Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2023–24 Budget Estimates

Tim McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (10:19): I am delighted to rise and speak on committee reports, and I also want to speak on the 2023–24 budget estimates report handed down on 3 October 2023. There are three different areas I want to speak about. First of all, 6.6.1 and 6.6.2: one is ‘Road maintenance and repairs package’ and the other is on road safety to reduce fatalities. Ovens Valley, my electorate, is 10,500 square kilometres, so there are plenty of roads in that amount of area from Cobram through Yarrawonga, Wangaratta, up to Myrtleford, Bright, Dinner Plain over to Mount Hotham and certainly Falls Creek as well.

So you can imagine that it is a massive network of roads. I have never seen the roads in such poor repair, and people are continuing to tell me that. I look at the Murray Valley Highway, which I travel on every day from Cobram to Wangaratta. It is only half the trip that I do, but there are seven spots along that section from Cobram to Bundalong that are absolutely unsafe and certainly unroadworthy. They are certainly not carworthy, those roads. That is what concerns me about this budget: the reductions and the cuts there have been to road maintenance – not infrastructure but road maintenance.

To put potholes in perspective, everybody who sees a pothole thinks this will be fine, you can avoid a pothole. First of all, in broad daylight, it is great to be able to avoid a pothole. But when you add rain and secondly you add night-time – when you put rain and night-time together – and you are riding a motorbike, it is not a lot of fun. As a motorbike rider myself, I know how dangerous it is on the roads. I do not drive at night if I can help it, but sometimes you get stuck in a predicament and you need to be riding at night, and it is really quite unsafe. I had an incident just recently when I was getting near home on a motorbike. I had a B-double right up the back, and I had to get off the road because I just could not stay in front of him. There was a drop-off on the side of the road by about this much. It was quite frightening. As I say, if it is during the middle of the day, you can avoid a pothole, but at night-time or when it is raining, it is not a lot of fun. We have had 250 people die on Victorian roads this year, and we are only in November. So that is 275 that could potentially die on our roads this year, and that is 10,000 lives that have been lost since 1990. That is a concern. We know the road maintenance budget has been cut, and I just urge the government to look a little bit closer and really throw some support behind that maintenance.

I want to skip now to 9.5.3, ‘Renewable energy generation’. It incorporates storage as well. In yesterday’s debate we all spoke about protecting our farming communities and our biosecurity – well, nearly everybody supported them – and we talked about how we can support our communities and make sure that they are safe in what they do. I also want to talk about, as per this report, the definition of a farm. The definition of a farm is ‘an area of land and its buildings used for growing crops and rearing animals’. That is why I ask the question: who invented the term ‘solar farm’? It is not a farm. It does not grow crops, and it does not feed animals or rear animals. It is a factory – it is a solar factory – and I get concerned that people keep talking about solar farms or lithium battery farms like we are getting in Dederang or they are trying to do in Dederang. And the solar farm in Bobinawarrah – they call it Meadow Creek – is a factory, it is not a farm. Whoever created the definition of a solar farm – it is not right. It is time to call that out because it is not right. People get this assumption it is a nice green environment, a beautiful environment. Well, it is actually not. When you get those renewable energy corporate companies all lined up doing what they do, it is really important that our communities have a say in what is going on.

9.7 in the report is ‘Water: key issues’. I want to throw my weight and my support behind the Minister for Water in the other place. I know you might find it hard to believe that I really want to support the minister. She is doing a terrific job in terms of the water buybacks, in saying no to water buybacks, because that will ruin our smaller communities. She is standing up, and I urge her to stand her ground. I think she is doing a terrific job in that respect. We know that 100 gigalitres lost in our community is 500 jobs and willing sellers are just a cop-out. Willing sellers are community cowards. When you have to do a planning permit on a property, you have got to put a sign up to say ‘I’m going to build a shed’ or ‘I’m going to do something on my property’. You do not have to put a sign up – you do not have to tell anybody you are selling the water – and that is just a cop out. So when people talk about ‘willing sellers’, that is not right, because all I will say it is community cowards who are selling out their water. That community, the whole community, is going to miss out, not just that farmer. I want to just make sure we have got that on the record.