Wednesday, 9 March 2022

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2021–22 Budget Estimates

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (10:12): I rise today to speak on the Report on the 2021–2022 Budget Estimates, handed down in October 2021. First I would just like to refer to page xxi of the report, in particular the section titled ‘Department of Treasury and Finance’. I would like to specifically bring the attention of the house to the net debt. Of course we know that the Andrews Labor government, with their ‘tax and spend, tax and spend’ agenda, are generating a huge debt for the state of Victoria, which is only going to be bad for our children and our grandchildren to have to pay back. We will note here that the net debt estimate was $156.3 billion by 2024–25, which was an enormous record debt at the time of this report. We now know with the 2021–22 budget update that that net debt figure has blown out to $162.7 billion by 2024–25. That is a whopping increase of $6.4 billion.

Now, we know that the cost of living for Victorians is critical and crucial, but with a state government that has no way of managing its money and a massive net debt, they have to find a way to service that debt—and all this government wants to do is tax Victorians more. We have seen that despite Premier Andrews promising no new taxes he has introduced not one, not five, but 40 new or increased taxes in his eight long years in power. That is a shocking situation for Victorians, because all that taxing does across the spectrum is make the cost of living for Victorians more.

The Andrews Labor government will have you believe that this has been due to COVID—that the ballooning debt and the ballooning problems in terms of that government debt are because of the COVID response and the extra money that they have had to put. And no doubt we have had a pandemic. We have had a pandemic, and there have been additional costs associated with that. But let us not forget that this Andrews Labor government was in a technical recession before the COVID pandemic and before the 2019–20 bushfires.

So they were in a poor situation financially, which is exactly why now, when we have a pandemic, when we have an emergency situation and a challenging situation for our state, the debt has only got worse. They cannot blame it only on the COVID-19 pandemic response, because we know that their Big Build infrastructure program is suffering immense problems: blowout after blowout after blowout on all of these major projects. I mean, the West Gate Tunnel Project is an example: more than two years after that project was given the go-ahead they had not even started tunnelling. It is a tunnel! That is because of the toxic waste, the toxic tunnel mess. They have nowhere to put the toxic soil. They want to dump it on outer suburban communities in Victoria, which I think is outrageous.

So these government projects have been racking up huge amounts of cost blowouts. This government has no idea how to actually budget any infrastructure project. Every single infrastructure project that they do goes over. I recall when I was a member of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee that we asked the Minister for Transport Infrastructure to name just one project that had not blown out and the transport infrastructure minister could not—could not name one project that had not gone over budget. We know from the figures that have been provided that these major infrastructure projects have gone at least $24 billion over budget as an aggregate. That budget blowout is just waste and mismanagement. That is just down the toilet. We know that that $24 billion, if it had not been wasted, could have funded 120 000 ambulances or 280 000 teachers or nurses.

We know that the report that I am talking on today, the report on the 2021–22 budget estimates, at I think page 37 refers to the ambulance response times. Now, if— (Time expired)