Wednesday, 1 November 2023

 Darren CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (17:14): I rise this afternoon to grieve for Victorians and indeed Australians who are struggling at the moment with the cost-of-living pressures that exist in Victorian and Australian communities. These cost-of-living pressures that exist in our households throughout Victoria are in fact fuelled by a whole raft of circumstances that are completely and utterly outside of the control of those households.

People listening to this speech will no doubt recall that earlier this year we had a global conflict break out in Ukraine, and when that conflict broke out it led to all sorts of inflationary pressures across the global economy with respect to fuel energy prices. We have also seen play out, in very much an Australian and a Victorian circumstance, floods, and we have seen bushfires, and these pressures have seen the cost of producing food and making it available to Victorians and Australians rise, again fuelling cost-of-living pressures in Victorian households. The Andrews Labor government of course have recognised these cost-of-living pressures by putting in place a whole raft of different policy responses to ensure that we can put, wherever possible, downward pressure on the cost-of-living pressures that households are facing.

We have also seen over the last 12 months or so the Reserve Bank of Australia respond to inflationary pressures in the Australian economy by lifting interest rates on a huge number of occasions. This is fuelling cost-of-living pressures at the household level as people respond to their mortgages rising or indeed as they respond to paying more rent because the landlord is responding to those mortgage pressures that they are under.

The Andrews Labor government and indeed now the Allan Labor government have a whole raft of public policy responses that we are putting in place to help Victorian households in responding to these cost-of-living pressures, and I want to go through a few of those this afternoon. What we are doing is putting in place free kinder. Free kinder reform will make a huge difference – a $2500 a year saving to households who have kinder-aged kids in Victoria. If you think about the profile of those that have kinder-aged kids, more often than not they are new home owners who are starting that journey of home ownership. They have mortgages or they have rent, and helping those households by putting in place free kinder will save those families significant amounts of money, which will help them in getting through those cost-of-living pressures that do exist.

We are also putting in place free TAFE courses, particularly in areas where there are skills shortages in the Victorian economy. Those free TAFE courses will of course save those young Victorians a significant amount of money but importantly ensure that we have the skills that we need to build a modern Victoria going forward, and that will indeed over time reduce inflationary pressures that exist in so many different parts of our economy.

We also recognise what education does to the productivity-enabling capacity of the state of Victoria, and we are adding three-year-old kinder, giving those young Victorians and their families the necessary skills that they need to go on a lifelong journey of education. Again, that will free up the capacity of our economy, and for every dollar we invest in those young Victorians from an education perspective we will see a great dividend return to the people of Victoria.

We also recognise that energy prices have been a significant challenge for many Victorian households, and that is why we have got things such as the power saving bonus, giving the tools and the opportunity to every single household in this state to be able to seek cheaper energy prices, cheaper power prices, for their households. This is all about making our economies as strong as possible, providing the balance sheet to households to ensure that they can get through these cost-of-living pressures that exist in our community.

In my seat, and when I look around many parts of Victoria, we have significant communities that are growing. In the context of South Barwon we have lots and lots of families that are making their way to South Barwon, and we see that in the growth corridors around the outskirts of Melbourne. The Andrews Labor government was and now the Allan Labor government is putting in place the investments we need to ensure that those communities living on the outskirts of Melbourne have that opportunity to access the education that they need to be able to access locally. That is why we are building new primary schools. That is why we are building new secondary schools. That is why we are funding and providing the opportunity for councils to make those investments to build kinders locally. The reason why that is important, the reason why we need to do that, is that if families are able to conveniently access schools and kinders locally in their neighbourhoods, they will be able to cheaply and easily access those schools without having to put lots of petrol in the car’s tank every single week and we will be able to help drive down the cost-of-living pressures that those households might be funding, and that is of course really, really important. From my perspective, responding to cost-of-living pressures needs to be done not just in the context of right now but also by putting in place the productivity-enabling decisions to ensure that for future challenges that come along and face our state we are that much more capable of getting households through.

Another thing that I am particularly proud of and another significant thing that our government has done is that it has funded the establishment of free teaching degrees. This is important because we need more teachers in our Victorian government system. It is important because we know when we look at the age profile of teachers in the state of Victoria a significant portion of those fantastic teachers are indeed baby boomers and will be looking forward to retirement in the near future. We know that the greatest way for us to recognise that challenge and to recognise the opportunity of getting fantastic people trained to be teachers, to train the next generation of teachers in this state, is to provide them with the opportunity to get free teacher training, because we want to do that. We want to make sure we have got fantastic teachers in this state and we want to make sure that they are incentivised to go and teach. That is why we have done that.

Equally, whenever I go and visit a hospital and I go and talk to our fantastic nurses in this state, I see the challenges that they are facing every single day. Our fantastic teachers and clinicians got our state and our country through the global pandemic, but we know that we need more people taking up that great opportunity of becoming nurses in this state. Again, we see a significant number of our nurses in Victoria as people at the back end of their working lives. That is why we have stepped up to that great challenge and incentivised people to go into nursing in this state by again providing that opportunity for people to get free nursing degrees. This is all about getting more people trained as nurses into our Victorian public health system, working to keep us safe and working to make sure that Victorians have the very best access to our medical services.

When I reflect on these things, what I see is an Allan Labor government making important investments for the people of Victoria, not only in terms of getting through the immediate cost-of-living pressures that our state, our country and indeed the globe are facing but also recognising and responding to those challenges to make sure Victoria is the best-placed state going forward. When I reflect on what the others might do if they were given that great gift of government, what I would never see is investments that they would make. What I think we would only ever see are the things that they would do, which would be to cut our TAFE training courses, to close our TAFEs and to cut important things such as education maintenance allowances.

We invest. We recognise the importance of Labor governments investing in Victorians. That is our approach, but we do know that when the coalition are elected, they go after Victorians. They make cuts. They close the important institutions that our state needs, those important institutions that give Victorians the skills that they need to be able to make the best life that they can in this state. We invest. That is what we do. That is why we are so proud of the investments that we make, whether it be in free kinder, adding an additional year to kinder, free nursing, free teaching or making sure that we have got 80 courses where people can go off and get a TAFE qualification for free. These are the things that we will always do when we are in government. Always we will do that, but when they are in government, when the coalition have that great opportunity, all they ever do is make cuts and closures.