Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2020–21 Budget Estimates

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (10:22): I refer to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry into the budget estimates 2020–21 and the contribution from the Treasurer as the Minister for Economic Development on how Victoria is trying to strengthen economic performance with a range of mechanisms. My call is to establish ‘creating opportunity zones’ and to drive economic and social development. This investment is needed now more than ever in response to the worst pandemic in more than a century and the worst global recession since the Great Depression. The aim is to spread opportunity and prosperity.

This policy is the next initiative in delivering the vision, strategy and collaborations established in Creating Opportunity: Postcodes of Hope in 2016. The strategy is aimed at providing practical, creative responses to cultural, generational and systemic failures and how we reimagine the so-called postcodes of disadvantage. These creating opportunity zones should be defined to address place-based inequality first and then move to other areas, and they should be given status in law. There should be an assessment by the Department of Treasury and Finance of government decisions and how they relate to these communities, because if you invest in these communities now, you will reap great rewards. This is a values-based economic and social policy development, and it is a big-picture vision whose time has absolutely come.

Broadmeadows tops this list, so I have defined this proud, resilient community as the prototype for recovery. We have been doing this through the Broadmeadows Revitalisation Board 4.0, specifically renamed 4.0 for industry 4.0. We had the investment attraction. We brought more than a billion dollars in shovel-ready and pipeline projects into the old derelict Ford site. Once we stop using that for vaccinations we will bring back the jobs, and that is what we need to do. These are going to be technology-driven jobs. This is how you actually turn these communities around. We have other companies who have come as well, and they want to do hydrogen hubs, so this is how we are going to provide lower costs and cleaner, greener energy for new companies as well. The business community has listened, they have seen the opportunity, and here is how we can bring it together to bring back these communities.

But my argument now is we need it in law and we need the Parliamentary Budget Office to make a report annually to the Parliament on how we are bringing back these communities, because this will be a low-cost, high-value investment. I think that now is absolutely the time to get this done. We do not want rust belts, we want brain belts. Right? That is our strategy for the future.

If you have a look, we have got CSL manufacturing more than 50 million vaccines against the pandemic and exporting them. Nearby, because of that critical pursuit of that vaccine manufacturing, there is a $1.8 billion strategy for vaccines against influenza. This is how you build what we are good at. Australia is not world leading in many things outside sport, but in medical research it is. So you define the areas, the communities. You invest in the best and you drive it. That is how we won the mRNA vaccines, right? This does not happen overnight. It has been generations of investment, of seeing the strategy and of pursuing it with rigour and relentlessness. That is what we need to do, and here is the way that we can now bring these together.

I had the privilege of launching the Broadmeadows breakthrough model here with two eminent professors from the University of Melbourne. What they are doing is bringing the clout of that university and actually looking at how we get the value from the iconic investments from the Victorian government—the Big Build, the Big Housing Build, the Suburban Rail Loop. This will add benefit to 321 suburbs. That is the value.

Here is what they want to do. They want to have a social and suburban innovation lab. The labs in other areas that look at the research and development are mainly about cities. We need to embrace the suburbs, and the pandemic has shown us that. More people are going to be working from home. Here is your opportunity to do it. Here are the best and brightest looking at what is world’s best practice. We brought them together, we defined the model and they called it—not me—the Broadmeadows breakthrough model, because here is how you can do it. You need a proof of concept. Here is the prototype for other communities to be involved as well, and here is how you can make it happen.