Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:11): I am pleased to rise to support the petitioners, each and every one of those people who signed this petition, and thank Dr Heath for raising this issue so very forcefully and compassionately and also for being on the ground. There is nothing like understanding the situation by standing in a shopfront with a small business owner as they are literally pulling their hair out and counting the loss of dollars that that impact has had. Certainly Pakenham is not a construction zone in a government construction project; it is a living community in a vital gateway between Melbourne and Gippsland. Indeed, Dr Heath and I share Eastern Victoria Region, and quite often we do a little bit of division of labour. Sometimes we will take various projects up, and I thank her very sincerely for taking this one on in terms of Eastern Victoria.
The construction commenced back in 2023, and there were prolonged closures. I, for my sins, have been a small business owner. I owned a health food store in Leongatha, Leongatha Health Foods. We took it on when it was most run down, and we spent hours, days and weeks in the front of the shop during the working day and in the back of the shop packing stock and doing bills et cetera and orders on the weekends and at night. Small business owners are the backbone of our communities. When the local netball club or the dance club eisteddfod comes round and says, ‘Look, could you sponsor us in some way?’ or the charity comes to the door and says, ‘Could you sponsor us?’ overwhelmingly small business owners put their hands into their pockets and say, ‘You’re part of my community. I’ll support my community.’
We have got these fabulous people, who, if you think about it, have rising input costs and have got rising taxes. In fact we spoke about taxes this afternoon. To date I think it is around 67 new or increased taxes over the last 11½ years under the Labor government. So you have got new taxes, you have got high energy prices and you have got the high cost of insurance – overwhelmingly. We need our employees. They are very important people in a small business, and we value them very greatly. But all of those are input costs.
Then you have a major disruption with major roadworks. That reopened in February, but the last and final upgrades were completed in July. You have this impost. The shopfront is important. Yes, in a modern society people can go online and you can sell things online, but so often it is that personal interaction and that service that the shopfront owner, the retailer, provides to the customer. They need that one-on-one advice, they need that service and they need to be able to walk in the front door, but they cannot when it is a construction zone outside the front door. I know that they survived COVID as well.
Labor celebrates the concrete poured and the lanes opened but refuses to count the businesses, the jobs and the family incomes that have been damaged along the way. The cutting of the ribbon is fine, but what has the whole community had to endure? Upgrades are important – there is no doubt about that – but you have to recognise the impost on local businesses. This is what this petition does. It certainly supports that. If we look at this, the community is asking for recognition of that impost and that pain that has occurred during this construction time.
If you look at other construction areas, the Big Build comes to mind and indeed the government’s Big Build projects and the estimated $15 billion not in construction but in rorted money that is going to bikies and criminals and all sorts on those Big Build sites.
These community people have got their ABN, they have bought their stock and they are creating a throughput, a supply chain for good-quality stock or services, as the case may be. They are not asking for an overall handout; they are asking for recognition of pain and suffering during the course. That is not too much for a reasonable government to come to the party on. I thank the petitioners, and I thank Dr Heath for her work.