Wednesday, 8 June 2022

Matters of public importance

Regional investment

The SPEAKER (16:01): I have accepted a statement from the member for Macedon proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house notes that the Andrews Labor government has invested more than $36 billion in regional Victoria, the largest investment of any government in Victoria’s history, and further notes:

(1) the average annual investment under the Andrews Labor government is 2½ times the average under the previous government;

(2) the 2022–23 Victorian budget is the second largest investment in regional Victoria in the state’s history, and 35 per cent of the new asset/infrastructure investment in the budget is in regional Victoria; and

(3) the 2022–23 Victorian budget provides a record $2.9 billion investment in health infrastructure, of which more than $1 billion is invested in regional Victoria.

Ms THOMAS (Macedon—Minister for Agriculture, Minister for Regional Development) (16:02): This is indeed a matter of public importance today, to ensure that the people of this great state absolutely understand our government’s commitment to the people of rural and regional Victoria. I am going to use this opportunity today not just to spend this time talking but to demonstrate with real commitment what our government is doing to invest in rural and regional Victoria.

Our government is a government that governs for people wherever they live, from Mildura to Mallacoota, from Wodonga to Warrnambool and everywhere in between. We want to ensure that rural and regional Victoria continues to remain the best place to live, work and invest, and that is why this year’s budget brings our government’s total investment in regional Victoria to $36 billion. That is more than five times what was invested by those on the other side when they were last in government. On average each of our budgets has invested 2½ times more than the average investment of the previous government, and this year’s budget of course is true to form, delivering $5.7 billion for rural and regional Victoria. This is the second largest single investment in our state’s history, following the record $8 billion that was invested in the COVID stimulus budget of 2020.

These investments are not just words on the page. These are investments that are delivering schools, health care, better transport. They are upgrading our roads and our railways and making sure that our communities in rural and regional Victoria have the services and the infrastructure that they need in order to continue to thrive. These projects also are creating jobs, once again, right across rural and regional Victoria. Ninety thousand jobs have been created in the regions.

A member: How many?

Ms THOMAS: Ninety thousand jobs since we came to office in 2014. Total employment across regional Victoria now exceeds prepandemic levels, and our regional unemployment rate of 3.4 per cent is the lowest in the nation.

What we have seen in the last year or so is the largest single migration of people from the CBD to rural and regional Victoria. We have had a net migration of 20 000 people—and is it any wonder, given the jobs that we are creating? The Minister for Transport Infrastructure and I well know that central Victoria is indeed an absolutely terrific place to live, work and invest, and there are plenty of job opportunities there right now for anyone thinking of making the move. Of course, against this backdrop we now have the announcement of the 2026 Commonwealth Games. For the first time the Commonwealth Games will be held across four sites, and they will all be in regional Victoria—in Geelong, in Bendigo, in Ballarat and in Gippsland. This is going to be an absolute further boost to the regions, and we look forward to welcoming the very many visitors, the athletes, their coaches and all the staff. We look forward to the opportunities that the Commonwealth Games will present for so many young people to grow new skills as a consequence of the Commonwealth Games. That is going to be brilliant.

As I said before, this year’s budget alone invests three times more than the average annual investment the coalition made when they were last in office. But the comparisons do not stop there. A massive 35 per cent of new infrastructure and asset investment in this year’s budget is going towards rural and regional projects. For comparison, if I may, the National Party has been out and about crowing about their 25 per cent guarantee of infrastructure investment for regional Victoria. But let me tell you what that means in practice. Let me tell you, when you cut through the spin and you cut through the fabrication, what it means. The National Party is actually promising to cut infrastructure spending in rural and regional Victoria, and why would we be surprised by that? Because we know nothing speaks louder than their previous record in government and what those on the other side did. Their legacy in rural and regional Victoria is one of cuts and neglect. That is what the National Party did, because really when push comes to shove the National Party in this state will do whatever the Liberals tell them to do. That is what they do. They are there as handmaidens to the Liberal Party.

So let me say this. I understand that those on the other side like to tell everyone that they stand up for country people. Well, let me tell you this. The country people that I speak to know better than that, and they know that those on the other side are condescending in their attitudes towards country people, that they will say and do whatever their Liberal puppetmasters tell them to do and that they will bow at the slightest pressure in order to maintain their own self-interest, their own seats here in this place. That is all they care about. That is all they have ever cared about.

We saw this too, I might say, at a federal level. The member for Murray Plains is in the house. My question, which he may like to answer in his contribution, is: when did he stand up to the former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce when we saw him as minister absolutely neglect Victoria—$7 billion of regional development invested by him or committed by him, and how much was coming to Victoria?

A member interjected.

Ms THOMAS: That is right—zero. So where were the Victorian National Party in standing up to Barnaby Joyce and the federal National Party. They were not there. Rather than stand up for Victoria and demand our fair share, the member for Murray Plains stood by Barnaby Joyce and his pork-barrelling in New South Wales. We will always stand up for rural and regional Victorians here in Victoria. This budget alone invests $2.3 billion in regional infrastructure, including $1 billion for health infrastructure. That is over a third of our government’s total investment in health in this budget. This funding is delivering the Barwon women’s and children’s hospital, acute care beds in Shepparton and a rehabilitation facility in Mildura. There is funding also of course for the upgrade of every special school in Victoria that has not yet been upgraded. Following this year’s budget, that will mean that every special school in the state will have been upgraded by our government.

Our funding in this budget is delivering new V/Line trains, built here in Victoria, and we are rebuilding and resurfacing vital road infrastructure. We all know, because we have heard it directly from the member for Murray Plains himself, that if elected a coalition government will cut funding to rural and regional Victoria—because they are committing only 25 per cent.

Members interjecting.

Ms THOMAS: It is a guaranteed funding cut from those on the other side.

The SPEAKER: Order! Members interjecting should be in their places.

Ms THOMAS: Can I tell you that the communities of Shepparton, Morwell and Mildura have also tired of the neglect of those on the other side who purport to speak on behalf of country Victorians, and they have voted in hardworking independents who have demonstrated that they can much more effectively represent the interests of their electorates.

I did want to talk about my own portfolio of regional development. This year marks the 20th anniversary of a signature Labor Party policy and commitment, the Regional Jobs and Infrastructure Fund, a fund that was implemented by a former Premier and former Minister for Regional Development, the Honourable John Brumby. We are so proud of what the RJIF has delivered across rural and regional Victoria. Indeed since we were elected in 2014 more than $700 million has been committed to more than 1000 projects across the state.

What I want to do is explain a little bit about the methodology that we use in regional development and how we ensure that we get real bang for our buck when we are making investments in rural and regional Victoria. It is good to see that the member for South-West Coast is here in the house at the moment because I do want to talk about the south-west. Let me give a couple of examples. Recently I was in Timboon—such a beautiful part of the world.

Ms Britnell: Not my electorate.

Ms THOMAS: All right, the member for Polwarth then—you know, in Polwarth, the south-west coast.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! There are members on both sides of the house that should be in their places.

Ms THOMAS: As I said, they are only interested in themselves and whether I get their electorates right. I was in Timboon. With funding from our regional jobs fund, Timboon Fine Ice Cream have been able to tap into new markets and grow their business. This is a third-generation dairy farming family that is value-adding, and of course the south-west coast, as we all know, is a premium producer—it is Australia’s powerhouse when it comes to dairy. But what is really important is that we continue to see value-adding to our primary produce here in Victoria. That is where we will generate the jobs.

We are also supporting Berry World through the jobs fund. They have rebuilt their cafe and restaurant and cellar door after they were destroyed in 2020, with some support from our government. So you have got those projects. We are also investing in the Twelve Apostles trail, linking Timboon to Port Campbell. The foreshore at Port Campbell is being upgraded with, once again, support from our government, and with a $6 million investment indeed.

A member: How much?

Ms THOMAS: So $6 million to support the revitalisation of the Port Campbell town centre.

Members interjecting.

Ms THOMAS: I said ‘Port Campbell’—Port Campbell town centre. Can I also say that we have also invested to support the unlocking of housing lots in Timboon and Simpson. I am using the south-west coast as an example to show how we are strategically making investments in business and infrastructure projects that will generate jobs across the whole region and play to the region’s strengths. This is the strategic approach that we take to regional development, unlike what we have seen from those opposite, who pork-barrel in their own seats in order to get themselves re-elected, because at the end of the day that is all they are interested in, and we have seen it time and time again.

Let me speak also, if I may, about the Latrobe Valley. Our government has always stood by the people of the Latrobe Valley, and it always will. We created the Latrobe Valley Authority in response to the closure of the coal generation power facility down there. Since its inception and with the support of this government we have seen more than 4000 jobs created down in the valley, with a $2 billion investment from this government. So once again the LVA is helping us plan a transition from fossil fuel energy to new industries, be they health care and community services, be they tourism, be they advanced manufacturing. Only an Andrews Labor government will invest in rural and regional Victoria. Only the Andrews government, with 18 rural and regional members, will stand up for country people in this state.

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (16:17): I rise to speak on the matter of public importance from the minister at the table, the Minister for Regional Development. Firstly the Latrobe Valley Authority creating 4000 jobs—my understanding from the recent upper house inquiry about the Latrobe Valley was that the CEO could not actually commit to having those jobs created. So I think the minister should go and get her facts straight on a whole range of things that she has spoken about.

Regional Victoria have thought for a long time that they have been missing out on their fair share when it comes to the Andrews government. With that in mind, the member for Gippsland South commissioned the Parliamentary Budget Office to do an analysis of the budget to actually look at whether the perception that people had in regional Victoria about not getting their fair share was true or not. The Parliamentary Budget Office has proved that regional Victoria is not getting its fair share when it comes to capital expenditure, infrastructure expenditure, in regional Victoria. If you go through the 2022–23 budget, budget paper 4 (BP4), you look at the columns and you add it up, you will see that when you separate out rural and regional projects and those labelled as metropolitan or statewide projects, only 13 per cent of the capital spending could be directly attributed to the regions in the 2022–23 budget.

If the minister that moved this motion actually wants to prove the 35 per cent she talks about, we would welcome the Parliamentary Budget Office looking at those figures, because it is the tangible spend in the budget that is important, not necessarily the allocation. If you go to the budget papers and you go to BP4 and you look at page 65, half a billion dollars of that spend is for the Barwon women’s and children’s hospital. And then you actually look at the forward estimates, and there are no numbers. There is TBC, TBC, TBC, TBC. There is $500 million in the first column, but there is no allocation across the forward estimates. That is the sort of stuff that is in the budget papers that people are concerned about.

And you might ask: why does that matter? Because if you go back to the 2016–17 budget, BP4, page 49 in that particular budget paper, the Andrews government allocated $50 million to the national proton beam therapy centre. It was announced in the budget with a whole heap of fanfare—$50 million of expenditure. Nothing has ever happened, nothing has ever been built; that just disappeared out of the budget. That is why when quoting the budget papers, as the member opposite said, you have got to look behind them—to know how deceitful this government can be around these particular issues. If you look at the two regional health projects that are in the budget, one of those is a $500 myth—phantom funding—because there is no money across the forward estimates.

If you look at some of the other projects, the Central Gippsland region water corporation has 11 new projects in the budget. Six of those have no spend allocated in the 2022–23 budget. If you go to BP4, page 111, there is no funding allocated in the budget for six of those projects. If you go to the Goulburn Valley Water corporation, there are 26 new projects in the budget but 16 with no actual funding in this year’s budget. So there is a lot of phantom funding in the budget that the government is talking about there. People that are unkind—and I am never unkind—would say this government is all headline and no deadline when it comes to actually delivering on their promises, but I would not be so unkind to say that when we talk about these things.

A member: Has that been tested?

Mr WALSH: That has been tested. It has tested very, very well in your electorate, mate; you just wait and see.

As I said at the start, the member for Gippsland South asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to have a look at this discrepancy between regional Victoria and metropolitan Melbourne, so for asset investment excluding Australian government funding for regional versus metropolitan Melbourne, because it is important that we are talking about the Victorian allocation to infrastructure, not the commonwealth allocation to infrastructure. With a lot of projects, particularly in regional Victoria, it is a significant investment in its own right. They had some criteria they set out about particular things, but it was to look at the asset spend in the budget between metro and regional statewide, and basing it back to individual suburbs and locations they came up with the numbers for what the split is. The number that jumps off the page for people out of that particular report is in figure 10, where it says the asset investment per person is $15 268 in Melbourne but only $7142 in regional Victoria. That is from the Parliamentary Budget Office. This is not a myth or phantom funding from the other side of the house. They are not numbers that we have done. It is actually from the Parliamentary Budget Office.

Now, I know the government will try to discredit the Parliamentary Budget Office. They do not like IBAC. They have cut the funding to IBAC because they do not like what is going on at IBAC. They have gone to war with the Ombudsman. If they try and dispute the Parliamentary Budget Office on these figures, they are going to go to war with another independent agency here in Victoria. This is about independent analysis of the Victorian budget. For the Treasurer and the Minister for Regional Development and Minister for Agriculture to stand up and use the numbers they are—they need to put their numbers to the test with the Parliamentary Budget Office to make sure they are real into the future.

If we talk about commonwealth investment, the Parliamentary Budget Office found that there is more commonwealth investment in regional projects than there is in metropolitan projects—so thank you very much. There has been a lot of criticism from the Andrews government about the federal government. But thank you very much to Darren Chester, when he was the infrastructure minister, and thank you to Michael McCormack, when he was the infrastructure minister, for what they have done for regional Victoria, because if we did not have the commonwealth government putting the money in, we would be a lot worse off.

If you look at some of the projects that are in the budget that the Andrews government lays claim to, such as the Regional Rail Revival upgrade for the Bendigo–Echuca line, which the member for Bendigo East talks about a lot, $158 million of the $175 million for that project actually came from the commonwealth government. If you look at the Gippsland line upgrade, $447 million of $531 million came from the commonwealth government. If you look at the rail revival for the Shepparton line, $320 million of $400 million actually came from the commonwealth government. If you look at the Warrnambool line, member for South-West Coast—I know what towns are in your electorate; some others may not, but I know what towns are in your electorate—$208 million of $260 million came from the commonwealth government. If you go to the Waurn Ponds track duplication, $754 million of $899 million came from the commonwealth government. So there is more than $2.1 billion of the $2.5 billion investment that the Andrews government lays claim to that has actually come from the commonwealth government.

When we, the Liberal and National parties, have given a commitment that 25 per cent of the state spend will actually go into regional Victoria, that is a real number that will make sure that regional Victoria will have the infrastructure it needs into the future. What we have seen with COVID is that a lot more people want to move out to the regions. They have seen the advantage of living in regional Victoria, and we as regional Victorians need the infrastructure to make sure that we can give the services to the people that live and come out to live with us. That is why the 25 per cent is so important—to actually make sure that we have that infrastructure.

If you go through the budget papers further, you will see that Regional Development Victoria, a core plank of the Andrews government, as the minister said, actually had its budget cut by $87 million this year. If you look at Agriculture Victoria, not only do we not have a department of agriculture anymore—we just have AgVic—but AgVic had a further $47.5 million cut in this year’s budget. Both sides of politics are very proud of the export capability we have, particularly in our agriculture sector, our education sector and some of our high-end manufacturing sector. Wouldn’t you have thought that the trade and global engagement part of the government budget, with COVID, might have been boosted to help us with more exports—might have actually been boosted to help us find other markets so we do not have the reliance on China that we have had in the past? But no, trade and global engagement suffered a $46 million cut. Over the last two years that program has been cut by nearly 50 per cent. So for the government to say they are investing record funding into these sorts of programs that help regional Victoria, they are just plain wrong.

The fire services levy has rated on every property in Victoria. It raises approximately $800 million this year for the fire services. We know the government hate the Country Fire Authority; the Andrews government have gone to war with the CFA just to appease Peter Marshall. It is all about appeasing Peter Marshall. Of that $800 million that is raised, there is only $11.1 million that goes into asset and expenditure for the Country Fire Authority. Yes, it goes into the paid firefighter part of it, but it does not go into the CFA volunteer part of it.

I suppose if you look at projects around regional Victoria that the Andrews government has funded and made an absolute mess of, the Minister for Transport Infrastructure would know very well that I am going to talk about the Murray Basin rail project. The Murray Basin rail project—

A member interjected.

Mr WALSH: You thought that might have been the case? The Murray Basin rail project was going to be a once-in-a-generation upgrade of the freight railway lines of north-west Victoria to standardise and upgrade those lines to make our transport system far more efficient. $220 million from the state government, $220 million from the federal government—and they made an absolute mess of the project. Thank you, Michael McCormack, for putting in another $200 million to fix up the mess of the first half of the project. But the second half has never actually been started. The freight trains from Mildura now take longer to get from Mildura to the port than they did before this project started. So $600 million was effectively blown, and the train takes longer to get to Melbourne. The commonwealth government—Michael McCormack—put that $200 million in and said, ‘We’ll put another $5 million on the table. If it’s matched by the Victorian government, we’ll do the business case to look at what needs to be done to finish that particular project’. The Andrews government has refused to put that $5 million in, and at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee the other day the Minister for Transport Infrastructure effectively walked away from even pursuing the commonwealth government for that $5 million.

Ms Britnell: Not even interested.

Mr WALSH: Not even interested. No show, your honour. She was not interested in doing that at all. So we will not be lectured by the Andrews government, not by any of the people on the other side of the house about what they are doing for regional Victoria, because if you actually go to the independent Parliamentary Budget Office report—and I am using it as a note, I am not using it as a prop—it sets out, chapter and verse, how regional Victoria has been short-changed by the Andrews government. I come back to that particular figure of the asset investment per person for regional Victoria versus Melbourne: $15 268 per person is invested in infrastructure in metropolitan Melbourne and only $7142 is invested in infrastructure in regional Victoria. That number is less than half of what is spent in Melbourne. I cannot see how those on the other side of the house can argue against the Parliamentary Budget Office report, which sets it out so very, very clearly. So I would like the Andrews government people that are going to speak on this bill, that are going to make rash claims based on the bits of paper that are put in front of them by some staff member somewhere, which they probably do not really even understand at all, to actually submit their bits of paper to the Parliamentary Budget Office. Let us see where the truth lies, because I have faith that the Parliamentary Budget Office is the truth, not what we are told from the other side of the house.

Ms EDWARDS (Bendigo West) (16:31): He could not even make 15 minutes. I am really pleased to speak on the MPI today. It is not very often I get a chance to make a contribution when there is a matter of public importance before the house, but this one was very important for me as a regional member. Of course when there are 18 members from regional Victoria on this side of the house there is a little bit of competition to speak on those matters, so I am really, really delighted to be given the opportunity today. As the Minister for Regional Development said in her contribution, regional Victoria is going great guns. There is absolutely no question. The investment in regional Victoria, particularly over the last few budgets, has been our second highest, I think, in the history of the state. Of course, as has been mentioned also by both the Premier and the Minister for Regional Development, it is five times what the previous government spent.

Now, for 11½ years I have been a member of Parliament, and I well remember those four years when the coalition was given the privilege of government, from 2010 to 2014. What I remember from those four years is constantly hearing complaints from constituents about cuts to education and cuts to health. I also remember very clearly that the youth unemployment rate in Bendigo was the highest it had ever been in its history, and that is an absolute reflection on those opposite. Why weren’t those on the opposite side, particularly The Nationals, advocating then for better services for regional Victoria? Why weren’t they increasing funding back then? They were nowhere to be seen, and they are still nowhere to be seen. There has not been a National Party candidate in Bendigo West since 2010, and like the Liberals, we only see them when it is the eleventh hour before an election, and even then their presence is very, very minimal.

Their narrative is one that we have heard time and time again, and it is a fallacy: it has been proven wrong time and time again. I think the political narrative that they continue to roll out is nothing more perhaps than a desperate attempt to regain relevance or maybe, just maybe, a desperate attempt to regain their party status. When it comes to advocating for regional communities The Nationals only do what they think will benefit them at election time. Outside of that their silence is deafening. In fact I saw the Leader of The Nationals up in Bendigo a couple of times over the last few weeks, and I thought, ‘That’s a bit odd’. Then I thought, ‘Oh, no, actually it’s not—it’s an election year’. It is six months out from an election, and there he is—he pops up. It is absolutely incredible. I was looking at Twitter before, and I came across a very interesting little piece of information: the word of the day, which I thought fitted nicely with those opposite and particularly the Leader of The Nationals.

A member interjected.

Ms EDWARDS: Yes—struthonian:

… one who ignores unwelcome facts and buries their head in the sand. From the Latin ‘struthio’, ‘ostrich’.

I wanted today to dispute everything that those opposite say about our investment in regional Victoria, and my focus in the short time that I have available—it is a very, very long list I have—is to give everyone a bit of a tour of the Bendigo West electorate and a bit of an idea of the amount of investment that has been put into my electorate. It is not an exhaustive list, because there are a few things that I have missed, I am sure, and some that are still to come.

I thought I would start with Maldon—beautiful Maldon, Australia’s first notable town—a beautiful historic town in my electorate: $4.5 million for the streetscape works, including the undergrounding of the powerlines; upgrades to the Bill Woodfull Recreation Reserve; $1.7 million just last week for the Porcupine Village rebuild; an upgrade to the RSL; an upgrade to the Maldon Athenaeum Library; and an upgrade to the Maldon Primary School, with a new outdoor oval and outdoor play space.

Then we go across to Newstead. We funded Renewable Newstead. We funded streetscape works in Newstead. We funded a primary school upgrade for the Newstead Primary School, kinder upgrades and an upgrade to the Pyrenees Highway to Newstead. We have also funded an upgrade to the old train station and the old goods shed, which have become a beautiful art space for the Newstead art community.

Let us go across to Guildford. We reopened the Guildford Primary School and included funding for upgrades at that school, a beautiful, historic school. We funded streetscape works in Guildford and CFA station upgrade works.

At Campbells Creek: a primary school upgrade, an inclusive playground and a walking-cycling path along the creek. There are streetscape works in Campbells Creek, a CFA station upgrade and a new community events centre.

Across to Chewton: lighting at the reserve, upgrades to the Chewton Primary School and streetscape works. We removed the old pine forest plantation, which the former minister for the environment might remember. We also included the Monster Meeting site on the heritage list and included it in the Castlemaine Diggings National Heritage Park.

Across to Harcourt: we built that La Larr Ba Gauwa mountain bike park—an amazing, amazing mountain bike park that is attracting so many visitors and tourists and mountain bike enthusiasts. We built a new kinder in Harcourt, co-located with the primary school. We built female-friendly facilities at the Harcourt Recreation Reserve and an all-abilities playground at the centre of Harcourt, and we upgraded the Harcourt Valley Primary School.

Castlemaine: there is a long list here. The Barkers Creek pavilion upgrade also has female-friendly facilities. We made upgrades to the Winters Flat Primary School, Castlemaine North Primary School and Castlemaine Primary School and built a new Castlemaine Secondary College, a new Castlemaine Men’s Shed and a new, inclusive all-abilities playground in Victory Park. There is $6 million for the Castlemaine Goods Shed for use by the Castlemaine State Festival and the community. We relocated the goldfields historic steam train works from Maldon, with a new shed in Castlemaine. There are upgrades to Loddon Prison and $6 million to upgrade the Castlemaine Art Museum, and there is the Regional Health Infrastructure Fund for the Castlemaine hospital. There are upgrades to the Pyrenees Highway in the centre of town; the female-friendly facilities and pavilion upgrade at Wesley Hill reserve; new netball courts; heritage funding for Buda, the Theatre Royal and the Market Building; funding for Buda to start their master plan; disability access and a lift at the community house; lighting at Camp Reserve; a community SES upgrade and a Castlemaine Library upgrade.

We will go across to Marong: there is funding for the Great Stupa, including infrastructure funding, a new library—an interfaith library—and the ILLUMIN8 festival, which I was at on Saturday night; upgrades to the Marong Primary School, which we just opened; and planning for a new ambulance station.

In Maiden Gully there are traffic lights at Edwards Road, an upgrade to the Maiden Gully Primary School and funding for Marist College.

I have not even got to Bendigo. I will just point out a few of the important infrastructure upgrades in Bendigo. First and foremost, we started the new Bendigo hospital and we finished the Bendigo hospital. Now there is $60 million on the table for a new day rehabilitation centre to be located at the site of the old hospital. There is the Bendigo Stadium upgrade. Bendigo TAFE has been completely rebuilt: $60 million for the McCrae Street campus, a new Food and Fibre Centre of Excellence and a new Health and Community Centre of Excellence. There is a new courthouse—$152.4 million—and of course the GovHub. And then there is funding to the schools: Bendigo Senior Secondary College, California Gully and Victory Christian College and upgrades to Bendigo Special Developmental School, and we built a brand new school at Kalianna. These are just some of the investments in my electorate.

For those opposite to say that we have neglected regional Victoria is an atrocity. I know and I remember their four years in government, when they spent very, very little in my electorate and we were always banging on the door asking for more. And what did they do? They cut services, they cut funding to health and to education. Jobs were hard to come by, and I know for a fact that our public servants were very, very angry and very, very upset because of the cuts to the public service. It is only a Labor government that will invest in regional Victoria, and with 18 regional members on this side of the house, we know how hard we work in our electorates to make sure that regional Victoria gets the funding it deserves. For those opposite to say anything other than that is absolutely not true.

Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (16:41): I rise to speak on today’s matter of public importance, and I find it absolutely fascinating that this government is trying to claim it has been investing record amounts in regional Victoria, because I probably do not even have to say anything, I can just list the lived experience of a regional Victorian, particularly one who lives right on the outskirts of the regions, right towards the South Australian border. I will not start on roads, but I am pretty confident I will spend a bit of time on roads, because the further away we get from the tram tracks, the worse our roads get, and that is the real, lived experience of regional Victorians.

But I am not just going to go on without evidencing what I will state as fact, and I am not going to use my work, I am going to use the work of the Parliamentary Budget Office: a report that was completed in April this year. It clearly shows in black and white the reality of how metropolitan Melbourne under this government has been faring versus the regions. I tell you, it has got it here in black and white that regional Victoria is not getting its fair share. I will go to some of the information in this document. I will take you to page 2 of the document, which talks about the asset investment per person. In the document it highlights that in metropolitan Melbourne the amount per person is $15 268, as against regional Victorians, who get $7142.

The situation is that the document talks about how most projects, particularly in regional Victoria, have a lot of funding that comes from the federal government. In fact the federal government have done all the heavy lifting. When you look at what the document says and when you look at ‘Asset investment of $100 million or more, excluding Australian government funding’—that is the federal funding—$79 billion has been invested in metropolitan Melbourne versus $11 billion in regional Victoria. Now, that means that people in metropolitan Victoria were invested in around 114 per cent more than those in regional Victoria. So again, this report demonstrates that the government have been trying to say they are investing in regional Victoria when in reality they are taking the federal money, they are putting it in the budget and they are portraying this as the money that Victorians are getting from the Victorian government when they have actually been getting most of the investment that has happened in regional Victoria from the feds.

I will take you to an example in my electorate of South-West Coast. In 2017 the Premier made a flying visit to Warrnambool—and I mean literally a flying visit; he did not actually travel by our roads or our rail—and he came to spruik that the government, his government, would invest $114 million in the Warrnambool line. The reality is that $104 million of that $114 million was federal money. Now, he said that work would begin in 2018 and would take 12 to 18 months, meaning it would be completed by 2019 at the earliest. Here we are in 2022, and guess what? It is not complete. That line upgrade we are now told should be completed by the end of this year at a cost of not $114 million but $252 million. This is just one project which this current state government has managed and blown out the cost of. That is a contribution from the federal government of $226 million of $252 million—$26 million, just 10 per cent, by the state. So the people of country Victoria are not fooled by this state government saying they are investing, because they can see the reality is it is not the state government.

The government likes to confuse the way things are reported, and even in the Weekly Times today there is an article pointing out how the government, in the way they have structured the budget, are making it hard for anyone to be able to make sense of the budget for key maintenance measures for roads. The VicRoads annual reports are published in a way that makes it almost impossible, and it is blurring its budget numbers. VicRoads has been subsumed into the mega Department of Transport, and so its financials cannot be analysed, the article talks to. VicRoads has changed its performance measures from reporting the number of regional roads and kilometres maintained to the square kilometres maintained. It is just making it impossible to compare the two measures. And why do you think they need to do that? They are fudging the figures. They are trying to fool Victorians into believing they are actually doing more than they are doing.

I look at the figures in the budget books. If I take you to budget paper 4 and we look at the projects under the Department of Health, the new projects part of the budget, this government talks about $2.9 billion in health in the 2022–23 budget for health infrastructure, with $1 billion of that being in regional health. Well, this is where it gets really good, because we have here ‘Barwon Women’s and Children’s Hospital (Geelong)’. It is a project that is supposed to cost $0.5 billion. So let us see what it says they are going to invest in that project in the first year, which is 2022. Nothing—there is nothing there. It says ‘TBC’. The next year after that, what is the next figure they are going to put into this project of building a very important hospital that they have talked about and spruiked? ‘TBC’— nothing. And then we go out into the next year. The figure there again is ‘TBC’. Even under ‘completion date’—to be confirmed. If I turn over the page and I look at Melton hospital, clearly under the $2.9 billion into health in the metropolitan area, well again, there is nothing there. It says the project is going to cost $900 million, but if you look at the next figures of 2022, 2022–23 and forward, there is nothing. Not a single dollar has been allocated. So these are the sorts of figures that the government is trying to claim they are using to tell us stories, but there is actually nothing there to back it up.

I might go to budget paper 3. Let us have a look, because this government also says that it is spending $12 billion more this year in health. Well, it is really not that hard to read. It is not research, it is not analysis, it is just reading. And if you go to the output summary by the department’s objectives and go down to the 2021–22 figure, the total figure, last year on health $27 billion was spent. If you go to the next column—this is how you read budgets; it is not that hard; anyone who has run a business has to do this every day—2022–23, the total figure at the bottom is $25 billion. Twenty-seven, 25—it was 27 last year; it is 25 for this year. That is a $2 billion cut. It is as simple and as clear as that.

But we hear from this current government that they are actually investing $12 billion more. Well, let us analyse that for a minute. It is just deception. It is absolute, clear deception, because what they are really doing is telling us about dollars that they have already spent. $3.5 billion out of that $12 billion is allocated in the budget that has already been spent, and this includes $1.3 billion already spent on PPE and COVID programs; more than $1 billion already spent on rapid antigen tests—well, they have already been stuck down someone’s neck and in the bin; and more on vaccinations—well, they are in people’s arms and gone. The federal government are the ones that put most of that money forward. This is absolute smoke-and-mirrors budgeting on behalf of this government, and it is spruiking, not the truth. It is a government that makes absolute false statements.

I am just going to end on the roads, because when I hear the government saying they are doing an amazing job of our roads in regional Victoria and claiming that our complaints about the roads are our fantasies, I think that is absolutely insulting. Our crumbling roads, our massive potholes, our dangerous shoulders are a result of the government not spending the right amount of money in the area of maintenance and road management. They want to reduce the speed rather than fix the roads properly.

This is a government that is absolutely trying to deceive Victorians, particularly regional Victorians. But it is our lived experience in regional Victoria. Our roads that we drive on that are failing, our rail that is not getting the investment it needs and not taking us where we need to go in a timely manner like the city gets makes it so easy to discredit this government. This is deception at its grandest. When you look at the government saying in Parliament yesterday, ‘We’re not cutting Portland health’ but we have not got the services we had two, three, four months ago, it is nothing short of being deceptive to the people of regional Victoria.

Ms SETTLE (Buninyong) (16:51): I am really pleased to rise to speak on this matter of public importance (MPI), because it really is incredibly important to me. I have lived most of my life in regional Victoria. I have raised my sons there. I have managed our family farm and spent a lot of time in regional Victoria. I have watched a few governments come and go, and I know which side of the house has protected regional Victoria as we have gone along. Sadly we have had to listen lately to those opposite playing politics with patients’ lives continually in question time, and now, I cannot believe it, they are playing politics with the lives of people in the regions, people that matter to me, that I stand beside every day.

The contribution from the member for South-West Coast talked about lived experience. What makes me giggle, I have to admit, on that note is that we have 18 regional members of Parliament on this side of the house. In addition to that we have two fantastic independent regional MPs. It seems to me that the lived experience of people in the regions—they are expressing that at the ballot box, and they keep doing that again and again.

We have heard a bit from the other side about the Parliamentary Budget Office’s report. There were some comments made that we would in any way denigrate their work. We would not do that. We do not need to do that. Very clearly they state in the report that these figures that they have delivered relate to projects under $100 million, so those on the other side are cherrypicking their figures. I have a lot of agriculture in my electorate, and one of the fine industries in my electorate is the Bacchus Marsh cherry picking. So if there is ever a need for a job from any on the other side, please come along and let me see if I can help you out, because really, what you have done here is a whole lot of cherrypicking.

We have heard this line about the comparison of spend per head—35 per cent of the new total estimated investment is in the regions. If you compare that to the population, 23 to 25 per cent of the population is regional, which means there is more per head. But of course those on the other side are busy cherrypicking to save their own political careers. The 2022–23 state budget was the second-largest investment in regional Victoria in our state’s history. Can I let that sink in? It was the second largest. But what I want you to think about is who delivered the largest.

Ms Richards: Who?

Ms SETTLE: Who? This government delivered the largest regional budget in this state’s history. The Liberal-Nationals commitment to 25 per cent funding for regional Victoria would actually stand as a cut. It is pretty extraordinary that they are proposing a cut right here and now, but you know, you sit back and think, ‘It’s in their DNA. Perhaps they just instinctively cut things’—like they have here.

Over the past eight years we have invested an average of $4.5 billion per budget in regional Victoria, and that compares to those on the other side, when they were in, investing $1.8 billion per budget. Two and a half times that amount we have spent on average, year in, year out, and we have spent that on health, education and jobs—things that matter to people.

This government cares so much about regional Victoria that it has come up with an extraordinary novel idea, which is to hold the Commonwealth Games across the regions, thereby putting an enormous infrastructure investment into regional Victoria. When this was announced—and it was announced in Ballarat, I am proud to say—we stood there with the people from the Commonwealth Games, and they said, ‘This is a new model; this is a new way that we can deliver this across the world’, because they could see the huge advantage that it would give to regional Victorians and they will be using this model around the world. The Commonwealth Games is a $2.6 billion investment in the regions.

We have, as I say, invested very heavily in health, and I know that my good friend and colleague the member for Wendouree will talk about the investment in Ballarat Base Hospital. It has just been extraordinary to watch it grow out of the ground. That is half-a-billion-dollar investment in Ballarat’s hospital, which I am delighted about, having had one of my children rushed there by a very good ambulance from my rural home in Ararat. The service there was just extraordinary. But it is really important things like, you know, making our paramedic stations 24 hours. I had the absolute delight with the member for Melton to open the 24-hour station that is now in Ballan. It is not just about investing in those big regional centres, which of course we do and are very proud to do; we make sure that everyone across the region can get to that service.

A little bit in the same way for me, what has been fantastic has been the investment in education and schools. In my electorate obviously there is part of Ballarat and bigger townships like Bacchus that will be coming into Eureka. But what I love the most is that in my time this government has invested $9.5 million in Woady Yaloak Primary School—there are four campuses—in Smythesdale and Ross Creek. And it has invested in small primary schools: Linton Primary School—$1 million—Cape Clear Primary School and Darley Primary School. This government does not just invest in the big centres, though we do that exceptionally well; it has been shared across regions, because we know that absolutely every Victorian deserves the best start they can get, so we have continued to invest.

One particularly close to my heart has been our investment in free TAFE. I know how much of a life changer TAFE can be; it certainly was for me. When I came off the farm I went and did a course at TAFE. This government’s investment has just been extraordinary. In Ballarat alone, at Fed Uni, it has doubled female participation—doubled it—by having free TAFE. That is making a real difference to people’s lives in the regions.

We understand the absolute value of agriculture. As I say, I come from a hundred-year-old proud farming family, and I know that this government is aware of the importance of agriculture. I see it again and again. I was incredibly proud to be asked to chair a review which looked at agricultural training. But our commitment is very strong in all aspects when we look at developing agriculture. In my electorate alone, 21 per cent of Victoria’s eggs come from Golden Plains, but we have also, as I say, got the wonderful fruit and veg of Bacchus Marsh. There is a pork industry as well as a potato industry closer to Ballarat. So agriculture is very important in my electorate, and this government has invested $3 billion in agriculture—investments which have seen the industry grow 32 per cent in that time. Our investment has seen the industry grow, and that is so important to all of regional Victoria.

There is so much to say. I am a bit like the member for Bendigo West; we have not got enough time to talk about all of the wonderful things. But one thing I will say is the member for Ripon likes to crow that no-one in her district remembers what the Kennett Liberal government did to them when they ripped out the trains from Ararat and Maryborough or cut jobs. I do not agree with that. I lived in Ararat in 2010 when the Libs got in, and the fear was palpable. We knew what was coming. It was going to be cuts again and again and again. But as a concession to the member for Ripon, I will not concentrate on the Kennett government. Let us just look at the last coalition government. In 2012 when the member for Murray Plains was the Minister for Agriculture he oversaw more than 500 job cuts from the ag department and shut down no fewer than seven regional offices, one of those in Ararat in the seat of Ripon. When last in office the opposition slashed core livestock biosecurity funding in half. Biosecurity is so important in the farming communities.

Those on the other side have not delivered for regional Victoria. That is why there are 18 Labor MPs in regional Victoria and two fabulous independent MPs in regional Victoria. We have invested $36 billion in rural and regional Victoria—five times more than those on the other side. They can cherrypick the reports as much as they want, but people in regional Victoria know and see all that this government has done to invest in them, and I am proud to stand on this MPI.

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (17:01): I am rising to speak on the matter of public importance (MPI) today that has seen our government colleagues get very excited and proud of the product in their own electorates. Despite the rhetoric from the other side, pork-barrelling must be alive and well. I am pleased to hear that some of the members who are claiming to be from regional Victoria have this great amount of activity happening in their electorates. Let me make it very clear: that is not the experience of the overwhelming majority of representatives from country Victoria. One only has to look at a map of Victoria to realise it is not a big grey dot in the middle of the state of Victoria and a dot at Bendigo and a dot at Geelong. It is not that; it is the whole state. And everyone in Victoria deserves the opportunity to make sure that the healthcare needs, the educational needs and, most importantly, the road and safety and infrastructure needs in their communities are being well looked after.

It is really clear that this budget has a lot of filibustering in it. Clearly it has got some pork-barrelling because some of the members are quite happy with it, but for members that represent areas like mine, for example, we are well and truly aware that we have had trains promised to go to Warrnambool. New VLocity trains were promised in 2018 and then fell out of the budget, and now they have reappeared magically—perhaps because, good heavens, it is another election year so they put them back into the budget. We know this government has a nasty habit of putting things into budgets, mentioning grand visions and then sort of reassessing them afterwards. Probably the best example is a $500 million—half a billion dollars—example in this budget. They have gone and put my trains back in, so that is nice until probably after November, but this government has become so brazen in its misleading budgets that we can go to budget paper 4 and the big one in there of course is the Barwon women’s and children’s hospital. This is a big slab of what this government says it is going to spend in rural and regional Victoria. It is a big slab of its big commitment to health care, yet they are so unable to commit to this project that they have not even done what they have done in the past, which is to put the figures in and then remove them. They have not even gotten around to putting the figures in the budget. They are just TBCs—to be confirmed. What sort of government is game enough to go out and tell people about its investment but then not even put it in the budget papers?

Of course their ability to sort of bend the truth on how much they are actually spending in rural and regional Victoria is not only identified by us in the opposition, it is not only identified by many in communities who get told projects are happening but find endless delays, it has also been identified by the Parliamentary Budget Office, who have done an analysis of recent budgets, and much of this holds true for this current budget. One line in particular caught my eye, and that line is:

… the budget does not explicitly identify all significant Australian Government funding contributions.

This is important because what this government is not telling Victorians and what it does not make at all clear in the budget is that so much of what is happening in rural and regional Victoria, such as the upgrades to the Warrnambool line, such as the Murray Valley rail improvements and such as other highways—the Western Highway, Princes Highway West—and other significant projects that rural and regional Victorians rely on, is actually being paid for by the federal government. If it was not for the federal government, rural and regional Victorians would absolutely be so much worse off.

I refer also to a project such as the Geelong city deal. The Geelong city deal is a huge amount—a couple of hundred million dollars worth of federal government funds which will go into Geelong and will actually go into very important projects in my electorate along the Great Ocean Road, and yet this government is sitting on that money. I have raised now on numerous occasions one of the significant Geelong city deal projects, which is of course the upgrade and development of the Point Grey area. There is many millions of dollars sitting there; it was given to this government many years ago, and it is still sitting there. It is most likely being used to prop up the many holes in the budget, but it is sitting there, propping them up. Not only has the money been committed, but this government are refusing to spend the money that the federal government is giving to them. They are hiding it in the budget. They are not acquitting it properly, and country Victorians are paying the price. That is because this government just does not have the cash and it does not have the resources to properly fund and look after the infrastructure that we are so desperate for in country Victoria.

One of the elements of this MPI today of course is the government wanting to tell us how much they are spending on rural health. This chamber has heard time and time again in recent months about how Victorians and particularly country Victorians are being let down. But let us just look at budget paper 3, which highlights this government’s commitment to health. The government is reporting a $2 billion cut to health. Where are they getting this magical ‘We’re spending all these extra billions’? I mean, clearly they are making it up. I will just run through some of the things, for your benefit, Deputy Speaker. Admitted services, a cut of a million dollars, from $15 million down to $14 million; non-admitted services, a cut. Emergency services—for heaven’s sake, in the middle of, as the Premier so often tells us, a one-in-100-year pandemic—

Mr R Smith: Wicked.

Mr RIORDAN: a wicked, virulent pandemic that is causing so much grief, he is actually cutting emergency services by $100 000. He has got residential aged care, one of the areas that has clearly suffered throughout the last couple of years—a cut there. Aged support services have almost half the allocation in the budget this year, from $102 million down to $67 million. Member for Warrandyte, that is a massive reduction. We have got ambulance non-emergency services. I mean, for heaven’s sake, we heard in question time today about ambulance services having to use taxis, and no wonder—there is a cut in the budget for that. Drug prevention and control, cuts. Drug treatment and rehabilitation, a massive cut from $300-odd million down to $272 million. We have got mental health community support services. I mean, can you imagine, after two years of lockdowns, when mental health is front and centre of community concern, this government has seen fit to cut that. We have got health protection, $1.5 billion cut down to $446 million. For heaven’s sake, please tell me, government, that that money has not been taken to pay for tunnel costs that are overblown—that $28 billion that is a complete overrun through mismanagement—that you are not taking money from health protection to pay for overblown tunnel costs. I mean, that is almost immoral. Emergency management, $17.1 million down to $12.9 million—and on and on the list goes.

This is not opposition interpretation of the budget, it is there in black and white. It is the budget that this government has produced, and it speaks to the very heart that this government is a mix of smoke and mirrors. It very much runs on the philosophy of ‘if we say it enough, it must be true’. And if they keep saying it and if the Premier gets up day after day and keeps telling us that it just is not so, then he must be right. It just does not go like that, because in the end you cannot disguise it, ultimately, in the budget. As hard as you try, you cannot disguise it, member for Mordialloc. You cannot disguise it.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has probably got less hair than what I have now with the stress of trying to compilate what this government does with its budget. As I said, he even identifies himself that the budget fails to explicitly identify where the money is coming from, and in fact he went on further to say that not only was all the money that the fantastic Morrison government fed in to keep this show afloat for the last eight years, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer went on to say that the budget also excluded projects that the government had not done business cases for. Well, heavens above, that is a conga line of cases. I mean, the North East Link, WestLink, all sorts of stuff—link, link, link! There is no link to facts, there is no link to proper probity in this budget and this government is out of whack.

Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (17:12): I have never heard so many fallacies in my life—mistakes based on unsound information and unsound arguments that are being put forward that have no foundations in the truth, no foundations. It is a fairytale, what you have just shared, a fairytale full of fallacies. We are going to talk about facts because fallacies and fairytales do not run a government. Facts and finances run it.

Mr Riordan: No, that’s true. They’re not doing a good job.

Ms ADDISON: You have had your go, and you have created this—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Through the Chair.

Ms ADDISON: Sorry, Deputy Speaker. The member for Polwarth has had 10 minutes to have his go. I am now going to have my go for 10 minutes, and I am going to talk about why I believe that the 2022–23 budget is the most outstanding budget for regional Victoria. I am going to go through that, and what we are going to understand is we are going to actually talk about some facts rather than go into this lovely fairyland where we just keep saying the same thing over and over again.

I would really like to thank the Minister for Regional Development for submitting this matter of public importance (MPI), because it really is an opportunity to address fallacies and fairytales. That is what we are going to do. I agree wholeheartedly—

Mr Riordan: So let’s talk about the truth.

Ms ADDISON: Through the Chair, the member for Polwarth has had his go. It is now my turn, so he needs to listen, okay? I did not shout out once during his contribution. I was very restrained because I knew I was going to get my go. It is called rebuttal.

I wholeheartedly agree that the Andrews Labor government has invested more than $36 billion in regional Victoria—the largest investment of any government in Victoria’s history. It is also the case that the average annual investment under the Andrews Labor government is 2½ times the average under the previous government. It is also the case that the 2022–23 Victorian budget is the second-largest investment in regional Victoria in the history of our state—even probably when it was a colony, prior to federation. I reckon they never had a budget as good as this in colonial Victoria—even during the gold rush. And 35 per cent of the new asset infrastructure investment in the budget is in regional Victoria. They are facts, not fallacies, and that is what this matter of public importance is about. That is what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how the Victorian budget that was handed down by the Treasurer this year did provide a record of $2.9 billion in health infrastructure, of which more than $1 billion is invested in regional Victoria.

This is a great MPI topic, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to make a contribution following on from the Minister for Regional Development, the member for Macedon, following on from the member for Bendigo West and following on from the member for Buninyong—strong women of regional Victoria who are passionate advocates for their electorates and regional Victoria.

I too am a proud regional Victorian. I come from a long line of regional Victorians dating back to the 1850s and have ancestors buried in the north-east and the north-west and in Geelong and in Ballarat. I was born in Ballarat, and I have lived there for the greatest part of my life. It is a fantastic place to live to raise a family. I know this from firsthand experience. I am raising my own family, with Mike—our girls—in Ballarat because we think it is the best part of regional Victoria, the best part of Australia, to raise a family. My mum still lives in my childhood home, and I only live a couple of kilometres away. I love Ballarat and all it has to offer. It has an energy and a vibrancy that continues to attract new residents and tourists from across the state, across the country and across the world. Over the last two decades Ballarat has been transformed, going from being cold to being cool, with bustling bars, cool cafes and raved-about restaurants. We have Mars Stadium that can hold a crowd of 14 000, that hosts AFL games, A-League games, Super Rugby and NRL. We have a world-class basketball and sports and entertainment centre, a brewing centre of excellence and a gin distillery, with another one coming. We have great schools: Federation Uni—TAFE and the university. We host a spectrum of events, including the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, and as it has already been mentioned, the Commonwealth Games are coming to Ballarat—who would have thought?

I have such strong memories, as I am sure a lot of people do, of watching the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane and could only have dreamt of Ballarat hosting them, but this is not an accident. Ballarat can and will host the Commonwealth Games because of the investments made by Labor governments. Ballarat will have the commonwealth’s greatest athletes racing at Mars Stadium because of the Andrews Labor government. We will have boxing at the Ballarat Sports and Events Centre because of the Andrews Labor government, and we will have T20 cricket held across Ballarat because of our commitment to rec reserves and community sport.

But Ballarat was not always like this. When I grew up in Ballarat it was far from this. It was known for being pretty old, bold and cold. I grew up in the suburb of Ballarat, and for the first 25 years of my life my community was represented in this place by members of the Liberal Party. Ballarat suffered years of neglect during the Kennett years and consequently, in 1999, local champion, Labor’s Karen Overington, won the seat, and it has been held by Labor members ever since. What a difference having state Labor governments has made to Ballarat. Through the great leadership of Ballarat’s favourite son, Steve Bracks, of Bendigo’s John Brumby and Wangaratta’s Daniel Andrews, Labor governments have invested in Ballarat and transformed it into a vibrant regional city and the capital of western Victoria. Under state Liberal and Nationals governments Ballarat did not get the investment it deserved. There was no Wendouree train station. There was no GovHub. There was no Goods Shed development at the Ballarat railway station. There was no shared bike path along Sturt Street. There were no traffic lights across dangerous Sturt Street intersections, including out the front of my old school, Loreto College. It is the Andrews Labor government that has invested in these community infrastructure projects to create jobs and make Ballarat a great place to live and work. It is the Andrews Labor government that has invested $500 million for the Ballarat line upgrade, and we are delivering $60 million to the Keep Ballarat Moving project to upgrade bottleneck intersections and reduce congestion, particularly in our growing suburbs to the west. It is Labor governments that have invested $8 million at Ballarat High School, $15.5 million at Mount Rowan college and $11.7 million at Phoenix college. The reason for Ballarat’s incredible transformation is Labor governments—and Ballarat is in the regions if you have forgotten that. We know that when regional centres like Ballarat and Bendigo and Shepparton and Geelong and the valley are thriving, then so is Victoria.

But there is more to do, and that is what we are going to do. We are going to keep delivering for regional Victoria and keep delivering for Ballarat. We are redeveloping Ballarat Base Hospital at a cost of $541 million to give patients and their families the world-class health care they deserve close to home.

We are building the X’Trapolis 2.0 trains at Alstom in Creswick Road. We are lighting up Lake Wendouree so more residents can enjoy it on our dark mornings and our early evenings. We are building an early parenting centre, and we are establishing a food bank to address food insecurity. We are creating a safe space trial in western Victoria.

We are going to invest $3.2 million to make sure that LGBTIQ+ individuals who are most in need of support have a safe place to go, because that is what we do in the regions. We know that for people who identify as LGBTIQ+ it can be very difficult in the regions, so what are we going to do? We are going to invest in regional Victoria, and we are going to support them.

We are going to build a brand new animal shelter that will take pets in from Ballarat, from Hepburn, from Moorabool, from Golden Plains, from the Pyrenees, from Ararat and from the Central Goldfields, because that is what we do. We support regional Victoria. We support all of these different pockets.

It is also about making sure that we have fantastic services. It was a great honour to be a board director of Ballarat Health Services and the great work there. I had both my children there. It is a fantastic place, the Ballarat Base Hospital. I am so thrilled that in this budget we are investing $6.5 million to buy a surgical robot for Ballarat. It is great news for patients. It is great news for the recruitment of doctors. We are also replacing the old radiotherapy equipment to deliver better cancer care for our local community close to home.

This government is about supporting the regions. It is about supporting Ballarat. It is about building a community where people want to live. It is not about fallacies; it is not about fairytales. It is about facts. Come to Ballarat and see the facts. We are delivering for regional Victoria.

Ms CUPPER (Mildura) (17:21): I rise to speak on the matter of public importance (MPI) submitted by the member for Macedon. It has been nice hearing people’s regional stories about the intergenerational farming families and the stories close to home. I had thought I was a fifth-generation Mallee girl, but then I looked at the family tree again and realised that I am sixth generation, and my little boy is seventh generation, so that is something I am really proud of. Of course Mildura has independent representation after having a long run of different representation. I like to think we have gone from warm to hot.

Ms Addison: So hot.

Ms CUPPER: Yes, that is true. The minister notes in the MPI that the Andrews government has invested more than $36 billion in regional Victoria; that the 2022–23 budget was the second-largest investment in regional Victoria in the state’s history, with the regions receiving 35 per cent of the state’s asset and infrastructure investment; and that $1 billion of the state’s $2.9 billion health budget was spent in the regions. It is true that that information is impressive when considered overall. But for our region to be reassured by that we need to know how it has been distributed, and we need to know that we have received our fair share of that very impressive and substantial pie.

Over the past 3½ years, just to get it off my chest, I have sat in this seat and listened to ministers statements and members statements celebrating funding for bigger and better rail services for regional areas. With all due respect, from our vantage point it has always been hard to share in that celebration. We were visited by a Senate candidate in the lead-up to the federal election, and we said that one of the most deep, pressing and enduring issues for our community was the passenger train. This Senate candidate kind of cut across the conversation and said something along the lines of ‘Don’t talk to me about passenger rail. We’ve had to use shuttle buses for months during the upgrades’. She missed the point. She missed the point entirely, and she also lost a vote. But in fairness, waiting a couple of months for upgrades is going to be felt as the height of inconvenience for a region that can take its service for granted. The idea of having to wait 29 years and counting for a basic essential service is just so alien to people in other regions that they can barely even hear what you are saying. Nine out of the 10 major regional cities in Victoria have a passenger train service connecting them to Melbourne, and we do not. While the government seems to instinctively recognise the need and the value of passenger rail to everywhere else in regional Victoria, we are required to justify it over and over and over and over again. The burden of proof always sits with us.

Our most recent attempt at proving our case was the north-west Victoria regional passenger transport study commissioned by Mildura Rural City Council and recently released in draft form. It found that a passenger train service—surprise, surprise—between Mildura and Melbourne was needed and that the service should be reinstated. One respondent to the study said:

It would also allow me access to a toilet as well as not having to transfer out of a wheelchair onto a bus seat, or having to crawl up—

the steps—

… as the V/Line bus lifts often don’t work …

The study is handy to have, but it is frustrating that we are required to fund our own research to demonstrate what should be obvious and intuitive. We are a long way from Melbourne, but everything is relative. Geographically we are a small state. Broken Hill is twice as far from Sydney as Mildura is from Melbourne, and Broken Hill has half our population, but nevertheless the New South Wales government accepts its responsibility, its basic moral responsibility, to provide this essential public service to its most isolated citizens. This latest study by the council will be a helpful resource in the fight, but as I said, the fact that we have to fight at all is an insult and a wound. We are Victorians too, and our region contributes billions of dollars to the economy. We pay our tax. We farmed a desert. We are not looking for luxury items, just the basics.

A few years ago my chief of staff was talking to a former Victorian state candidate, and they were comparing the political dynamics of their respective electorates. She had a regional electorate. She was rattling off different issues that were pressing for her electorate and gave the example of a turning lane on the highway. Stephen asked her, ‘Is there an example of where your community has been deeply wronged?’, and she thought for a moment and said, ‘No’. Research confirms that. We know from evidence that the sense of grievance in the Mallee is significant. In that way we are an outlier among every other regional part of the state, and that grievance comes from neglect over many decades by successive governments.

One of the two main symbols of that neglect was the cancellation of our train service. The last Vinelander ran on 12 September 1993, when I was 13. Two days before the service was axed passengers were waiting on the platform at Spencer Street station ready to board the train to Mildura, and an announcement was made that there had been a landslide on the track. The cancellation was very last minute, but conveniently there were buses all ready to go. Suspicions about the landslide claim were aroused when it was realised that the landslide had not interfered with the Melbourne-bound service that same night, and then a leaked document from train controllers working that evening prompted an investigation. It was found that the landslide story was a hoax. There was never any explanation given as to why the community was misled, but it was strongly suspected that the government wanted to avoid any protest, like the one that had occurred at Bairnsdale, when the service was withdrawn a couple of days later. So for us in that context it was not just the cancellation of the service that created such a deep sense of collective trauma and grief but the way it was executed with such utter contempt for our community. They did not just take our train, they took our voice too, and to that extent we will not feel like Victorians again until we get that service back.

The attention our electorate has been given this term has been extraordinary in historic terms. The return of Mildura base hospital to public management, the installation of air conditioning in public housing and the funding of a residential drug and alcohol rehab and detox facility were hard fought for for years but never realised until this term. We thank the Andrews government for listening and delivering on these things. With every funding breakthrough we move a step away, slightly, from our culture of grievance towards a culture of hope and optimism and possibility, but we are starting from a very low base, and there is much more to be done to restore our sense of being a valued part of Victoria and to make us feel included and supported as an equal partner in Victoria’s success and prosperity.

But the reinstatement of our passenger train service is not the only way to ensure Mildura receives its fair share of the Andrews government’s historic and impressive tranche of regional investment. Another way would be to fund a new Mildura Base Public Hospital. The master plan will soon be completed, and this will provide clear evidence of what is needed. The 2022–23 state budget allocated a considerable amount of money to hospital upgrades and redevelopments. I understand there are other hospitals in the state that are asking for an upgrade or redevelopment and that the government needs to manage scarce resources and not everyone can have a pony, but I would like to make a case for why a redevelopment of our hospital is particularly urgent, and it stems from the unique way our hospital came into existence. We were just one of two regions in the state to have a public hospital privatised. It was in the heyday of neoliberalism, and the Kennett Liberal government was keen to stretch its legs. Our community was told that if we wanted a new hospital building, we had to agree to a fully privatised one—privatised management, privatised design, privatised build and privatised ownership. As they say, the rest is history, and history records it was a disaster.

Decades later the Andrews Labor government took the first steps towards remedying that fatal mistake by announcing in 2019 that the private contract would not be renewed and the hospital would finally be brought back to public management, and for that, truly, we are eternally grateful. For the first time in 20 years a community board was established, staff were entitled to salary packaging and a new CEO was appointed with a focus on patients and not profits. It was quickly identified that the building which was designed to serve shareholders was poorly equipped for patients and staff. Its design presented clear and present risks to the quality of care. It undermined the ability of our exceptional hospital staff to provide the level of care that they are capable of.

Earlier this year the Leader of the Opposition came to Mildura to promise a new $750 million Mildura Base Public Hospital if the coalition was elected to government this year. A funding promise is good, but it is only a promise. Only a government can deliver it. Funding a new Mildura base hospital building would override those last remnants of the Kennett legacy at our hospital, it would ensure that our electorate receives its fair share of the Andrews government’s record spending in the regions and it would help to restore our region’s sense of belonging in the state—because we are Victorians too.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (17:31:371:): I must say I have listened very intently to the member for Mildura for her passionate representation in this place during this debate but indeed throughout the course of this term. In reflecting on that passionate contribution and seeing her advocate firsthand for her community here in this place, it is in stark contrast to what we see when we see the National Party effectively claiming that they own that seat and the lack of passion that they bring to this place for the interests of that community. I would very much like to just acknowledge and thank the member for Mildura for her passionate contribution.

It is my pleasure to rise this afternoon and make my contribution on the member for Macedon’s matter of public importance. In reflecting on that MPI and listening to her contribution and all the contributions made by some fantastic Labor members in this place, I must say I take a very long-term view about what the Labor Party does when we are given that great gift of government here in this place. As someone who is a passionate regional Victorian, someone who lives in Torquay—a part of the fantastic Surf Coast and indeed a part of the broader Geelong community—when I look around my community, I see some absolutely remarkable investments that the Andrews Labor government has made in our region.

If I reflect just on the budget alone, handed down just a few weeks ago, a very key component of that Andrews budget was the half a billion dollars that we are putting into a women’s and children’s hospital. We are doing that because Geelong is a fantastic place to live, it is a fantastic place to invest and it is a fantastic place to raise a family, and so many people are moving to our region because of the wonderful attributes of our community, with the Armstrong Creek growth community and indeed many other suburbs that are growing very, very quickly, often with first home buyers. Those first home buyers are going on of course and having families of their own and contributing to the broader Geelong region, and we want to offer to them a fantastic health and hospital system, a system geared up to deliver for their needs for many years to come. But not only do I reflect on that, I reflect on the Andrews Labor government’s Big Build agenda, which is delivering for our region. It is delivering the infrastructure that we need.

I am very pleased to see my friend the Minister for Public Transport here today, because we are making some very, very profound investments into the broader Geelong region. I must say all of regional Victoria is indeed experiencing significant investment made by our government, unlocking the capacity of our regions to contribute to a growing state that of course is very much, in so many ways, powering the national economy—and I would say, very clearly, that regional Victoria is absolutely contributing. Indeed when I reflect on regional Victoria over the last 30 or 40 years, what I see is community after community that is growing and that is adding productive capacity to our economy.

If I reflect on Geelong, over the last 40 years the Geelong community, the Geelong economy and the Geelong population have more than doubled. I must say, in reflecting on Ballarat and in reflecting on Bendigo, that those stories are indeed very much true for those communities as well, and that growth and that contribution to the state economy are very much fuelled by investments that Labor governments have been making into those communities. When I look at Geelong, as I say, the population of Geelong over the last four decades has grown, and when I reflect on the key infrastructure that has been delivered through that period of time, almost all of it has been delivered by Labor governments recognising the productive capacity of infrastructure for those communities, making those investments and creating partnerships with other levels of government to make sure that we are driving that investment and driving the economy to put in place the infrastructure that those communities need.

Not only do we do that from an infrastructure perspective, though, we also invest in the productive capacity of those communities by investing in people. Indeed we do that through those profound investments in our education system to give our kids the very best start to life to make sure that we give the options to kids when they go to high school so that they have the sets of skills they need to be able to meet the needs of a growing community and for future jobs. We make sure that we invest in our TAFEs because we recognise that for a growing state with a growing infrastructure burden what we need more than anything else is people with the skills to be able to deliver that infrastructure, and we make those investments in our TAFE sector because we recognise that those investments in people ultimately mean that our economy can grow, that we can prosper as a nation and that we can be the engine room of the Australian economy—and that is exactly what we do.

When I reflect, though, on the consequences—which has happened a few times in my life—of electing state Liberal governments, what I see time and time and time again, every time we see the Liberals and the cow cockies that are the National Party elected to this place and to government, is that they take a meat axe to the very services that Victorians need. Whether it be to have a war on our ambulance service, whether it be to privatise our TAFE system or whether it be to sell off and privatise our schools, at each and every occasion that we see the Liberals given that great gift of government, they do what is in their DNA, which is to make cuts. They make cuts to the very foundations of our community. They deny, particularly in our regions, the money that our regions need to grow to be able to contribute to the Victorian economy.

When I look around Geelong there is no evidence whatsoever of any investments that they made when they were given that great gift of government after the 2010 election. All they did was make it hard for our TAFE sector to deliver the skills that they needed, and in fact the Gordon TAFE almost had to close. We saw cuts to Barwon Health. We saw the very important regional service delivery of Barwon Health and the Barwon hospital, which deliver not just for Geelong but further afield, experience profound cuts. At every opportunity when we see the Liberal Party and the National Party given that great gift of government, they make cuts.

When I look at this budget delivered by the Andrews Labor government I see record investment, and I see that record investment built year on year on year. When we are given that great gift of government we make those investments in our regions and in our peri-urban areas. We make those investments—we do that. When I look around this chamber it is no wonder Labor’s numbers in this chamber continue to grow—because the Victorian community are backing us. They are backing us in the regions.

Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (17:41): It is a pleasure to rise and make a contribution on the matter of public importance relating to regional infrastructure spending, and I will just pick up where the member for South Barwon left off when he was talking about cuts. In this year’s budget papers Regional Development Victoria has suffered an $87.1 million cut—it is there in black and white; Agriculture Victoria, another cut of $47.8 million; trade and global engagement, another cut of $46.3 million. It is interesting that those line items did not make it into the previous member’s speech. That is interesting.

I will move on now to this year’s budget papers in relation to rural and regional spending, and 13 per cent of capital spending can be attributed to the regions in the budget that was announced just a few weeks ago. As we have seen in this chamber today, we have gone back and forth with different things being quoted by this side and different figures being quoted by that side, and we have had isolated projects being quoted by government members as they have stood up. But rather than listen to this side or that, let us have a listen to an independent source, and that independent source is the Parliamentary Budget Office. They released a report this year titled AssetInvestment Excluding Australian Government Funding: Regional vs Metropolitan Victoria. Now, it is all well and good to stand up and mention isolated projects, but the PBO found that:

Asset investment per person in metropolitan Victoria was around 19% higher than regional Victoria.

And this includes Australian government funding. If that is not damning enough, here is the key: when the PBO could exclude Australian government funding they found that for asset investment per person on major projects of $100 million or more the Andrews Labor government invests $15 268 per Melburnian and just $7142 per regional Victorian. Now, that is an independent set of eyes going over these budget papers. It is an independent set of eyes. If we do not want to recognise what the PBO is saying as an independent authority on this and we want to go with the claims from the government members, let us get your detailed figures into the PBO—as I think the member for Murray Plains might have mentioned—and let us get that assessment. Rather than refute those figures, let us let them have a look at the alternate figures being suggested and let them assess that.

One area of interest is that there have been some funds in the budget papers to be spent in rural and regional Victoria over recent years where they have been tagged but the funds have actually never been spent. In this year’s budget papers, for instance, we have the Barwon women’s and children’s hospital in Geelong. It has been announced that there is going to be a $500 million investment into regional Victoria, but there is none of that money in the out years. There is just ‘to be confirmed’ written there. Now, hopefully it does eventuate—absolutely hopefully it does; it is an important project—but there is no certainty there. And I raise that because if we have a look at, for instance, the 2016–17 budget, there was a $50 million allocation to the national proton beam therapy centre. It was announced there in that budget with ‘TBC’ next to it, and it was never built—and that would have been included in regional spending.

I can go on and on and on. We had an announcement in the Latrobe Valley for 2400 vehicles per year, and 500 jobs were announced with much fanfare, but nothing happened. It fell by the wayside and it never eventuated. We have regional hospital projects and we have got water corporation projects announced in this year’s budget with nothing in the out years. Given the history and that some of these rural budget announcements never come to fruition and never eventuate, that is an area of concern.

Then we read on the front page of today’s Weekly Times the headline ‘Road to nowhere: figures hidden on maintenance spending for regional routes’. What we want to do is have some open and transparent assessment of that. We need that data put out and released, as has been done in the past, so we can have a look and see in black-and-white figures what that level of investment and spending is—again, another area of concern.

But I will go back to the PBO just for a minute. On top of what I mentioned before, it also found that on regional projects overall—and this was the finding—they are more likely to receive federal government funding. That was the PBO’s finding. If we read the budget papers, we have state Labor saying ‘Haven’t we done a good job in the regions’, but the PBO has highlighted that it is predominantly federal funding. If we have a look at some of these projects—and the Leader of The Nationals mentioned this earlier in his contribution—things like in my electorate $531 million for the Regional Rail Revival, stage 1 of the Gippsland line, $447 million of that came from the feds. Thanks, Darren Chester, for that. We have highway duplications in the east predominantly funded by the feds. But without going through all those different projects, the bottom line is that for over 80 per cent of these projects that are funded the money has come from the federal government. It has not come from the state government at all.

We talk about rural and regional spending. It got that bad a couple of years ago that when the capital investment budget paper came out with a little map of Victoria showing where the capital expenditure was around the state my electorate of Gippsland East actually had the index over the top of it because there was nothing there at all. The index was over the top of it. Then we also will not forget that in 2015, when we had the Stronger Country Bridges program announcement—the name of the program was the Stronger Country Bridges program—10 of the 48 bridges were built within 4 kilometres of the electorate of Mulgrave. I am assuming the government probably counted that in their regional spend, which is very, very interesting.

Our commitment to a 25 per cent regional infrastructure guarantee is not a cut, it is a significant improvement over the 13 per cent that is already spent—figures that are backed up by the Parliamentary Budget Office. It will deliver at least a quarter of all the new state government capital into the regions, a per capita equitable share, so that the regions are certainly getting their fair share. This aligns with, I guess, the commitment that was made the other day that we will deliver a number of projects that our regions have been waiting for for quite some time.

I also mention on top of that commitment these funding cuts to the department of agriculture and the funding cuts to regional development. I heard the minister trying to explain the funding cuts to the department of agriculture on ABC radio, and there was just no reasonable excuse or explanation given that made any sense whatsoever in terms of saying why that had occurred, what services were being impacted and the rationale behind it—it was just basically a blank page.

We also have the issues around the CFA. You know, we have $800 million being raised out of the fire services levy and $11.1 million going into the Country Fire Authority, and I have certainly got CFA brigades down in my electorate that are waiting for significant investment. Lakes Entrance and Metung are just a couple, but it is the same all around the state.

I will just finish off, Deputy Speaker, by taking up a comment that you might have made when you were speaking around the Nats turning up late on occasion in Bendigo West. I think you will be interested to hear that when I was standing for my electorate and my community was looking for bipartisan support, we actually ended up with a Labor candidate who was a nurse—and I think she was from Bendigo—coming into my electorate to stand. Three weeks before election day her nomination was announced. So when you talk about the Nats maybe turning up a bit late to put their hat into the ring on a local candidate scheme, I do not think we have ever been as late as announcing our candidates three weeks prior to the election like the Labor Party did in Gippsland East. The candidate turned up once before the election for a day, giving no local community groups or interest groups an opportunity to secure any commitments whatsoever. There was not one commitment made in my electorate from a candidate who turned up for one day in the three weeks before the campaign. So I will just say what goes around comes around, and that needs to be taken into consideration as well.

Ms CRUGNALE (Bass) (17:51): How fabulous it is to rise and speak on this matter of very public importance now that I have got all my notes sorted—not that I am reading my notes. How wonderful also was our 2022–23 budget for our regional and rural communities, the second-largest investment ever in our state’s history. As we have heard, we have allocated 35 per cent of new asset investment to regional Victoria, and this was confirmed by Treasury analysis—

A member interjected.

Ms CRUGNALE: Why? What happened? Okay, keep going. Thirty-five per cent, not 25 per cent, so a very stark contrast to the Liberal-National commitment of 25 per cent funding for regional Victoria, which one can only eloquently describe as a cut really. It is not something I would be pushing in Bass, that is for sure, and not something that if I was a candidate for those opposite I would be jumping up and down spruiking as a commitment. So the 13 per cent claim from The Nationals is a slight grand work of fiction—fraudulent perhaps, deceitful for sure. Did they not count anything under $100 million? Their analysis fundamentally excludes smaller projects and contributions from the commonwealth and is unlikely to also include partnerships with local councils, with a view to understating the level of investment that is occurring in regional Victoria—sleight of hand, if you will. It is no wonder trust was a key election platform in the federal election. So let us look at some objective facts, you know, as I wear my dad’s suit, which is probably 50-something years old. He only went to grade 2, but from an early age he taught me to fight fair, to fight with the facts, admit when you are wrong and give credit where it is due, also adding in things like learning from your mistakes and always looking out for your neighbour.

The Andrews Labor government has invested $36 billion in regional Victoria since 2015, five times more than the previous Liberal-National government. Regional Victoria is receiving 40 per cent of the record $2.9 billion investment in health infrastructure in our latest budget. Over the last eight years we have invested an average of $4.5 billion per budget in regional Victoria, around 2½ times the $1.8 billion per budget under the previous government. We have invested more than $700 million in the Regional Jobs and Infrastructure Fund, supporting around 13 000 jobs and delivering over a thousand projects. Regional Victoria will be a big winner from our $2.6 billion investment in hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games, with upgrading of sporting infrastructure, affordable housing and other infrastructure upgrades.

Regional Victoria was also left out of the former federal Liberal-National government’s $7 billion regional development plan—an appalling omission, one could say, and aren’t we so very thankful that they have gone. The former Prime Minister can obviously focus on Sydney, where he belongs.

The 2022 budget invested $5.7 billion in regional Victoria. There is a lot going on across our whole state—$300 million for the Regional Health Infrastructure Fund, providing another $30 million for the Regional Jobs and Infrastructure Fund and, as I said earlier, delivering the Commonwealth Games for regional Victoria.

I might just quickly talk about roads actually, given that we have the Minister for Roads and Road Safety in the house. Yes, the Regional Rail Revival program—great name but slightly full on—is upgrading every passenger rail line across our state. We are getting on with the Geelong fast rail and the Melbourne Airport rail, which will benefit Gippsland and the Pakenham line, because you will be able to just go straight through and not change trains and get to the airport. We have invested almost $1.2 billion in building new trains for regional Victorians, and the modern VLocity trains, as the minister well knows, are running on almost every regional train line.

On roads, we are upgrading the Western Highway, South Gippsland Highway, Princes Highway east and west and Barwon Heads Road. All our projects are designed to make travel easier for everyone, from the Metro Tunnel to level crossing removals and the West Gate Tunnel. The new Pakenham line train station is being designed to improve the Gippsland V/Line services as well. We know in the recent budget the Bass-Kilcunda corridor project resonated magnificently—not just with the local community of Kilcunda but the wider region as well—and that $7.8 million will get us pedestrian-operated traffic signals, refuges, dedicated turning lanes and fix up that service road. But it is more than a road, this particular project, because we have thousands of people coming down and visiting our beautiful coastline to enjoy the spectacular sea and landscape, local produce, music, food, whales, stars and really immerse themselves in nature and take time out.

I might just sort of rattle off the education side of things as well. Obviously as part of our budget we invested $1.8 billion in school infrastructure, and what we see in terms of the regional aspect is we have got Bass Coast Specialist School, which will receive $1.9 million to upgrade and modernise their school, including with new permanent facilities; East Gippsland Specialist School gets at least $6.7 million; South Gippsland Specialist School in Leongatha gets $3.6 million; and Warragul & District Specialist School at least—and I love the ‘at least’ bit—$6.5 million. If we backtrack just slightly, I recently opened the Cowes Primary School $5.5 million gym, so they can actually fit all their students into it, but it is a shared facility, competition grade, and again that one has resonated throughout Phillip Island. Then we also opened earlier this year the new Bass Coast College at San Remo—that was around $50 million—and the senior campus back in 2020. That does not even begin to measure the upgrades across all our schools.

I might quickly talk about the renewables as well and the investment that we are doing there—not just locally with Sustainability Victoria working in partnership with Gippsland Community Power Hub, where our centres like Coronet Bay, Corinella and Venus Bay are all benefiting from solar and battery power, but with our $40 million for offshore wind projects funding that will drive jobs in the regions and bring forward the next wave of renewable energy opportunities. We have kickstarted three major offshore wind projects—Star of the South, Macquarie Group and Flotation Energy—through the Energy Innovation Fund. These projects will bring thousands of jobs to the Bass Coast and Gippsland regions and help our state reach its target of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030. The best winds in the country we have down there on the Bass Coast and perfect locations for offshore wind projects.

On the tourism front I could certainly rattle off a whole heap of stuff. It was wonderful to have the Premier down recently announcing $5 million from the Regional Tourism Investment Fund. There are a few more announceables coming soon as well, but this particular one provides new accessible boardwalks and a sky box for an elevated viewing experience over the beautiful Sunderland beach and penguin parade.

I might also rattle off a few of the partnerships given this opportunity to talk about the great stuff that is happening in Bass Coast. With council—this is because of our grants program which supports our growing suburbs in the peri-urban council areas—we have got new lights at Inverloch, Dalyston and Phillip Island footy clubs; new croquet pavilions at Wonthaggi and Phillip Island; soccer pavilion upgrades at Newhaven and Wonthaggi; cricket nets and clubrooms for the Inverloch Stingrays; the Guide Park play space; the Kilcunda skate park; and kindergarten inclusive outdoor areas in a number of schools. The Wonthaggi Life Saving Club, we are funding all of that—it is not in partnership yet. The Cape Paterson surf club was a partnership, three tiers of government, done and opened. We have the Guy Road shared pathway, the Phillip Island Early Learning Centre expansion and kinders. We have got boat ramps as well; Inverloch, Rhyll, Cowes and Mahers Landing are all progressing really, really well.

In the literally 1 minute that I have left I cannot even start talking about health, but we do have a great health building—massive, $115 million, which I am sure those opposite counted because it was over $100 million. It was great to have the Premier down in Wonthaggi. He met with about 200 of the workers on the site and also a whole heap of staff from Bass Coast who have been doing an amazing job in the last couple of years.

Just to reiterate and to make it really clear, we are delivering the second-largest investment in regional Victoria in our history, which includes 35 per cent of total new asset and infrastructure investment. Only the Andrews Labor government can be trusted—I thought I had 25 seconds left. (Time expired)