Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Motions

Budget papers 2022–23

Debate resumed.

Mr TAK (Clarinda) (18:02): As I said before, almost $1.3 million will deliver the Empower Youth program, connecting young people in areas of high socio-economic disadvantage with work or education and nurturing their health and wellbeing. And on this point I thank the Minister for Crime Prevention for coming out to my electorate earlier this year and delivering some of those exciting announcements and meetings. There really is a great deal here for young people and the multicultural community, which will help to continue to build a fairer Victoria and a stronger Victoria.

In closing, we know the effects cost of living are having on our families and that many Victorians are still paying too much for their energy bill. That is why we are stepping in to help families get the best deal. We are providing a once-off $250 payment for all Victorian households that use the Victorian Energy Compare website, the Victorian government’s independent price comparison website, to search for the cheapest electricity plan that suits their needs. I am sure that we all have been busy in terms of assisting our constituents in our respective electorates with that. This is a great initiative, one of so many in this amazing budget.

Talking about this amazing budget, people, especially businesspeople, know that Victoria is a great place for business. Just this morning I attended the sod turning and opening of Synnex, one of the largest IT businesses in my electorate. The budget for building the new headquarters is more than $120 million. This shows that businesses know that Victoria is on for business and it is on for work and for jobs. With that, I would like to commend the motion to the house.

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (18:05): I am rising this evening to make use of the time to talk about this year’s budget through the budget take-note motion. This budget, the 2022–23 budget, is one that many thinking Victorians have real concerns about. We all know that we are gripped; we have been grabbed by the throat in Victoria at the moment by a health crisis. This health crisis is not sparing anybody—rich or poor, country or city, outer suburbs, small country towns, peri-urban areas. It does not matter where you live in Victoria at the moment; your health, your family’s health, your community’s health and the safety of many people have been called into question.

This budget—this government has trumpeted about it. The sad part about this budget is that there are lines in it everywhere that just do not make sense to a person that cares about the future of their state, that cares about prudent government and that cares about a well-managed government into the future that not only will provide for the needs of today but is cognisant of the ability of the state to look after people into the future and that will leave a legacy that taxpayers of the future will be proud of.

The most classic example really was in the south-west, west of Melbourne. Much has been made by this government that they are going to invest in the Geelong children’s and women’s hospital. Of course that line item is just devoid of accountability. The line item in this year’s budget shows no money allocated at all. It just adds to a growing list of health promises that this government has just failed to address. My own electorate—or the new redistributed electorate—is Torquay. The government now for two elections has talked about building a community hospital at Torquay. They have only just found a paddock to put it on in recent months. It is no further advanced now than it was two election cycles ago. That joins a long list of health promises that have not materialised.

The big one that so many people in the west of the state understand is the Melton hospital, which was promised, as it always is by this government, near election time and then progresses no further. Not only do the Melton people know but most Victorians now know it is yet another paddock of thistles, sitting there waiting to one day turn into a hospital. So this budget does not deliver that. It is still a distant and far dream of this government to provide that important health service to a municipality, interestingly, that is the same size as the eastern suburb municipality of Monash. They are both just a bit over 200 000 people. After eight years of Labor—and a Premier that has been the Premier the whole time and prior to that was health minister—they have still failed to build one hospital. One hospital has not been provided for 200 000 people, and yet if you go into the eastern suburbs, not far from where the Premier himself is, they have managed to have about five public hospitals available to the people out there. So the neglect of the west is palpable.

I look at my own electorate. I think my electorate possibly has the most hospitals, at 10, sprinkled in there in a variety of sizes, from a larger regional acute hospital to smaller hospitals, mainly specialising in aged care. They provide an important reassurance to those communities that the government cares about them and their health needs. They are often the bases where the local ambulance will be dispatched from. They all provide a backbone to primary care, to community care and other really important services that are vital in this day and age to make sure people feel connected.

If I look around my electorate, out of the 10 hospitals we had one with some promised funding into the future for upgraded aged care. That is of course in Camperdown. But when you look at the Colac hospital, for example, which was upgraded some time ago now, it has accident and emergency. The stress and the strain on the Geelong hospital system right throughout the region and the closing of GP services in Apollo Bay, in Camperdown, in Timboon and in Cobden is forcing more and more people to go to the Colac urgent care service. The Colac urgent care service is one that was built for 3000 or 4000 yearly presentations, and that figure is now well in excess of 12 000. It is doing so much more.

What so many people in the city do not realise is that so many of our urgent healthcare services in country and regional areas are not provided by employed doctors’ services, although Colac has some, but so often rely on the willingness of local general practitioners to join in with the public health service—that shared public and private responsibility to provide good health care. The state gets a very good deal in country Victoria from its local medical professionals when it comes to providing urgent care services, and as a result the least the state could do is to make sure those services are well equipped, modern and capable of dealing with the huge demand that has been put on our health system in recent years.

I would refer to a recent commitment from our side of politics to support Cobden Health. The Cobden health service sits on the brink of losing accreditation because its facilities just are not up to modern standards. This government has been asked and asked, and I have certainly asked them to join in, but this budget, the 2022–23 budget, does nothing for a community like Cobden. A community like Cobden has to bear with the fact that it only has one GP to service that whole farming area. That GP just simply cannot work seven days a week, 365 days a year, and so once again it is an example of where the state has a responsibility to step up.

What concerns me in the construction of this budget is that on one hand we have got huge promises and commitments from this government, which they are so ashamed to even put a value to because, I guess, their experience on suburban rail link tunnels and West Gate tunnels and level crossing removals is that their budgeting is so far off, they are not even prepared to put a dollar figure on what their commitment to Geelong is. So it comes as no surprise when you have the example of the energy bonus. No-one will ever say no to free money, but the prudent people in the state are asking why—when we have a health crisis, when we have people that genuinely need help. Take, for example, the homelessness rate, the people waiting to have somewhere safe to live, which has ballooned under this government from 9900 to in excess of 30 000 people, and our estimates are—because we do not actually record the amount of people; we only record the families—that that is a figure probably closer to 60 000 or 80 000 people who are not going home. When the sun sets at the end of the day they have nowhere safe or comfortable or reliable or warm to stay at night.

When you have got those types of pressures—huge waiting lists; 80 000 people waiting for elective surgery; 60 000 people potentially waiting every night for somewhere safe to live, and that includes small children that want to sleep in a bed and not on the back seat of a car—when you have that sort of crisis in the state, every man and his dog is issued with a $250 cashback. That is great for pensioners or for easing the cost of living for people that need the assistance, but this government is incapable of fine-tuning that or of managing an assistance plan that is targeted and well budgeted for.

What then surprised me, and which is coming through my office now, is that the government provided this vote-buying exercise in the last budget, and people filled in the forms, but a bit like we experienced during COVID, this government’s mechanisms—its operations as a government—are so incompetent that they did not have any of the files or the records or the capacity to accept someone they had given the money to last year to allow them to get the money again this year. I have had an enormous amount of people for whom the $250 is actually a benefit—elderly pensioners, older people, people who are not tech savvy, people who are not necessarily capable of following instructions to get this cash back from the government—coming to my office. They got the money last year, and then this year the government says—tap, tap, tap on their computer—‘Sorry, computer says no’. This is the level of incompetence, the level of financial mismanagement, that is writ large in this budget. We are now entering into a phase with this budget, the 2022–23 budget, where the people of Victoria will be saddled, burdened for decades, with a debt that is equivalent to the debts of Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania combined.

That is an extraordinary amount of money to owe, and the people of Victoria expect a responsible government to be cognisant of that and make prudent decisions. They understand the need to target assistance for cost of living to people that need it. They want to know that the money that we are spending on public infrastructure is prioritised in a way that the most urgent public infrastructure—pieces of infrastructure like a hospital in Melton, a hospital in Torquay, a hospital in Mildura, a hospital in Wodonga, hospitals that communities have been waiting years and decades for—actually gets built.

Instead this budget continues to deliver largesse and excess to out-of-control projects in Melbourne and big infrastructure projects in Melbourne—not out in the regions or outside of metro Melbourne—that are beholden to big unions and are beholden to big costs. Most tragically, there is no end in sight for what this will be costing the bottom line and the people of Victoria. Of course many of my constituents saw last week the independent Parliamentary Budget Office come out and say what this Andrews government has been telling people now for the last eight years quite frankly is misleading. We have been told that the Suburban Rail Loop, this grand vision of the Premier, is something that is going to magically link people across the metropolis of Melbourne in a modern, efficient way and that it would cost $50 billion. That has been proven to be a lie. The Parliamentary Budget Office has come out and said this folly will take decades to build and cost up to and in excess of $200 billion. As we have said, at a time when our health care in this city and in this state is in crisis, that just cannot be prioritised.

I also speak on behalf of country Victorians. I was briefed recently on the complete underspend on our country roads, and it was said to me by people in the industry that for the last 10 years this government has averaged just a little over $540 million a year as a spend on all country roads, upgrades and maintenance. That is equivalent to one level crossing removal in Melbourne. This government proudly trumpets, I think, 50 or 60 level crossing removals in its time; that is as much spending in Melbourne on level crossing removals over eight years as the people of rural and regional Victoria could expect to see spent over 50 or 60 years. We would have to wait 50 to 60 years in country Victoria to see that level of investment in the safety of our roads. And while country Victorians are pleased that Melburnians can get to work 3 minutes quicker, I point out that the death toll on our roads and the cost to industry are borne largely by rural and regional Victorians. This government, instead of spending just one level crossing removal’s worth extra on roads in country Victoria, goes out onto our dangerous country roads, puts up 40-kilometre-an-hour speed signs and expects country Victorians to be happy with that as the level of maintenance in this state. Can I tell you that country Victorians are tiring of that. Road maintenance is not about slowing speeds down; road maintenance is about providing a safe, workable, well-maintained surface so not only can people expect and anticipate getting home safely at night but all of the amazing product that rural and regional Victoria produces can get quickly and efficiently to port, to the airports and of course to the markets here in Melbourne and business and commerce can provide the wonderful food and services that they do.

In conclusion, I just again bring to the house’s attention that this budget is a sign of a government that just will not listen. It is a government that is happy to put a hard hat on, go underground with a TV crew and a TikTok team and sit there and talk about the big spend as if Victorians should be grateful. And can I say that I know the Victorians who live in my electorate would be grateful for just one level crossing removal’s worth of road improvement, for hospitals that can service the people they need to and for a better focus of this government on what matters most to Victorians.

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (18:20): I am pleased to speak on the take-note motion of the Victorian state budget 2022–23. This will be the last chance I get as a member in this place to speak on a budget, and I would say 16 out of the 20 budgets that have been delivered in the time that I have been in this place have been excellent budgets for the Yan Yean electorate. The only exceptions were the four years when I served on the opposition benches. I hope that my community will remember that.

I particularly was delighted on budget day to be able to nick out of this chamber and go and visit my friends at Doreen Primary School. Doreen Primary School, ably led by Glenn ‘Simo’ Simondson, who has been at that school for many decades, is a lovely little school in a rural setting, a lovely little country school, but it is on the edge of where there are now large suburban developments. When I was first elected there were only about 1300 people on the electoral roll in the postcode of Mernda and Doreen, and now there are about 50 000 people. We have six schools that serve the Mernda and Doreen postcode, and all of them are new schools except for Doreen. Doreen was the only school that was yet to be upgraded or totally rebuilt. I was delighted to go out there, and the principal, Glenn, I think nearly fainted. He expected a bit of maintenance money or something like that, but he certainly did not expect $5.39 million to upgrade and modernise the school, including a new classroom and administration building. That means that all six schools in the Mernda and Doreen postcode will have no permanent buildings that are more than around 12 years old. It just epitomises the Education State, there writ large in Mernda and Doreen. To finish on that note as the local MP was a real delight, to be able to make that announcement to that school.

There is another great school just up the road from there, about four kilometres I think along Yan Yean Road. Doctors Gully Road is where Doreen Primary is, then Yarrambat Primary is on Yan Yean Road at the corner of Ironbark Road and it is getting $444 100 to refurbish the existing student and staff toilets. The school was built—it is a fairly new school—in the late 1980s, early 90s, and it has had significant additions since that time, about 15 years ago. But with all the growth and the number of students that are there—there are about 650—the existing toilets for staff and students had really gone past their use-by date, so I was really pleased to be able to go and give the school that good news.

The budget also announced increased capacity for the Northern Hospital, and then of course we have seen since then the announcement of new urgent care centres. The increased capacity that was announced in the budget also included funding for the Werribee Mercy Hospital and the Casey Hospital, and that was an overall budget package of around $55 million.

One of my favourite announcements in the budget was in the agriculture portfolio, that Victoria is set to have its first pet census. Everyone in this place knows that I am a dog lover, and Bailey, my fur baby, is very much part of our family and visits this place frequently. I think any of us with pets know just how important they were to us throughout the pandemic and throughout the lockdowns. But we realised that we need as a government to understand more about Victorians’ relationship to their pet ownership, whether there are changes that need to be made with local government regulation and also what the economic value is of the Victorian industry and the impact of animal welfare and management policies. That is a fantastic initiative in the state budget.

Related to that, there is also $150 000 set aside for Safe Steps, who support victim-survivors of family violence so that they can stay together with their pets when leaving a family violence setting. The funding will support Safe Steps to deliver veterinary care, transport and accommodation for pets as well as targeted support for foster care arrangements. We know that often victims of family violence stay in the home because they have nowhere to go with their pets, so not only is this great for pets but it is great for their owners.

The budget also provides a boost to paramedics and ambulance services. I have certainly been out to a number of regional areas, including Inglewood, to welcome the additional crew in there and a number of other locations. In emergency services there is additional funding for call-taking and dispatch capacity to ESTA, to the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority. Others have mentioned the $250 power saving bonus, and I think that it has been overwhelmingly welcomed. The cost of living is just so difficult for people at the moment, while we are transitioning to changes in energy sources and also with what is happening internationally. I encourage anyone who has not yet applied for it to contact my office or particularly neighbourhood houses, such as the Whittlesea Community House, working on a daily basis assisting people to apply for this. There is also additional funding for solar homes, another way not only to support our environment and decrease greenhouse emissions but also to give people an opportunity to get a cheaper source of power into the future through the solar homes boost, and that is $47.2 million.

With the announcement that we are getting the regional Commonwealth Games there is funding set aside for that, both for delivery and for legacy. I think that this will be an absolutely generational game changer for Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong, Gippsland and also beyond into many other regional areas which will have the opportunity to host. Even if they are not getting the main events, there will be many opportunities for major events prior, training venues and accommodation, plus there will be all the visitors. So it is just an amazing thing for our state.

The Regional Jobs and Infrastructure Fund (RJIF)—there is another $30 million for that fund. I see the minister at the table. She is now the Minister for Health, but she has the regions deep in her heart, having grown up in regional Victoria and having done a stint as the Minister for Regional Development. I had the great pleasure of working alongside her, and I know that she knows that the Regional Jobs and Infrastructure Fund has supported amazing investment. Since the government came to office $36 billion has been the total investment in regional Victoria by the Andrews Labor government. That is five times that of the Liberal-Nationals government. This year’s budget provides $5.7 billion in regional investments, including the $2.6 billion for the Commonwealth Games.

The policy announcement by the National Party saying that they would guarantee 25 per cent spend in regional Victoria—well, in fact that is a cut, because our government has independently been shown to be spending 35 per cent.

Mr Riordan: You can’t just make it up.

Ms GREEN: I have not made up a figure, member for Polwarth. The member for Polwarth before was trying to say that there was little spending happening in regional Victoria. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. We are helping deliver projects like $4 million for the Portland foreshore development in the electorate of South-West Coast, $5.5 million for the second stage of the Mildura riverfront development and $4.2 million for the Parwan employment precinct. Just last week I was in The Gurdies in the Bass electorate, not far from Phillip Island. There is a small amount of money—$250 000—for Ecoliv modular builders to do a new display home product, which will be a carbon-positive product. That will enable them to market those buildings. They are doing a great job, particularly building in regional Victoria, where there are tradie shortages, and particularly in areas that have been impacted by the Black Summer fires in East Gippsland and in north-east Victoria. It is builders like Ecoliv that are able to deliver an absolutely quality product—Victorian made, 7-star rating. They are very skilled in understanding bushfire sites. Then there need to be some local tradies, just to connect them to power, sewerage and other services. That is just an example of some of the projects that get funded through our regional funds. Over time the RJIF has also supported a range of iconic projects, such as the revitalisation of the Maryborough railway station and Wodonga’s magnificent $12.8 million Hyphen, which I know that the minister at the table, the Minister for Health, is very familiar with.

I am proud to have served under three Premiers in my time in the Parliament. I would say that in the beginning, from the outset—and I know the member for Lara will agree with me—the first leader that we served under was Steve Bracks, and he said that we needed to serve for every part of the state. I think that that is what each of the leaders that I have served under has done. All of them have been rooted in regional Victoria, with Steve Bracks, John Brumby and the current Premier all having strong roots in regional Victoria and never having forgotten where they come from. Eighteen of our members—15 women and three men—currently represent regional electorates in this Parliament. I really hope that we are going to continue to do that, because I think the budget shows how we have driven investment.

The employment figures that have come out, particularly only today, have really shown that our investment in COVID recovery and support to business has really helped get Victoria back on track after the impact of the worldwide pandemic. But when you look at the unemployment figures, in particular the regional unemployment figures, I think the ones that were announced today for the South-West Coast area—Warrnambool—are between 1 and 2 per cent. We know that there is still more to be done in some areas of the state where there is high youth unemployment. But we are the Education State. We put money into TAFE, into training. The further announcements that we have made only this week are in addition to the budget—the support for nurses and midwives. It offers young people and people wanting to retrain alternate pathways, but also helps ease the skills gap in regional Victoria.

This is the final budget that I will have the privilege of speaking on. It is a great privilege to have been part of a government that has delivered for the suburbs and has delivered for the inner city and also our regional areas. I did not mention that the Growing Suburbs Fund has again been supported, and I really hope that the federal government takes up the opportunity to create one of those funds as well.

Mr ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (18:35): I also rise to speak on the budget take-note motion. I would like to start by addressing some of the matters that the member for Yan Yean raised, just as a matter of the principles that she outlined in her contribution and the principle of governments in this state governing for all. I wish that was true, and I wish that was true for many reasons. The 46 100-odd members of the Sandringham district community so desperately want the Andrews Labor government to govern for all and to specifically govern for them, and during the course of this contribution I intend to articulate why and how the current government is failing the local residents of the Sandringham district.

This is my first term as a member of Parliament, and the way I have tried to operate is in a reasonably cooperative way with members of the government. They have been elected to government; they do have a mandate. But it is my job as the local member to represent the needs of my community—to fight for them, to advocate for them when members of our community are in need of various things. To that end it has been my consistent practice before a Victorian budget has been handed down in this place to write to the Treasurer and to present to the Treasurer a Sandringham district budget submission. In that budget submission on behalf of the residents of my community I outline for the Treasurer just some of the things that would make the Sandringham district community a better place—investment that is needed in the Sandringham district community in infrastructure and in services to make my community a better place for this generation and the next. I did so again this year when I wrote to the Treasurer in April outlining a number of things that my community needed.

In the area of health I requested major upgrades to the Sandringham Hospital to give it renewed purpose so that it may continue serving my community for this generation and the next. In the education space I asked for stage 1 urgent maintenance funding at the Mentone Girls Secondary College. The Mentone Girls Secondary College is at the intersection of Charman Road and Balcombe Road in Mentone. It is the only all-girls state secondary school in the southern region of Melbourne. It serves my community and neighbouring communities—Clarinda, Mordialloc and as far-flung as Carrum and further down the Frankston line—very, very well. What is more important is that it actually gives parents within those communities—my communities and the broader diaspora—the opportunity to choose for their girls, their young women, to go to a single-sex, girls-only state school. The trouble is that particular school has not received a brass razoo of state government funding or major capital funding in at least three decades. There is only so much paint that you can put on rotted wood to cover up the fact that the wood is rotted, and that is the circumstance at Mentone Girls Secondary College. It is not right—it is just not right. So, trying to be a community champion and a community advocate, I included that in my budget submission to the Treasurer and $10 million for stage 2 of the redevelopment of Sandringham Secondary College, once again a fabulous educational institute within the Sandringham district.

I asked for money for the construction of a new school hall, a gymnasium, at not only Beaumaris Primary School but Beaumaris North Primary School as well. At Beaumaris Primary School the principal there, Mrs Skewes, is a wonderful principal. The parents and the teachers and the students there are wonderful, and they make up a fabulous community at Beaumaris Primary School. Once again, what they are asking for is not the world. They are not asking for the world; they are just asking for a bit of dignity, a bit of respect—a new school gymnasium so that they as a whole school community can gather within one place.

Similarly, at Beaumaris North Primary School on Reserve Road in Beaumaris, the terrific principal there, Mrs Duffy—an educational institution herself within the Sandringham district—has been advocating for some time for a gymnasium. In fact she tells me she was promised one by the Department of Education and Training a number of times if her student population reached a certain number. Well, it has reached that number and it has exceeded it, and still Beaumaris North Primary School has not received the school gymnasium that it not only needs but deserves.

I asked for $100 000 to better protect our Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary. The Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary in Beaumaris is our area’s greatest environmental and ecological asset. It is synonymous with our Bayside community. You think Beaumaris, you think Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary. I recall, as I have lived in the Bayside community all of my life, as a young boy, together with my twin brother, wandering down to the shallows of Ricketts Point, playing on the sand there in the shallow waters and going and discovering the rock pools as well. Now I have the opportunity to bring my own children to the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary so they can enjoy it. I feel a happy obligation to do everything I can to protect the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary, not just for this generation and not just for my kids but for their kids as well. That is the opportunity that I have as the elected member for Sandringham.

I asked for a number of other things as well. I asked for investment in the Sandringham Football Club at the Trevor Barker Beach Oval on Beach Road. The Trevor Barker Beach Oval on Beach Road in Sandringham is home not only to the Sandringham Zebras VFL team but also to the Southern Saints VFLW team, and it also hosts and plays host to many other local competitions—the Victorian Amateur Football Association finals, for example. If you have ever been to the change rooms there, Acting Speaker Morris—I do not suppose you have, but I have—they are terrible. They are substandard. The blokes do not even feel comfortable or safe showering in them, let alone the VFLW teams. There are no dedicated, specific change facilities for the female umpires either. Once again the ask of the Treasurer in the Sandringham district budget submission was not for the world. It was not for gold plating or brass plating, it was for the basics, to offer those players, those VFLW players especially, at the Trevor Barker Beach Oval in Sandringham dignity and respect—a pretty basic request.

These were just some of the things that I asked for in the Sandringham district budget submission this year. I got a note back from the Treasurer, very courteously, in May. He outlined a number of statewide things that the Andrews Labor government were doing but failed to really address any of the specific items that I raised in my original correspondence with him. To me and to my community that was a great disappointment because it demonstrated to me and it demonstrated to the community organisations—those sporting clubs, those schools, those groups within my community—that the Andrews Labor government claims that it will govern for every Victorian but it does not govern for the people of the Sandringham district. They had an opportunity to demonstrate that in responding positively to some of the items that I raised in that Sandringham district budget submission and failed to do so.

Well, we are not waiting for the Andrews Labor government to recognise what is important for my community, we are just going on and doing it. On 26 November this year the people of Victoria have a choice. They have a choice between the Andrews Labor government, who claim they govern for all Victorians—but the experience of my residents is that they do not—and a local member who is a local community champion, who was born in the community, who has lived there all his life, who knows the area, who loves the area and who is a champion for local causes. These things I am not advocating for for myself; I am advocating for them for my community.

That is why I was very pleased to stand alongside the member for Bulleen, the leader of the Liberal Party, the Leader of the Opposition, and the Shadow Minister for Health, Ms Crozier from the other place, to announce that a future Liberal government would make a significant investment in the modernisation of our Sandringham Hospital. That commitment included—and this perhaps costs the least but is the most impactful commitment that we made—the establishment of a Sandringham Hospital community reference group, bringing together local health professionals, hospital fundraisers and community members who will undertake the important work of drafting the very first Sandringham Hospital community charter. Every bill that is introduced in this place has attached to it a statement of compliance with the Victorian charter of human rights. Similarly, any decision that government or Alfred Health would make about our Sandringham Hospital, our community hospital, the caring heart of our community, in the future would need to be in accordance with the very first Sandringham Hospital community charter. Sandringham Hospital is not just an outpost of the Alfred; it is our community hospital, and it must be preserved as such for the future.

I alluded to earlier the needs of the Sandringham Football Club—the Sandringham Zebras VFL team and the Southern Saints VFLW team—at the Trevor Barker Beach Oval. Just earlier this week I was there with the Shadow Minister for Sport, the member for Eildon, announcing that a future Liberal government would commit $1.5 million to the full refurbishment of the north pavilion at the Trevor Barker Beach Oval. That would fully refurbish the north pavilion and would contribute to the commencement of the refurbishment of the south pavilion as well. That would mean dedicated change facilities not just for the blokes but for the women as well. It would mean a dedicated female change space for female umpires as well. Again, these people are not asking for the world; they are just asking for basic dignity and respect, and where the Andrews Labor government fails to recognise this, this side of the chamber does.

For those in the chamber who have heard me make contributions in this place before, I have since time immemorial been requesting of the Deputy Premier and others for the level crossings at Highett Road and Wickham Road to be removed, and time and time again the response has come back: no. Well, what we have done is committed to the removal of the Highett Road and the Wickham Road level crossings in my community. It is the number one issue that members of the Highett community raise with me. It would make a significant impact. Highett is a growing community. There is major development planned on Graham Road at the former CSIRO site; Bayside council has recently approved more than 1100 dwellings there. This is just a stone’s throw from the Highett Road level crossing. The current Labor government have the former Gas and Fuel land at Nepean Highway in Highett under the auspices of Development Victoria at the moment with plans to develop that site as well—more high-density high-rise in Highett—without a plan to remove the Highett Road and Wickham Road level crossings. This is not a luxury; we are not asking for a luxury. We are asking for necessary infrastructure upgrades in our community.

Where the Labor government has failed to recognise the significance and the importance of the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary in my community for my community, a future Liberal government will invest $100 000 to better protect our Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary, and I was thrilled at that announcement to have the member for Brighton, my colleague the Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change, there together with members of the Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron, with members of the Bayside Climate Change Action Group and with members of other environmental groups—Marine Care Ricketts Point and others—to announce this plan. Where the Andrews Labor government has failed my community, my commitment is that a future Liberal government will deliver.

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (18:50): I want to address the big-picture issues: how the Labor government takes care of grassroots communities and who you should vote for because the decision and the choice are clear. When it comes to addressing the catastrophes of our times and looking at what we need to do in the time of pandemic, the Victorian government has invested $12 billion in health. I want to acknowledge the Minister for Health, who is at the table, and her predecessor, the member for Albert Park, for what they have been doing. You can see these initiatives building on a daily basis. I have just come from having meetings with AAMRI and the Victorian chapter of the Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes, and that is after we had a record investment from a Canadian philanthropist today in the elegant science that we have here in Victoria, so it all fits together—how we take care of the pandemic, how we address the network that needs to be taken care of and how we keep building a better proposition for health to address the times that we are in.

Going directly to what the Minister for Health has been doing, this investment of $12 billion is to look after the care of people and ease pressure on the stretched workforce, and this is a critical thing. We know there is the fatigue and the fog of COVID, and the impact that has had right across the workforce has been tremendous and brutal in a lot of ways on these carers. We cannot thank them enough for all they have done and all it has taken in the time of pandemic. The new funding focuses on delivering the pandemic repair plan, so training and hiring up to 7000 healthcare workers, of which 5000 will be nurses—

Ms Thomas: Hear, hear!

Mr McGUIRE: The minister is saying ‘Hear, hear!’, and that is exactly right. This is a critical point. The minister knows as well as the member for Broadmeadows we have got a $60 million investment. We are trying to build a centre of excellence for health care, and this is particularly relevant in the northern suburbs and in the areas which are, as I call Broadmeadows, virtually a United Nations in one neighbourhood, with people from 160 different nationalities. What we are looking to do is get the collaboration and coordination between the Broadmeadows Hospital and Kangan Institute to get the best education you can get, so in the clinic and in the classroom simultaneously. This will be really important in these communities, particularly in the northern area.

We know that the Northern Hospital had the highest number of people turning up at their emergency department and the highest rate of ambulance ramping. How do we actually take care of that? I know the minister and the Premier were recently out at the Northern Hospital. There is new technology, and great innovation is being done at the Northern Hospital. These are ideas I have pursued with them for a number of years to get done—‘How do we do the intervention through technology-driven leadership?’—and they have got a proof of that concept.

I want to bring these themes together, because this is what people will be voting for: who is going to give you the best chance in the future to be able to take care of these issues? As I look more into the detail of this $12 billion investment, it will also deliver more paramedics, more support for paramedics themselves and increased capacity for 000 call takers and dispatchers; a package to recruit, train, upskill and support healthcare workers across the sector; $2.3 billion to upgrade and build new hospitals, including $236 million to double emergency department capacity in Casey and Werribee, two key areas; and a record investment in surgical capacity across the state. It includes $1.5 billion in the COVID catch-up plan to increase surgical activity beyond prepandemic levels through establishing rapid access hubs, supporting private hospitals to deliver more public surgeries and transforming Frankston Private Hospital into a public surgical centre with the capacity to perform up to 9000 public surgeries each year once operational.

Ms Thomas: Opposed by those on the other side.

Mr McGUIRE: As the Minister for Health says, opposed by those on the other side. Why would you oppose this initiative at this critical time? We had the New South Wales Premier in Victoria this week standing next to the Victorian Premier. We are getting unity tickets, and this is what the public want. They want to see how we could actually put together better deals to make this happen. So this is what is going on and this is what needs to happen.

I note that this is the tone that the Prime Minister has moved to as well. We need to be able to have a more cooperative federation and to make this work. He was recently of course in Melbourne at Monash University, where we had a world first: we had Moderna announcing that it would manufacture, for the first time on a campus anywhere in the world, mRNA vaccines. This is the next-generation breakthrough that we need to have for vaccines, and this then takes us to a higher level internationally.

I was delighted to represent the Victorian government at the Australian British Health Catalyst, and I explained it in these terms: if you think about medical research, think about three key cities. Think of Boston with Harvard and MIT, think of London with Oxbridge and the Imperial College and then think of Melbourne with the elegant institutes anchored around the University of Melbourne—that is in our boulevard of big dreams—and the great southern hub, which is Monash University—

A member: Postcodes of hope.

Mr McGUIRE: connected to the CSIRO by Innovation Walk, and that should be our billion-dollar boulevard. So this is how you put together these epicentres. Someone called out about postcodes of hope. Well, it was an initiative from Creating Opportunity:Postcodes of Hope that actually addressed CSL testimony to the Senate in 2014 that Australia was not a great place to commercialise your intellectual property and export it. So I took this up with great fervour and pursued this, that we need to take care of these sorts of things. So here is what we did: CSL has been manufacturing AstraZeneca vaccines from the UK. We are about to have the debate on the free trade agreement between Australia and Great Britain, and I have said to the British government officials, ‘Let’s lift the debate beyond a comparison between Vegemite and Marmite and let’s talk about life-saving vaccines’. They agree with this proposition. This is what we should be talking about in the time of pandemic, because this is what people need. This is the exchange of the intellectual property, of commercialising it here and then exporting it in the Asia-Pacific region. This is what we are doing. The best diplomacy that you can have is saving lives, and that is what has happened. This is already happening.

Here is the other thing that happened. When we lost manufacturing mass because our once-proud automotive industry was closed, here is what happened. We were able to get $1.8 billion in a new investment to manufacture vaccines.

Mr Riordan interjected.

Mr McGUIRE: Scott Morrison had to come to Broadmeadows, so do not denigrate Broadmeadows. He stood there at CSL. The $1.8 billion investment is for a new lucrative export industry to manufacture vaccines against influenza nearby. That is through Seqirus, a subsidiary of CSL, and that is going to be in the Melbourne Airport precinct there. So here is how you pull it together, here is how you deliver the big picture and here is how you can actually have the new industries and jobs and you can have independent supply chains and national sovereignty.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.