Thursday, 9 June 2022

Motions

Budget papers 2022–23

Mr WYNNE (Richmond—Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing) (12:38): I move:

That this house takes note of the 2022–23 budget papers.

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to provide a contribution this afternoon to what is by any measure a splendid budget—the 2022–23 budget—because it has an extraordinarily strong focus on our healthcare system. As we continue to live through this pandemic, our budget rightly focuses on prioritising and supporting our healthcare workers, who by any measure have done and continue to do a magnificent job.

Mr Edbrooke: Heroes.

Mr WYNNE: Heroes, as my colleague the member for Frankston says. They are heroes—no question about that—and we call out all of our healthcare staff, whether they are our ambulance paramedics, our doctors, our nurses or our allied health colleagues. It has been and continues to be an extraordinary effort in the most extreme of circumstances, but we come into this Parliament at question time and people seek to not necessarily, in my view, have a bipartisan view about this.

We are in a very unique situation here where we as a community have gone through the most significant health challenge that has ever been faced not only by us here in Victoria or Australia but in the world more generally, with COVID in its various mutations and manifestations. The work that our healthcare staff have undertaken has been herculean—it is the only way that one could describe it—and we remain deeply grateful to every single one of them. I am delighted of course to see today that the Premier yet again has reached out with the wonderful announcement of a retention package for healthcare staff of $3000, which by any measure is an appropriate acknowledgement of their efforts going forward. In that respect we absolutely commend those frontline health service workers.

The budget of course addresses a pandemic repair plan for more staff, as I indicated, and better hospitals and indeed continues our first-class healthcare system. It is creating decent jobs, secure jobs, because every Victorian deserves the dignity of the right to work. It is building a world-class education system and ensuring our kids have the foundations for a good life.

On indulgence, Deputy Speaker, as you know, I am very much attuned to social media—very much so. I simply invite anybody who perhaps follows my Twitter account—

Ms Ryan: Do you follow it?

Mr WYNNE: Too right I do, and I post on it too. Do not worry about that. Do not distract me. The visit of the Premier to one of my primary schools in Richmond only a few weeks ago, the reception that he received there—fair dinkum, it was like he was a rock star—

Members interjecting.

Mr WYNNE: No, I did all right. Do not worry about that. He was an absolute rock star. It goes to the question of what this government has done in education. People actually get this. There is not one school—

A member: Record funding.

Mr WYNNE: Record funding, as my colleague indicates. There is not one school in my electorate that has not received substantial funds—right through the electorate—because this government understands the crucial importance of investing in education.

Mr J Bull interjected.

Mr WYNNE: The Education State, absolutely. Of course the marvellous announcement that every one of our special schools will be either rebuilt or upgraded speaks to the heart of this government—what this government is actually about. I am just so thrilled as I am coming to the end of my public life here to reflect back on just what an extraordinary job this government has done in education itself. As I indicate, it is the absolute foundation of opportunity for our community. I really must call out the Minister for Education, who by any measure will be seen in this term of government, and I hope the next as well, as a stellar person committed to—

Members interjecting.

Mr WYNNE: I have got everything. Do not worry about that, mate. If it is coming and going, I have got it. Do not worry.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The minister to continue without interjections.

Mr WYNNE: Deputy Speaker, this is outrageous. I am under duress here. This is very, very high pressure for me.

Mr J Bull: The minister did a great job.

Mr WYNNE: The minister—yes indeed—who has done an absolutely splendid job.

I want to talk a little bit about an area that I have remained deeply committed to for all of my working life, and that is the provision of public and social housing. This $5.3 billion build, as I have talked about here in the Parliament before, is the biggest commitment ever undertaken by any jurisdiction—federal or state government. Nobody has committed so much funding to the provision of public, social and affordable housing. I am immensely proud of our government for this achievement. As we know, 25 per cent of that is being invested in regional Victoria, right across the state. And what does this mean? It means we are spreading the opportunity right across the state. It is a fantastic social outcome, clearly, in terms of the provision of housing and incredibly important in terms of jobs on site but also for the supply chain as well, so it is win-win-win all the way through. It is just, I think, a wonderful, wonderful investment by our government.

Can I also say that the work that we have done in the area of rough sleeping—and I say this with a little bit of humility—actually leads the country, and in fact leads the world, in terms of the intervention that we have made with rough sleepers. Through the COVID virus we took more than 2000 people off the streets of Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat—everywhere. We took people off the streets, and we put them into hotels. Why did we do that? For the obvious reason that we knew that if you were rough sleeping you were in an incredibly vulnerable situation, with the potential to contract the COVID virus. The motivation that the government had to do this has been quite profound in terms of providing a safe environment for people who do not choose to be homeless as some lifestyle choice. They find themselves homeless because of family breakdown, drug and alcohol issues and mental health issues. I was just so thrilled that we made this intervention and made it with a really clear focus. The focus was to get people into a more secure environment than, obviously, being on the streets but also to seek to stabilise them and then move them on to secure housing.

We will have housed in the order of 1800 households, which amounts to about 2100 people, who actually to date have been rehoused into long-term secure housing. We have got at least another 200 families, possibly a few more, that continue to be in hotels, and we are committed to moving them into longer term housing as well. But the key to this, as you know very well, Deputy Speaker, is not just about providing a house, it is about providing the supports to both stabilise people in their new housing environment and to ensure that they have got the pathways to a better life than what they have now. So it is about housing itself, but it is also about the wraparound services to support them going forward. That is why I was so pleased to announce a further $23 million, which was allocated to continue our head leasing program, because many people at the moment have gone out of the hotels into head-leased properties and will move into long-term housing as part of the Big Housing Build. That extra year that we are providing in terms of head leasing itself but also the support services, with the $23 million, I know has been very welcomed by the homeless support agencies more generally.

To reflect back on this budget, as I say, we are likely to build over the four years somewhere in the order of 15 000 to 15 500 properties. It is a massive investment by this government by any measure. It will be a legacy of this term of government and one that I know we do have a very unique opportunity to in fact work with our federal colleagues on now. Frankly we could find no interest or commitment from the previous federal government to the provision of social and affordable housing. They did a little bit on homelessness, and that is okay, but it is about ultimately a supply-side response—but a supply-side response, particularly when you are talking about vulnerable people and homeless people, that has got the supports in there as well, because we know, absolutely we know, that if you do not provide those supports, many homeless people of course end up churning back through the system again because they are not being properly supported. They end up back in our emergency wards in the hospitals, they end up in our mental health facilities again, and at an enormous cost to the community of having people in these environments when in fact the alternative intervention that we are making stabilises them and ensures that they are not continuing to cycle back through the public hospital system or indeed, in some contexts, into the criminal justice system, where the cost to the community is absolutely enormous. A relatively modest intervention at the front end—get someone a property to live in, put the supports around them—we know that that model actually works.

What has been really interesting is that we are getting incredible interest in our intervention from overseas. I mentioned to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee that people in Scotland in the UK are approaching us saying, ‘Tell us a bit more. What’s this model all about? This is something quite unique’. Certainly I had a visit from the new Western Australian Minister for Housing, who came over to look at some of the work that we are doing here, and he could not believe what we have actually achieved here in terms of our intervention in terms of homelessness and the Big Housing Build and also the partnerships that we are establishing with the philanthropic sector and with local governments. The City of Melbourne—we have got marvellous partnerships there and with a number of other councils as well. The $5.3 billion that we have in the budget gets stretched when you have a partnership where your partner comes along and says, ‘Well, actually, we’re prepared to put in land’, which of course completely changes the equation and gives you an opportunity to get a much better outcome for the dollars invested. I am delighted to make this brief contribution today. This is a wonderful budget, and I commend it.

Mr M O’BRIEN (Malvern) (12:53): While I am always pleased to have the opportunity to rise in this house to speak on matters of importance to the people of Victoria and particularly the people of my electorate of Malvern, I have to say that in taking note of the budget papers for the forthcoming financial year they have been a disappointment. I know that in opposition you never tend to get the same level of attention or care or investment as you might do for your community when you are in government. I have been in government, I understand how the system works. But I do not think I have ever seen a budget in my 15 years in this place that has had nothing specifically for the people of my electorate. My people work hard, my community pay their taxes. My community are entitled to a fair share of government investment, but they do not get that in these budget papers. The people of Malvern are being asked to pay more, get less and go slower. That is all they have been told to do by this government.

This government boasts about the level crossings it is removing across Melbourne. Well, I have got three level crossings in my electorate. I did have five. One was removed in a budget funded by the former Liberal government in which I was proud to be Treasurer—Burke Road. It was done well with the rail going under the road, which the community is delighted by. This government removed the level crossing at the entrance to the Monash Freeway on Toorak Road. Sky rail—not as good but, look, credit where it is due. Removing a level crossing is better than not removing a level crossing, so credit where it is due for that. But I have got three more level crossings in my electorate that have not been touched by this government. There is an organisation called the Australian Level Crossing Assessment Model, and they list the level crossings across Melbourne in relation to how dangerous they are and in relation to how disruptive they are. Despite the fact that the level crossings at High Street, Glen Iris, Tooronga Road, Malvern, and Glenferrie Road, Kooyong, are all ranked very high on the list, they have been ignored and neglected by this government in favour of ones in Labor seats. When the Minister for Transport Infrastructure gets up and says, ‘We’re about removing deadly and dangerous level crossings’, why doesn’t the minister actually focus on the most deadly and the most dangerous level crossings? Why is this government more interested in playing politics about where it chooses to remove level crossings instead of relying on the science and relying on the assessments that have been done, which say that these three level crossings are highly dangerous? Tragically we know they are deadly as well. The fact that this government has got no plans to do anything for those three level crossings frankly is appalling.

High Street, Glen Iris, and Tooronga Road, Malvern, clearly need work. What I found interesting is that Glenferrie Road, Kooyong, was actually the subject of funding by the former federal government. At the federal election before last, in 2019, the federal coalition government promised to provide the funding to remove the level crossing at Glenferrie Road, Kooyong. What has the state Labor government done subsequent to that? Apparently nothing. Even though we had a federal government willing to pay the money to remove a deadly, dangerous and disruptive level crossing, this state Labor government has gone on what looks to be a deliberate go-slow. I do not know whether the government just did not want to give the federal government any credit for funding the removal of the level crossing or the government just felt, ‘Well, it’s not in our patch. We don’t care’. But to have a federal government saying, ‘We’ve got money on the table to remove a level crossing’, and then just not taking any action on it is appalling. My constituents, who are held up every morning getting to school and getting to work and every evening getting home from school and getting home from work and all the hours in between, will not be thanking this government for a deliberate go-slow when it comes to removing level crossings.

I have also got, tragically, a deadly intersection on Dandenong Road where it meets Darling Road in East Malvern and also at Koornang Road in Carnegie. I say deadly because we lost at least two pedestrians last year. I have written to the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and I have raised this matter in Parliament on many occasions. To his credit the minister for roads has written to me saying, ‘Yes, we acknowledge this is a problem’, and he said in one of his letters, ‘We have funding, and we will take action’. My questions therefore are: what is the funding, what is the action and when are we going to see something? Following the last fatality at this intersection, the government put up an electronic sign warning drivers to be careful. Well, that is not going to fix the problem, and now that sign has been removed so there is nothing there—no additional safety measures whatsoever, not even an electronic sign to warn people about what we know is a deadly intersection. This government cannot afford to keep delaying these matters. The minister has written to me. He said, ‘The money’s there. We will take action’. Well, my community wants to know, Minister: how much money, what action and when? Because we do not want to see another life lost.

I have got five government schools in my electorate, and my own kids went to one of them. They are great schools, but they deserve investment too. I go through the budget papers with a fine-tooth comb. I go to the capital budget paper, I look at the back and I look for all the suburbs in my electorate. I look with hope every year to see Armadale or Malvern or Malvern East mentioned. Disappointment once again: not a single dollar for upgrades for any of my state public schools.

Sitting suspended 1.00 pm until 2.01 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.