Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2023–24 Budget Estimates

Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (10:28): I rise to make a contribution on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s report on the 2023–24 budget estimates. I would like to cover off on three topics this morning. The first of those is reference to page 148 of that report, which mentions bushfire response and recovery. I say, not for the first time in this chamber – in fact there have been multiple times – that we are now, since Parliament resumed, more than four years post the 2019–20 East Gippsland bushfires. This government at the time when these fires hit, as I have said in this chamber before, stood up at press conferences and said it would walk every step of the way with East Gippslanders through this recovery process. Four years on, we have the East Cape Boardwalk not open. I think I have had five opening dates given to me by Parks Victoria. The last one was prior to Christmas, and then early in the new year was announced in December, but it is still not open. So it is not open early in the new year at all, and it is no wonder that people in the local community are getting sceptical about whether this government intends to complete some of these bushfire works at all.

At the Cape Conran cabins – you would not believe this – there are about eight to 10 cabins there that were burnt down. They are cabins – they are not luxury accommodation; they are cabins – but they are very reliant on our local business community in that area and important to the local economy from a visitor perspective. We are not rebuilding the Taj Mahal here, we are rebuilding eight cabins, and 4½ years on a whole department has been stuffing around for that long with its bureaucratic bungling that they are not yet erected – 4½ years on. If we had a few cabins burn down in a metropolitan Labor seat I reckon they would be up within six months. But four years on, that has not happened. The Thurra River bridge is forecast for 2026. Who knows when that will happen? The Buchan Caves Reserve, which got hit by floods recently and which you all would have seen in the news – tragically two lives were lost – had not had the fire recovery work done from four years prior to when the flood hit. It is a disgrace. The parkies on the ground are fine, but the Parks Victoria management in relation to this bushfire recovery and the minister and the government more generally have been absolutely hopeless ‍– there is no other word to describe it.

Page 149 of the estimates report refers to the timber worker transition packages, and I want to make some quick comments on that. It says on page 149 that transition support programs are already well underway and being fast-tracked. They were to be finalised by Christmas. They are not finalised. We have still got timber workers very unsure of what their future holds. The packages that have been offered to them have been set around a budget; they have not been set around what is fair. It is not fair on these families who have been left in limbo for so long. And in relation to taking an industry away from us – and it is not just my electorate; there are other electorates as well – there is no talk about any replacement industries. Nothing. These people are going to have to move out of our region to other jobs. So your government removes an industry and there is no replacement. Towns like Orbost are dwindling in population, and there is just no effort made whatsoever.

I also want to briefly talk about homelessness, and the one fleeting mention it gets in the budget in the estimates committee’s report is on page 108. Now, regularly we get government members coming into this chamber spouting the Big Housing Build and what it is doing and the new homes, and yes, there are new homes, but in many cases they are not additional homes because the old stock is being sold off at the rate or close to the rate that new ones are being built. So an increasing number of people are sleeping rough in my electorate. Compared to 2017, we have got two less public housing homes in my electorate now than we had in 2017, because we have had an enormous amount of stock sold off. There is no plan to deal with it. The minister is our local member, Ms Shing in the other place. We have got up to 15 people now sleeping at our saleyards, and they have been opened so people can use the showers. Let us stop talking off speaking notes and get some new homes on the ground in electorates like mine, which has had a decrease of two public housing homes since 2017. We spruik the dollars, we spruik the money – the action is not being seen on the ground, and it is an absolute disgrace.