Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2021–22 Budget Estimates

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (10:27): I rise to make a contribution on the Report on the 2021–22 Budget Estimates tabled in October 2021, and I specifically want to talk in relation to chapter 11 on page 153, ‘Department of Treasury and Finance’. I will start off by referring to the financial analysis, also on page 153, which refers to the 2021–22 net debt. It outlines that DTF will have $154 billion of debt. That is the trajectory that has been outlined by the Department of Treasury and Finance, and I want to focus specifically on this point to start with. This is a very troubling level of net debt that the Andrews Labor government is taking the Victorian public into. It is very troubling, and it is an astonishing record level of debt.

This is a terrible legacy for the Andrews Labor government to leave to our children and our grandchildren—this astonishing level of debt. I have to note that it is through waste and mismanagement that we have reached this level of debt by the Andrews Labor government. We know that in the most recent budget update, the 2021–22 Department of Treasury and Finance budget update, on page 33 of that particular report it states that net debt has soared to well over $160 billion in their forecast. That just demonstrates that year after year after year of this Andrews Labor government, which has been in power for nearly eight years, each year the trajectory of net debt has soared, and that is something that we should not be proud of. That is something that the Andrews Labor government should hang its head in shame because of.

Only this morning in the Australian Financial Review newspaper it was reported in relation to the recent Deloitte report that Victoria is the hardest place to do business, and we know that that is because of the many tax burdens that businesses face, and this Labor government is imposing more and more taxes to fund its ever-increasing debt. Despite the fact that the Premier said there would be no new taxes under his government, we are now in a situation of having at least 39 new or increased taxes under this Labor government. This debt is a significant problem that really should be constrained. We have had a global pandemic. The Andrews Labor government will always duck to that and look to use the pandemic as cover for its ballooning debt, but we all know that its waste and mismanagement go far beyond the issue of the pandemic.

Just look at some of their major projects and some of their capital expenditure projects. The West Gate Tunnel Project—we know what a disaster that is. After well over two years of that project they still have not started tunnelling at all. No tunnelling has occurred because they know they have got a toxic tunnel mess, a toxic waste problem on their hands. They just want to dump it on the inner suburban communities of Sunbury, which is an absolute shame. They know they have got nowhere to put this toxic soil, and so they have this huge problem on their hands—no tunnelling. And that project is extraordinarily over budget. These budget blowouts just demonstrate mismanagement. That has nothing to do with the COVID pandemic, and the government cannot apportion blame to it.

When we look at the Department of Treasury and Finance, we know that it looks after the public sector wages bill. Again, in a recent report and also through the budget process and DTF updates, we know that public service executives have almost tripled under the Premier, with an astronomical ballooning of public sector wages. The bloating of the public service is over some 40 per cent now, and for no better improvement for the Victorian people—there is no better improvement at all. All this government is doing is wasting, mismanaging and increasing taxes in debt-fuelled government projects, which must be reined in.