, the PBO has found that we are getting just 13 per cent of the infrastructure spend. That is the dividend of that $41 billion of cost overruns that I was talking about before, and that is before we even start on the Suburban Rail Loop.

The Suburban Rail Loop will suck capital out of regional Victoria for decades to come because of this government’s decisions, and it will leave us with worse roads, without the hospitals that we need, without the schools that we need and without the police services that we need because so much money is going to be going onto this mega multibillion-dollar project – a project that I might say still does not have any funding for it. Sorry, I should not say that. It does have the state government commitment, but it does not have anything from the federal government. It literally does not have anything from the federal government, despite the Minister for Transport Infrastructure trying to claim the other week that there is $2.2 billion from the federal government. They have not signed the cheque and sent it yet. We are going to apparently get another $9 billion from the feds – I do not know that that is going to happen – and then we are going to tax people another $11 billion in value capture.

Can you imagine if I went to a builder and said, ‘I’m ready to build my house,’ and he said, ‘Great, have you got the finance organised?’ and I said, ‘Oh, no. I’ve got a third of it, but I’m sure I’ll be good for the rest.’ Do you think the builder would go ahead? No. Do you reckon the bank would be happy with that? I do not think they would. That will be a disaster. I have said in this place before that the concept of the Suburban Rail Loop I think is not a bad one, but the concept of me buying an island in the South Pacific is also a good one. The problem is we cannot afford either of them.

The member for Nepean talked about the Commonwealth Games. I am going to run out of time to speak about the debacle and the betrayal that that is not just to the people of Victoria but the people regional Victoria. Labor cannot manage money, and it is regional Victorians who are paying the price.