Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:09): If Mark Twain was alive today, after 10 years of Labor he might change his words. His words were thus – I think he was actually quoting Benjamin Franklin: ‘In this world there could be nothing more certain except death and taxes.’ After 10 years of Labor government, in this world there can be nothing more certain than Labor taxing Victorians to death. If we were to rephrase Paul Simon’s very famous song 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, we could also rephrase that in Victoria as ‘60 ways to tax your voter’. This is the story of 10 years of financial mismanagement by this government – debt, debt and more debt and financial mismanagement and lack of transparency. And we heard the opening speaker earlier today, Mr Davis, reiterate a very chilling and sobering conversation about the forward estimates of the projected debt that this state will face, that all Victorians will face – $194 billion in debt. It is higher than New South Wales and Queensland combined, and that relates to $29 million a day in interest repayments, $1.23 million an hour, or every minute Victoria is going to be required to pay – must pay to meet its obligations – $20,000 a minute. I have just come from a fantastic meeting with Youth Space, who have been funded partially in Latrobe Valley from the state government and partially in Wellington and East Gippsland through the bushfire recovery funding, and they are doing amazing things in terms of turning youth lives around in a very positive direction. What they would not kill for a couple of minutes worth of debt repayments to continue them, to keep them going, and I commend them for their work.
If we look at the ‘long and winding road’ – to coin another phrase from a very famous group – and put in there ‘crumbling, potholed, shoulders disintegrating and surface in need of rehabilitation’. What we have seen from this government – and the ‘Department Performance Statement’ highlights it – is the ‘Road area major patched: roads in regional Victoria’. That is part of the budget. The target for last year was a little over a million square metres of patching – that is what the government’s target was. It put that as its focus, its mandate to do. Well, the state’s Labor government achieved 500,000 square metres – half of the target. This year, rather than actually meet your own objectives, meet your own targets and bring about these positive outcomes, the target this financial year is for 70,000 square metres – a 93 per cent reduction in that resurfacing and patching. That is not acceptable. Go down any country road that is a state government road and you will find dangerous potholes that can rip the rim off your tyres and endanger people’s lives by the fact that people avoiding those potholes can veer either off to the side of the road or onto the other road just to keep their car wheels turning.
If we look at the regional development budget – once upon a time it had its standalone part of a department. Now it is in a back room. It is like an outhouse under this government. Again, they are cutting the regional development budget. We know our regions drive our economy. We have heard it from members in this house right across the divide here about the importance of our agricultural sector in the drought, and it is our farmers who feed and clothe us. Yet we have seen regional development being put on the backburner by the Allan government.
If we look at the health of our regions – in my Eastern Victoria Region we see the then Andrews government in 2022 committed to build the West Gippsland Hospital. The land has been sitting there available. It has been bequeathed to the people of the Baw Baw shire and it is still waiting, and they will still be waiting for years to come under this government. It is on the never-never. It is in the too-hard basket, and I know the wonderful doctors and nurses and staff that work at the Warragul hospital are just so desperate to have something that is fit for purpose. We see that Wonthaggi Hospital stage 2 was committed to in the 2022 state election. It was earmarked for funding in 2023, and now the Minister for Health Mary-Anne Thomas has again kicked it down the road, kicked the expansion of those services down the road.
Disability – there has been $120 million cut from the disability sector, and there is no stronger advocate in the disability sector than my colleague the member for Gippsland East Mr Tim Bull. He has been a huge advocate. He has his finger on the pulse of what is going on in that budget, and he is highly concerned that our most vulnerable people in this state are having their services cut and comprised. Let us look at ambulance services, and there is no joy here. If we look at ambulance response times in my Eastern Victoria electorate, there is supposed to be a benchmark, a response time that the ambulance once called will make it to that vulnerable person sitting in their home in an ailing state, in a state of concern and a state of unwellness and meet them within 15 minutes at a minimum of 85 per cent of the time in regional Victoria in those indicated areas. This state government is not achieving that in Bass Coast – 59 per cent of the time, and not in Baw Baw – 65 per cent of the time. They are not achieving that in Cardinia – 57 per cent, and not in East Gippsland – 50 per cent of the time. Those ambulance services are getting to people in East Gippsland only 50 per cent of the time within 15 minutes. There have been some horror stories that have come out, and I thank the ambulance officers that I have spoken with over the last 12 months on this for the work that they are trying to do to better coordinate their limited resources. Latrobe – 26 per cent of the time; South Gippsland – a frightening 46 per cent of the time, and Wellington about 53 per cent.
Understaffed hospitals are unable often to release those ambulances, leading to ramping. A little while ago when I was standing with my colleague Martin Cameron at Latrobe Regional Hospital we counted seven ambulances ramping waiting to be released to get back out into the community and do the work that those wonderful ambos do so well. This is not an acceptable state of play.
If I can turn to crime, our police in Eastern Victoria Region do an amazing job and we are so grateful for the work they do, but they cannot clone themselves, although they need to. That thin blue line is getting stretched thinner and thinner in Eastern Victoria Region and there are some normal activities that police are trying to get to that they often cannot. The crime stats for Victoria are out today and we see crime fuelled by antisocial behaviour and theft up in Bass Coast, up in Baw Baw, up in Cardinia and up, up, up in East Gippsland, Latrobe, South Gippsland and Wellington. Motor vehicle thefts, residential aggravated burglaries and stealing from a retail store, all of these are up, and common assault is up. These are highly concerning. As my colleague David Southwick said, there are not enough police to keep our communities safe. We know that at any given time over 2000 officers are not available for active duty because of WorkCover, sick leave and vacancies.
If we look at other major projects that we would like done in Eastern Victoria Region, I know my good colleague Danny O’Brien has been advocating for the Foster fire station for many years. Post the fires the minister went out to Mirboo North and said, ‘What do you need?’ ‘We need a new fire station,’ said Mirboo North., and they are still waiting for it. Winnindoo is a single truck station, and it has been waiting since before Noah was a young man. Hazelwood fire station – again, those wonderful CFA volunteers out there would love their not-fit-for-purpose facility, with an old shed, one toilet and no catering for females, updated.
Of course we have the SEC sham, and I will leave it at that. Nobody liked it in the Latrobe Valley, because if they had liked it in the Latrobe Valley they would have elected a member there, but they knew; they could see it for the sham that it is. Then we have the very vexed problem of coastal erosion. We have the people down at Bass Coast struggling in Silverleaves with initiatives that are short term that are failing. We have the people in Inverloch who are also very concerned about the loss of a much-loved public asset that the government seems to be pussyfooting around. The government has provided $10 million or thereabouts between six different communities. That is insufficient to provide certainty. There needs to be practical application, not just consultation within an inner circle and then a report that is never tabled. We have had no update on funding for the New Haven jetty, and this government has then decided to cut fisheries officers. This is highly concerning. Many of our anglers are very concerned. They love angling, but they also love healthy ecosystems and sustainability of species. If I can go to sustainability of species in terms of my own portfolio, we know that this government has failed. The State of the Forests report is now three years overdue. Victorians are still waiting for the government to release the State of the Environment report. On the last track there were many poor or below average benchmarks and outcomes for the environment. The government is not even testing or assessing what is happening in our forests. It is going to lock them up. It is going to go and turn another state forest into a national park. It is going to turn the Wombat and Lerderderg area into a national park, tick that and say, ‘Aren’t we doing well?’, but it actually does not know what is happening in those state parks. It does not know whether it is actually achieving good environmental outcomes, but locking it up – changing the land tenure – apparently saves species. I think not.
While we are on that topic, over the last three years the government has cut the bushfire preparedness budget. For the last three years it has been $600,000 overall when it was all tidied up. This year the Minister for Environment has offered $400 million in the budget. When asked in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings, he said, ‘Well, these figures are a bit rubbery, and we’ll get Forest Fire Management Victoria to go cap in hand to the Treasurer and ask for a Treasurer’s advance.’ Last time I looked, a Treasurer’s advance was supposed to be for issues and emerging emergencies like a bushfire or flood, not for regular core business such as firebreaks and fuel reduction.
We see school infrastructure is being delayed for many in my patch until 2027, and we see this horrific, egregious emergency services tax. Every Victorian will pay this emergency services tax. Every household and every business will have it doubled. Every industry, in terms of owning a commercial entity, will pay double. An industry down the street will be taxed at 64 per cent and farmers will be taxed at 150 per cent. ‘Thank you for feeding us. Thank you for clothing us,’ says the Allan government, ‘and by the way, we’re about to hit you with 150 per cent tax.’ There is one stay for a year, and the government are patting themselves on the back: ‘Look what we’ve done.’ It is a con and it is a crock. On top of that, the CFA, FRV and SES budget over the past two years has been cut by $160 million. That is what the budget papers indicate. This is the contempt that the Allan government provides, particularly to people in rural and regional Victoria. We can hear all the rhetoric, but country people know that they are getting short-changed by this government that is trying to prop up a black hole of debt. This government’s focus is on metropolitan Melbourne, and rural and regional people are paying the price.
