Tuesday, 24 May 2022

Bills

Appropriation (2022–2023) Bill 2022

Appropriation (Parliament 2022–2023) Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed on motions of Mr PALLAS and Ms ALLAN:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (13:02): This year’s budget has red ink as far as you can see when it comes to regional Victoria. Regional Victoria has been deserted by the Andrews Labor government when it comes to this year’s budget, as with other budgets, and that old adage of a city-centric government is just reflected on page after page after page of this particular budget. One of the key things that stands out to me is that under this budget there are now nearly more people in the Premier’s own department than there are in what was once the Department of Agriculture—it is no longer a department anymore; it is now Agriculture Victoria, which is down the end corridor of a bigger department. There are actually nearly more people in Premier and Cabinet than there are in what was the Department of Agriculture, now called AgVic.

The food and fibre sector in Victoria is one of our largest export earners, it is one of our largest employers if you look at the whole supply chain from paddock to plate and it is the biggest employer in regional Victoria. There have been budget cuts and there have been staff cuts of over 100 people, particularly on the science side of that department, so the rhetorical question would be: how much value do we get out of having more people in the Department of Premier and Cabinet who shuffle paper, dream up ideas that make it difficult for people, lock us down, close playgrounds and make us wear masks when we do not need to wear masks—they invent all these rules that make it hard for people in Victoria—compared to scientists, researchers and extension officers that actually help farmers and help our food and fibre producers be more productive and manage the environmental issues on their farms better. Rhetorical question: which do we get more value out of, more bureaucrats in Premier and Cabinet or staff in AgVic? I would say, and people right across regional Victoria and particularly the food and fibre sector would say, we get better value out of scientists, researchers and extension officers than we do out of bureaucrats in Premier and Cabinet.

Regional Victoria, food and fibre producers and our farmers most definitely feel deserted by this government and particularly deserted by their minister. Obviously the Minister for Agriculture has no sway when it comes to the budget expenditure review committee in actually getting some good outcomes for her department and for the farmers there. The minister at the table, the Minister for Industry Support and Recovery, is shaking his head.

The same story goes for Regional Development Victoria and for trade and global engagement. Again, we are great exporters in this state, but there have been huge cuts to the budget for trade and global engagement. Why in this unstable world environment would you actually reduce the resources to trade and global engagement, to the people that do the work to help our exporters to earn export income? Why would you reduce the money that they have to work with? Why would you invest in an office in Paris when there are more important priorities? We already have a trade office in Frankfurt. If you were serious about engaging with the EU, why wouldn’t you open one in Brussels, where the European government is, so you could engage with the people there that you have the most impact on? The cynic would say the Paris office is going to be a nice retirement package for a retiring MP on the government benches over there, so it will be interesting to see who gets the gift of the gig in Paris out of this particular announcement.

But there have been huge reductions to trade and global engagement and to Regional Development Victoria. Regional Development Victoria have had budget cuts of 68 per cent over the last two years. RDV was a core part of actually making sure that regional Victoria thrived, that business was attracted there, that jobs were created and that export revenue was created, and there has been a 68 per cent reduction in its budget over the last two years and staff cuts that go with that particular issue. Again, like the cuts to AgVic, why would you cut the department that helps our economy grow, particularly as we recover and rebuild from the two years of lockdowns and COVID? Why would you cut that department as well there?

When it comes to funding out of this budget, regional Victoria has been totally left behind over a series of years. If you go to the 2021–22 budget, only 11.4 per cent of the capital spend of this government of Victoria actually went into regional Victoria. If you look at this year’s budget, 2022–23, 13 per cent of the capital spend goes into regional Victoria. Twenty-five per cent of Victorians live in regional Victoria, but over the last two years they got 13 per cent in this year’s budget and they got 11.4 per cent of the capital spend last year. If you break that down by per capita spend, which is a very good way of looking at it if you are comparing 25 per cent of the population living in regional Victoria and 75 per cent in Melbourne, the capital spend for Melburnians is $15 268 per person. Look at the capital spend for regional Victorians. It is only $7142, basically half the capital spend on infrastructure in regional Victoria that there is in Melbourne. Again come back to the old adage of a city-centric government. It stacks up when you look at the numbers in the budget on the capital spend in regional Victoria. It is so city centric.

One of the things that drives that disproportionate spend is the mismanagement of capital projects in Melbourne: $28 billion now, and counting, on the overrun on capital projects here in Melbourne—$28 billion. If you think about what that would do in any community, that is 28 brand new builds of what was the Royal Children’s Hospital, which cost $1 billion. You could build that 28 times over with the overrun on capital projects here in Melbourne. You could build the Mildura hospital. You could build the Warragul hospital. You could build the Melton hospital. You could basically give every major town in regional Victoria a new hospital with the $28 billion—

Mr D O’Brien: And have change.

Mr WALSH: and have change—in cost overruns on the projects here in Melbourne. So it is an absolute blight on this particular government around that.

The country roads and bridges program, which was cut a number of years ago, has still not been reinstated. That program, which gave each of the country councils basically $1 million a year across the four years when we were in government, was the best program going for local government because they could actually plan, they could do their road maintenance plans and they could do their bridge replacements—because they knew they had money every year. That is one of the cuts that was done a number of years ago that has not been reinstated.

No doubt as the member for Euroa, the Shadow Minister for Public Transport and Roads, will talk about, there has been a huge cut in the road maintenance budget—28 per cent across the last two years—with $240 million taken out of the road maintenance budget over the last two years. I do not know, Acting Speaker Taylor, how much you drive into regional Victoria, but if you do, make sure you take two spare wheels, not one, because there is every chance you will damage a tyre or damage a rim when you hit the major potholes that you find across regional Victoria. There has been that huge cut to road maintenance in regional Victoria even though the government likes to spin that it is not actually the case. For $5 million, if it was in the budget to match the commonwealth’s $5 million, we would have got the business case to finish Murray Basin rail. That would have helped put more freight on trains and less on the roads, which would go back to that issue around the roads into the future.

One of the issues we have talked about in this place a lot is the Country Fire Authority and the damage that the Andrews government has done to the Country Fire Authority now over two terms of government—

Mr D O’Brien: Gutted it.

Mr WALSH: Absolutely gutted it, absolutely destroyed the CFA, a volunteer organisation that started after the Second World War and that has kept our communities safe from bushfires over that particular period of time. But if you go to the budget papers, the Andrews Labor government is collecting approximately $800 million from the fire services levy in Victoria. In the budget papers there is $7.16 million in new capital spending for the CFA—$800 million being collected over here, $7.16 million being spent back on the CFA in capital expenditure there. In my electorate alone, the Leitchville fire station has needed upgrading for literally decades. There was money announced two years ago, but it is not going to be done until about 2024 so that is on the never-never. The Rochester fire station has desperately needed to be done now for about the same amount of time. That is actually on the never, because it is not in this particular budget. And the community of Appin South, one that I think desperately needs a fire station—again, nothing in this budget. So the Andrews Labor government are collecting $800 million from property owners right around Victoria but only putting $7.16 million back into capital spend for the CFA there. One of the things that we want to see is the CFA returned to a volunteer-only organisation that has its own management and its own staff so that we can actually rebuild that organisation and we can rebuild morale in that organisation, rather than the way the Andrews Labor government has destroyed it.

One of the last things I want to touch on is the integrity bodies of Victoria and the funding for them. The Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission is something that was set up when the Liberals and The Nationals were last in government, something that was desperately needed here in Victoria, something that we actually set up, something that we funded appropriately and something that we gave operating rules to so it could track down and root out corruption in this particular state—something that the Andrews government nobbled with legislative change when they came in. But they have actually nobbled them even more by reducing the funding they have, and we would have seen the recent comments about the demands from IBAC for appropriate funding and rules so they can do their job better. Again, people ask: is one of the reasons that IBAC is not being funded appropriately the fact that government ministers and particularly the Premier are involved in at least three investigations by IBAC at the moment? The rhetorical question again is: is the Andrews Labor government actually making sure that IBAC is not funded appropriately so that they cannot do their job, so that they cannot hold the Andrews government and their ministers, and particularly the Premier, to account for the things that have gone wrong under their watch—from the red shirts to the issues with the United Firefighters Union and the CFA and all the issues of how the Labor Party managed staff in their offices and the interaction between Labor Party business and parliamentary business?

Mr D O’Brien: Taxpayers resources.

Mr WALSH: It is taxpayers money, but the Andrews Labor government, and particularly the Premier, seem to think it is their money, it is their plaything. The thing that happens to governments that start to show disrespect to the voters is that ultimately they will be held to account because the voters are not silly. They will realise that the Andrews Labor government think the Treasury benches, the opportunity and the privilege to govern are theirs for the taking and no-one else should interfere with them.

IBAC needs more funding. It has not been funded appropriately in the budget. The Ombudsman’s office is the same. The Ombudsman’s office—Deborah Glass does a fantastic job as the Ombudsman—needs more resources, needs more funding, so that she and her team can do the job that they need to do to make sure that we have the checks and balances and that the government of the day, the executive government, is actually held to account.

The third body that needs more funding is the Parliamentary Budget Office. Again, the government have Treasury, finance, all of those bureaucrats there at their call. We know the Ombudsman has been looking at the politicisation of the public sector, but the independent Parliamentary Budget Office is another body that can hold the government to account around costings and making sure that political promises are costed properly.

In this budget IBAC, the Ombudsman’s office and the Parliamentary Budget Office are not funded appropriately because in reality the Andrews Labor government does not want to have the integrity bodies of this state funded appropriately, because they will actually hold them to account on the mismanagement and the corruption that are embedded in this state now. As I said—and the Ombudsman has said—the politicisation of the public sector here in Victoria means you have to be a Labor mate to get a job to do something, because the whole issue of nepotism is alive and well with the Andrews Labor government.

Mr PEARSON (Essendon—Assistant Treasurer, Minister for Regulatory Reform, Minister for Government Services, Minister for Creative Industries) (13:17): I am delighted to make a contribution on the appropriation bills for 2022–23. This is a really important budget that has been handed down by the Treasurer. I think if you look at the metrics, what we have done as a government is provided the necessary support for households to get through the worst and the most grave economic crisis the state has seen since the Great Depression, and we have done that while we have had a significant decline in revenues as a consequence of the pandemic, coupled with a significant increase in relation to health and hospital expenditure. We had to make those necessary investments in order to try and stabilise the state.

I was with the member for Gippsland South last week in the Legislative Council committee room, and I recall that in the last Parliament I was having a conversation with the member for Mornington—I think that the Legislative Council committee room was the scene of the 1931 Premiers Conference, where Sir Otto Niemeyer from the Bank of England came out and remonstrated with the Scullin government about the importance of repaying bondholders ahead of funding fiscal support. Now, ‘Red Ted’ Theodore, who was the federal Treasurer at that stage, had read Keynes for the very first time about the theory of money. For Theodore, who was interested in the idea of using that long-term horizon, of making those significant investments early to provide that level of support, this was something that was quite attractive to him. Unfortunately for Red Ted, he was not able to fulfil that vision. He was subject to a royal commission, and the Labor Party subsequently split when Joe Lyons was recruited by—well, he was recruited by many, but the head of JBWere at the time was pretty influential in encouraging Lyons to come across. And Sir John Latham, who ended up being on the High Court of Australia, relinquished his position as Leader of the Nationalist Party in order for Joe Lyons to become the leader of the United Australia Party. So—

Mr Pakula: Craig Kelly’s predecessor.

Mr PEARSON: Indeed. Obviously what happened was when you had a government that decided to run its budget as though it were a household budget, you saw what was a mild economic contraction become a severe depression. So that is why you have got to make these sorts of necessary investments—to provide that level of fiscal stimulus and support to ensure that the economy can rebound strongly. Again, if you take this global pandemic as a once-in-100-year phenomenon, if you look at the costs that have been incurred and you amortise those costs over the course of 30 years, 40 years or 100 years, then the cost is relatively low compared to the price that would have been paid if the Treasurer had been courting budget surpluses at that point in time.

It is important to recognise and note too that the Treasurer had a four-step plan in relation to these matters. To begin with, it was to stimulate the economy and create jobs, and that has been achieved with the really strong rebound—the fact that gross state product for the 2021–22 financial year looks like it is going to be 5.5 per cent, rocketing out of the gates. The second point was to look at having a cash surplus. That will be achieved in the 2022–23 financial year. The third point was about having a cash operating surplus. So that is taking into account issues such as depreciation in the general government sector. That will be acquitted in the 2025–26 financial year. The final point is stabilising debt, and I think you will find that that will be acquitted as well. So in terms of those broad macro strategies that have been deployed, this is a really solid foundation. It is a solid budget. It has really guided us through incredibly challenging times, and it puts us in a really strong, commanding position to go forward with a degree of confidence and to embrace what lies before us.

I am very excited about what this budget has delivered for my portfolio areas. We are providing a significant level of fiscal support to ensure that our agencies and our great cultural institutions get the support that they need to continue to operate. We are investing in NBCUniversal studios coming out to the Docklands. This is going to be an absolute game changer. You are looking at huge volume LED screens that are cutting edge, that were used in, for example, The Mandalorian. We beat London to this. They could have gone to London, they could have gone elsewhere. They came to Victoria. This is the only site in the country where you will have this level of investment. We will then turn around and use this as a way in which we can start to really get significant productions based here. Anyone who has spent any time on a film set will know that these productions employ a lot of people. So it is really important that we have these sorts of investments coming in, they are regular and they provide a pipeline of activity, and we create the ecosystem for the workforce to give them a level of confidence. Again, this partnership I think will stand the sector in really good stead.

In addition to this, we are continuing to support live music in Victoria through the music industry growth package. Again, we are the capital of live music in the country. Our musicians have done it hard over the course of this pandemic. In many cases musicians were the first to lose their jobs, and they will be the last to come back. We have provided over $80 million worth of support to live music, and it is just wondrous to see live music really coming back with a vengeance and a lot of force over the course of recent times.

I am also pleased that we are providing funding for the Go West Festivals Fund. This is about making sure that people in the western suburbs can experience some of the best that our creative industries and our festivals have on offer.

Ms Hennessy: Hear, hear!

Mr PEARSON: Indeed, member for Altona—such as the comedy festival or Rising, as the case may be, to try and really drive that level of activity and engagement.

In addition to this, I am really pleased that we are providing significant levels of funding to Service Victoria. Service Victoria has done a fantastic job in terms of guiding us through the pandemic, giving everyone a level of confidence that they can go out and about and through that QR code check-in system know that if they are at an exposure site, then there is the ability for them to be identified early on. That played a really critical role in terms of reopening the economy when it needed to.

There is in the order of about $96 million for further work for Service Victoria. I envisage a future where Service Victoria will be that key gateway for citizen engagement. I think one of the reasons why Service Victoria was so successful was the fact that it put citizens at the centre. It is all about the user experience, it is all about how we try and find a way where we make it easier for people to be able to use the system. I think that if you look at the innovations that occurred over the course of the journey with Service Victoria, we constantly looked at innovating. We were really focused on improving the customer experience and the citizen journey. For example, it was about making sure that you had the opportunity to check in your children. It was about making sure that businesses could check in people who did not have a smartphone. It was about connecting your vaccination certificate to the Service Victoria app.

I just want to pause for a moment and reflect on this. The Australian immunisation register is a commonwealth-run asset, and it is on a mainframe computer. Mainframe computers are often very old. They are sometimes 20-plus years old, and they are designed to hold a large volume of documents and records. What Service Victoria did was get an asset that was not theirs in ageing and legacy infrastructure, connect that with cutting-edge 21st century technology and find a way where you could then transmit that vaccination certificate onto the Service Victoria app. Now, from a citizen experience it was fairly straightforward. It was quite seamless, really. Something like in the order of 6 million certificates were connected in the end to the Service Victoria app, and if you look at Service Victoria there has been over a billion transactions or engagements since the start of this pandemic—around about that quantum. If you think about that for a moment, from the citizen experience it was seamless, it was easy, it gave people confidence, but the tech behind it was involved. I think that what you want to try and do, even if you are dealing with complicated transactions, complicated technological solutions, is from the citizen perspective make it be seen as seamless and easy. That is something that is really important.

I am really pleased that this budget, too, provides additional funding for the Business Acceleration Fund. We provided funding in previous budgets for the Regulatory Reform Incentive Fund, and that was about how you try and use the ability to improve government regulations and processes so that the BAF builds on the work of RRIF, which provides more opportunities to get more of those transactions online.

Talking about the Premiers Conference in 1931, I am attracted to the 1991 Premiers Conference, which was, I think, probably Bob Hawke’s last Premiers Conference, It was quite insightful because what Hawke did was get with the states and say, ‘Look, I’ll do you a deal. You reform some of your inefficient state taxes and I will put money on the table. You will be able to then receive those payments if you reform’. That decision in 1991 played a really important role. Nick Greiner was very good on this. Nick Greiner had said to Bob Hawke, ‘Look, it’s in the national interest. I’m signing up to it. I will do it’. That underpinned a lot of those great productivity gains of the 1990s that we are all the beneficiaries of.

It is all good and well for me as the Minister for Government Services to go around lecturing local government, for example, about the fact that they need to improve their citizen experience. But words do not count for much. I think that there is an opportunity here to be able to find ways in which we can use a digital solution, a technological solution, to improve the citizen experience and get councils to improve their performance by making some of these investments. The reality is that many businesses will tend to deal with local government before they deal with us. We are probably the third in line in relation to their level of engagement. The average small business might be applying to council for a permit for one reason or another. They will lodge a BAS with the federal government. Sure, they might require a WorkCover premium if they have got staff, or they might pay payroll tax if they get to a certain size. But often for a lot of citizens and a lot of businesses their first primary engagement is with councils.

The thing is with the RRIF and now with the BAF there is a fantastic opportunity to look at finding ways where we can improve the operational efficiency of councils and we can start to work with them in a constructive, agile, collaborative fashion to make things better. The good thing too here is that if we can get it right with one council—for example, if we can try and find a way where you can pay your rates online simply and easily through some form of platform—then it is easy to replicate that across the other 78 councils across Victoria. It is scalable, and it has got enormous potential. This is particularly important when you are talking about regional or remote communities; those councils which do not have much of an IT budget may have some challenges there. So there are some really great opportunities that lie before us by making these sorts of investments. I think Service Victoria gives us some sense as to the future. It gives us some sense as to where this can go and the potential and the opportunities that can emerge for us to try and find those ways where we can improve our efficiency. The reality is that when we start to improve our efficiency in relation to the statutory and regulatory functions, that will provide us greater levels of fiscal opportunity to reallocate that funding to other things that really count and that do not have a digital solution, that cannot use AI and that cannot use tech. It is a really important initiative.

Turning briefly now to my electorate of Essendon, this budget has really delivered for my community. There is over $7 million for Moonee Ponds West Primary School—a great local school—and I am really pleased about and proud of the work that Kerri Simpson as principal has done over the last few years in guiding our school community. Kerri is due to retire, which is disappointing; I had hoped she could hang around a bit longer to see this project be constructed and delivered. Kerri has been an outstanding contributor to our community. She has worked tirelessly on behalf of her teachers, the parents and the children at Moonee Ponds West, and she is to be congratulated.

I am pleased and delighted as well that there is additional funding for the Victorian African Communities Action Plan. This is something that I was heavily involved in when I was first elected in the last term. We have provided in the order of $4 million of additional funding to the Victorian African Communities Action Plan because it is about treating African-Australian communities with respect—not demonising them, not castigating them—giving them opportunities, believing in them, giving them respect and giving them opportunities to reach their potential. What is occurring at the moment in inner Melbourne is fantastic. We are investing heavily in our schools, and we are investing heavily in our housing. We are investing heavily, particularly in relation to some of the African-Australian communities in my area and indeed in other areas as well, such as by having homework clubs, and are providing the kids in those communities the chance to get the very best start in life. It starts with housing. It continues on with child care and education. It gives them the opportunity to reach their potential. This is a great budget—it is a great Labor budget—and I commend it.

Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (13:32): I rise to make some comments on the Appropriation (2022–2023) Bill 2022. This was a missed opportunity for the government to actually deliver a budget to help people recover and rebuild from the traumas of lockdown, the traumas of hardship and the difficulties that many Victorians have faced over the last few years. There is no question that many Victorians right across the state have done it tough, including many of my constituents in Caulfield. We have been advocating quite strongly for a number of local projects to be funded, and we had hoped to see particularly some funding in this budget for a number of our schools. I know that we have raised a number of issues and written on a number of occasions to the Minister for Education to see what could be done to support schools such as Caulfield South, Caulfield, Glen Huntly, Ormond and Ripponlea, to see what we could see in the budget for any of that, and unfortunately there was a big nought—and not only that but also a lot of disappointment.

I received a letter from St Kilda Primary School, which borders the electorate of the Minister for Health, the member for Albert Park. The school was so disappointed at not being considered in the recent budget announcement and called for an urgent appeal for funding. That school put out a press release on 12 May saying that even though they had had a number of discussions with the state government they were very disappointed to not receive any funding at all. It really does highlight the fact that the government have neglected those kids that have really suffered during these lockdowns. When you look at a school like St Kilda Primary School, which has huge diversity and kids from a whole range of cultural backgrounds, it is a school community desperately trying to meet the directives of the government, yet the government have turned their back on them. The children simply do not have adequate facilities, undergoing a physical education program in a space that was designed to be a library area sitting in the middle of four classrooms without a wall or any permanent divider. They cannot throw balls. Children cannot run. Their voices need to be kept quiet while the classrooms are being used. It is just inadequate. The physical education program cannot run because they have got no space to run it in. It is a school that has been growing. Certainly it is a school that has had portables and a whole range of things but no funding. Education—huge failure. We will continue to not only advocate to ensure that those kids are given the infrastructure that they need—the buildings, the classrooms and the physical activity areas they need to get things back from the time that they have lost—but also to invest in those students and their education to ensure that they can catch up on the lost learning that they have had under the Andrews Labor government.

There are a number of things in my electorate that I would have thought were an opportunity for the government to actually do something about which they have completely ignored. I want to focus for a minute on the Caulfield Racecourse Reserve. Prior to 2018 the member for Oakleigh and I did a review of that space, which led to the Caulfield Racecourse Reserve Act 2017, an act of Parliament to designate that space for public space. You have heard on many occasions in this chamber that I have advocated very strongly for open space—green space. Caulfield in my area—Glen Eira—has the lowest amount of open space in the state. We desperately need some more. We have a big racecourse, and the middle of that racecourse should be used for open space for kids to play, for kids to have sport and for just passive recreation—a whole range of opportunities. There is a lake in the middle. There is a real opportunity.

Well, as a result of the work that we did in a bipartisan manner we had the act of Parliament and we had a new trust. Sam Almaliki has been the chair of that trust. He is certainly a strong friend of the Labor Party but has done his job very well in a way that puts the community first, and he has been advocating for a long time for this government to actually deliver the money that fits the plan. There is a land management plan of some $500 million—$290 million from the racecourse and $290 million they need to actually make this work. There have been three-plus budgets and not one dollar allocated to a plan worth about $500 million. They cannot even run a fete there. The extent of what this committee have been able to do is pay the wages of the staff that run it. The trust barely have the money available to run the wages and have told me that if they do not get funding within the next 12 months they will be insolvent themselves. They will not be able to continue. The government and the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change have turned their back on the very trust they set up. You cannot set up a trust—you cannot set up a program—to fail. The government have done the initial work. They have gone out there. The minister for environment has been out with me and said how fantastic it is. We have had press conference after press conference. We need dollars to provide the facilities to enable many of my constituents in Caulfield to have the recreational space to do the stuff that they want to do. The kids need playing surfaces, and the government needs to provide the dollars to do it.

Caulfield Hospital, the Alfred hospital—again, we know we are in the middle of a health crisis. We desperately need to ensure we have those hospitals available to actually deal with the health crisis. The government, over a budget ago—two budgets ago—provided a couple of million dollars to do a review of the Caulfield Hospital site to see what we could do in terms of utilising that site better. There has been no money, no plans in terms of what the Alfred site could be used for or what could happen to that hospital itself. That hospital is over 100 years old. It repatriated a number of soldiers from World War I—18 000 soldiers through World War I. Unfortunately the buildings are as old as the time, in terms of their still being from the war days. You see the breezeway and a number of those old areas. A lot of it has been shut down. A lot of it has been left. It is an opportunity waiting to happen. In the middle of a health crisis you would think that there would be some funding to actually utilise that site and provide opportunities around it. It has been neglected. Again, many of my constituents would love to see something being done about Caulfield Hospital and that site. Nothing is being done to support it.

So they are two opportunities where there has been complete failure in our area. Open space, and as I have said on many occasions, an opportunity for open space—none of it, not only in the racecourse itself but in pocket parks and a whole range of things where we could have more, but there is not the funding that goes with that in terms of support.

In our shopping strips, the likes of Glenhuntly, Ormond, Balaclava, Carlisle Street, Ripponlea—and many people in this Parliament would have been to Carlisle Street in its thriving and pumping times—again because of the lockdowns, because a lot of those small businesses have not been supported by this government, there are so many for-lease signs. There is a lack of anything to support many of those shopping strips and a lack of vision to do that as well. They are in desperate need of repair. Ripponlea desperately needs a coat of paint, upgrades, some marketing and some support, and it is certainly something that we have advocated for, should we win government in November. We will provide the necessary funds to ensure we revitalise those shopping strips, that we breathe life into them and that we make them community hubs where people can visit, can enjoy, can shop and spend and shop local, which is so important to the community.

There is not enough being spent on manufacturing. These are jobs. Not enough is being spent on small business. Again money is limited in terms of the recovery, and then the government and the ministers say, ‘You know what? COVID is over. We’re not supporting you anymore’. Well, those businesses are struggling. When they most need the support, many of the small businesses that are the backbone of our community are struggling. They are on life support. You only have to go down to the CBD of Melbourne and have a look at the for-lease signs there in the CBD of Melbourne. They are desperate. There is no plan to get the CBD back. The CBD should be the gateway to the rest of Victoria. Melbourne was the most livable city, year in, year out. We have gone to eighth, and there is no plan for us to get anywhere back from where we are right now.

If you look at the public sector, there is no plan to get the public sector back—no plan whatsoever. We were down talking to a pharmacist only a few weeks back that supports the Telstra building and the Department of Health. That pharmacy is lucky if they see many of the people that work in those buildings once a month, and when you talk to him and you say, ‘Well, what’s happening? What would you like?’, he says, ‘You know what? Even if I got workers back three days a week, I’d be able to run my business. My business is running on a day-to-day proposition because the government has got no plans to get workers back’. Again, what are we doing in terms of the recovery? What are we doing to incentivise? What are we doing to ensure we get a nightlife and we get weekend support? What are we doing for many of these shopping strips, the retailers, to ensure that we breathe life into them?

We desperately need a plan for small business, and it is not just those businesses, it is the families that run them. It is the jobs that they create. There is none of that in terms of a plan, and I am really disappointed that those sole operators have never had any support. Those businesses, many of which have operated from home, had no support during the lockdown, no support at any time and no support now. The best they got—when it was uncovered that if you did not have a GST number, effectively if you were below the GST threshold, there was no money for you and there were no grants for you—was that the government put in a concierge service so they could talk to someone. Talking to someone does not pay the bills. Talking to someone does not put food on the table. These are people that make fashion stuff. These are artisans. These are photographers. These are people that during the lockdown had not a dollar coming in and no support coming in. Again, many of those have struggled. You have heard me talk about gym owners. You have heard me talking about people in the dance industry and the fitness industry, those people that have really struggled during this time. There has been no support, no funding, to actually back them as well.

Our events industry has really struggled. For the events industry, again, we advocated for insurance, which the government did come to the party on, underwriting an insurance policy, which was great. An insurance policy does not underwrite the kinds of thing where you have got artists that cannot come, because of COVID, at the last minute. So again it is very limited in terms of that insurance. But we need more than insurance. What about all of those local events that we want to get back? We want to restart those local events, the food and wine festivals, the regional events—the kinds of things that actually bring people, bring excitement, bring new ventures and bring new opportunities.

It is great that we have things like the Australian Open. It is great that we have a racing carnival. It is great that we have the grand prix. But we have got to ensure that we also support the business events, the corporate events and the smaller boutique events. They are the kinds of things that are going to make Victoria and Melbourne number one again. That is going to get tourism back. That is going to get people back. There has been nothing to support training people, getting traineeships and getting people back into the kinds of jobs that we need.

A lot of businesses cannot open because they do not have the staff. There has been no work being done to ensure that we get those people—we get workers back, we get people back, we get confidence back, we get tourism back. There is so much that needs to be done. Confidence is at an all-time zero because the government have not talked up what they are going to do. The government have not planned what they are going to do. I am very proud of the fact that we in opposition launched our plan, a six-point plan that talks about recovering, talks about rebuilding, talks about fixing the health crisis.

It is appalling, the fact that we have seen people die on 000 because they cannot get an ambulance. People have got to take their loved ones into a hospital because no-one is picking up the phone. Ambulances are being ramped. We hear today that the government is being sued because of the lack of response and that people have been dying because of the 000 crisis. Hospital waiting lists are at 100 000 people—no money for many of those hospitals. We have seen press announcements for Melton and other hospitals—no substance to build them. Again, the health crisis has been absolutely appalling, what we are dealing with. The member for Mulgrave has been the Premier or the health minister for 11 of 15 years, and what does the Premier do? What do they do in this budget? They put out a budget, ‘Putting patients first’. That is the headline. It is all it is, a headline. There is no substance in this budget, none whatsoever. You cannot just give a headline when you have had 15 years to actually do something about it—15 years.

Members interjecting.

Mr SOUTHWICK: The member for Bentleigh can jump up and down. In this budget the member for Bentleigh put out on social media the fact that they were closing a school—a special school, Katandra—and did not even tell those kids and those families at the special school. Well, that is not doing the hard yards. That is another press conference. That is another social media story.

Mr Staikos interjected.

Mr SOUTHWICK: The member for Bentleigh can interject all he likes, but those parents who have kids with special needs are very, very offended. The member for Bentleigh can join with me on Friday and meet a number of parents at that school that have been traumatised by the fact that he does a social media post talking about the closure of a school without those parents even being informed about that closure. It is an absolute disgrace.

This is a government about spin. This is a government about a headline. It is not a government about substance, and that is what we are seeing here. It is an appalling budget. This government does not care, and that is why it is a budget that, quite frankly, does not do anything to fix the problems that Victoria and Victorians are facing.

Mr STAIKOS (Bentleigh) (13:47): Dear oh dear. I have to say I spent all of Saturday at booths across my electorate, which covers the seats of Hotham and Isaacs and Goldstein, and I witnessed with my own eyes the Liberal vote collapse, including in the member for Caulfield’s own seat. You would think that after such a disastrous and cataclysmic event on Saturday they would change course, they would change direction. But listening to that garbage for 15 minutes, it is clear that they are not going to change course, not going to change direction. I will come back to them in a moment, but needless to say if I were them, I would probably think about packing up my offices.

Mr Southwick: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I would ask you to refer the member to refer to people appropriately, not by ‘them’.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Taylor): I do not uphold the point of order.

Mr STAIKOS: Thank you very much, Acting Speaker. They are a bit touchy at the moment, aren’t they? I do not blame them because I would be very, very jumpy in my seat if I were them. But I did not get up to talk about them; I got up to talk about another fantastic Labor budget of this Andrews Labor government. It is really an honour to speak about this budget. It is in fact our eighth budget as a government, it is the eighth budget handed down by the same Treasurer, which is a marker of the stability of this administration, and it is a budget that again puts Victorians first.

As the Treasurer’s parliamentary secretary I had the absolute privilege of seeing the Treasurer work behind the scenes with his team to develop this budget, and what I saw every single day was a government that is delivering for Victorians and a government with the right values and the right priorities. This is a budget that illustrates everything Victorians need to know about our party and this government. We prioritise jobs for Victorians, and we promote access to health care, education, transport and critical services for all Victorians. We also support the economy to recover and to grow rather than choking it with austerity, and we manage the state’s finances in a responsible way—even through the historic challenges of the last couple of years. Despite the difficult and costly decisions that this government has needed to make in recent years, where this government rightly used its balance sheet as a government to support the Victorian community, this budget will deliver a cash surplus of $1.3 billion in 2022–23 and an operating surplus of over $650 million in the final year of the forward estimates. It also shows an improvement of $7.8 billion in our net debt levels and establishes the $10 billion Victorian Future Fund to reinvest returns in debt stabilisation, meaning we have met or are progressing towards all four steps of this government’s fiscal strategy.

I am immensely proud to be part of a government that has, through this and previous budgets, provided more than $44 billion in pandemic response measures for health and to save jobs. On unemployment, under this government we have reduced unemployment to historic lows, and in our regions the unemployment rate is 3.2 per cent, which is the lowest across the continent. We have removed 60 level crossings and counting. We have invested more than $11 billion in health infrastructure, including $790 million in regional health infrastructure. We have built 23 new ambulance stations, and there are 15 more on their way, including in East Bentleigh in my electorate. We have provided funding to upgrade every special school in the state, and for the benefit of the member for Caulfield, I will come back to that in great detail later in this contribution. We have also invested more than $12.8 billion to build new schools and a total of more than 1850 school upgrades, including in my electorate. We have pioneered free TAFE and free and subsidised kinder, which is expanded in this budget. We have created over 560 000 jobs, of which more than 400 000 are full time, and that includes over 80 000 jobs in regional Victoria. We have created conditions and subsidies that have enabled 250 000 Victorians to buy their first home, and we have driven the biggest infrastructure program in the nation, investing four times more in capital projects on average than when those opposite were in office. I think that that is a pretty good summation of a very good record.

I do want to take some time to talk about something that did not get much coverage at all during the state budget, and that is the gig economy, because I am especially proud of what is in this budget to support workers in the gig economy and, frankly, to provide national leadership in a space where leadership has been lacking. I do want to be very direct on the gig economy and just say that I have never subscribed to the argument that has been put forward by mainly the bigger platforms that these workers are somehow small business people and are somehow their own bosses. Frankly, proffering such an argument is part of their business model. We have never subscribed to that. That is why we are taking action. While it did not receive much airtime, the budget we are debating contains important funding to address the challenges of the gig economy. It is important to see this particular issue from both sides, because the gig economy does promise choice and flexibility, but it also threatens, in the absence of a proper regulatory framework, to undermine the pay, the conditions and the security that working Australians and unions have fought for over a century to win.

As the Treasurer’s parliamentary secretary I have had the privilege in recent months to consult with gig platforms, with workers and also with independent experts, with academics, on the best way to regulate the new and growing form of work. My involvement followed this government commissioning in 2018 a landmark inquiry, indeed the most comprehensive piece of work in Australia in this space, led by Natalie James, the former Fair Work Ombudsman, into the Victorian on-demand workforce. And what the James inquiry found was that more than 13 per cent of Australians had at some point worked in the gig economy and that at any one point in time more than 7 per cent of Australians work in the gig economy. We also funded some groundbreaking research by QUT academics that revealed that gig work can exacerbate gender inequities and structural barriers to women’s workforce participation. But despite this comprehensive report, despite its 20 recommendations and despite the advocacy of this government, the former Morrison government oversaw a total policy vacuum in this space.

I am really pleased that the new Albanese government has committed to ensuring that the Fair Work Commission expands its remit to covering employment-like relationships, aka gig economy workers, because that is really what we need. And this is something that started from the national leadership shown by this government in the gig economy space. As I said, our government accepted all 20 of the recommendations of the report, and we are now consulting on a set of six key standards to give these workers some basic protections. To aid in this space the budget provides $5.6 million to continue the implementation of the government’s response to that inquiry, including provision of a support service for on-demand workers to help them better understand their entitlements and work status and to administer the standards that we will implement.

Turning to my electorate, it was another great budget for the Bentleigh electorate. When we talk about schools—and the member for Caulfield had a lot to say about schools that he did not deliver for in the four years that those opposite were in power—I can say that it was a great budget for schools in the Bentleigh electorate. Bentleigh Secondary College’s performing arts centre has been fully funded to the tune of $12.7 million. The performing arts is a space in which Bentleigh Secondary College excels, and I am really pleased to have been able to deliver such a fantastic outcome for them.

The member for Caulfield also spoke about Katandra School. It is important that we put a lot of facts on the table about what he called the ‘closure’ of Katandra School. Katandra School is a very valued special school down in Ormond. It is a primary school. It is a school of between 35 and 40 students. It is accommodated in a few modified old homes. Nearby in Hampton East there is Berendale School, another special school, which is a secondary school on a substantial piece of land. In the previous budget this government had funded some planning, with $500 000 to ensure that there was collaboration between Berendale School and Katandra School—between their school councils, between their school leadership—to plan a potential merger of those two schools. To say that there has not been any consultation is a complete and utter lie. There has been 12 months of consultation on this with the school communities; that includes all the families from both Berendale School and Katandra School. And can I say, if the member for Caulfield is about to oppose the merger of Berendale and Katandra schools, he is not on the right side. I think most parents—probably 99 per cent of parents—at both schools are going to have something to say about that. I am proud that this government has funded $12.2 million to facilitate that merger, but not only that, this government has ensured that through this budget every single special school in Victoria has been rebuilt.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.