Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Regional Victoria

Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (17:32): I am not quite sure what the member for Mordialloc was grieving about, after that 15 minutes. But I am here today to grieve for regional Victorians, who are victims of neglect and regional discrimination from the Labor government. Every week in this place we hear from members in statements how a minister has been out to their electorate to open an envelope or to announce something or whatever it is, but rarely do we see them – unless there is something that has occurred that is usually dire; bushfires, storms, something that cannot be ignored – in other patches and even more rare is an invitation to such events. It is just about as rare as that government infrastructure spending.

We see the Victorian Treasurer in the media having a crack at his federal counterpart for us not getting Victoria’s fair share of tax revenue. But you know what? It is about time to practise what you preach. Over 25 per cent of Victorians live in the regions – that is a quarter at least, over that. So how about, instead of sinking money into Commonwealth Games blowouts, $38 billion in budget blowouts – the member for Mordialloc is familiar with the number 38, I am sure, after 38 cabinet shuffles and he still has not got one. But what infuriates those out in the regions is that big hole under the city where they can see cost blowouts in the Suburban Rail Loop and the Metro Tunnel. Meanwhile you have got people out in the regions, growing your food, growing your fibre, that are getting a half-done, half-cooked Murray Basin rail project and having to get that food and fibre to market and port on roads that are barely worthy enough to carry a horse and cart.

Where do you think your avocado on toast and your almond latte come from? They certainly do not come from the barista; they are coming from us. You know what, there is a really simple solution for most of these things. There was a plan for the Murray Basin rail loop, and that has been put on the table. There has been research on this. In fact Mildura Regional Development put in a submission to the national freight and supply chain strategy review in October last year. They said:

Not converting the Maryborough to Ballarat to Gheringhap … line –

which is the Maryborough freight corridor, which I talk about standardising and reinstating – not doing that, not standardising that line –

… has severely compromised supply chain resilience. During times of train service disruptions –

and there are a few –

… there is no contingency route …

At the moment those trains have to come from the north-west of the state and go via Ararat. That is like driving a car from Mildura to Melbourne via Shepparton. It makes absolutely no sense at all. Meanwhile, we have got cost blowouts in city rail projects.

At the same time the trucks are getting bigger. It used to be that the most common truck you might see on major highways from the north of the state going to port or to market would be a road train, a B-double or an A-double, depending on what they were carrying. Now not even some of the biggest freight companies in this state but family farmers are running fleets of 10-plus B-quads. They have the same axle weights, but these are really big, really intimidating. If you can picture that – and I can see your minds ticking over – that is four trailers –

Members interjecting.

Jade BENHAM: Not me – I am not talking about me. But if you can imagine, these same roads are – and I have stopped to measure them many times – not more than 3 metres in width. If you come up in a sedan – and again, tourists are on the roads all the time – Google Maps sometimes takes you the quickest route on back roads, which it absolutely should not, because people go, ‘I’ll go the quickest route’, completely unaware that there are no shoulders or that the shoulders that are there have a drop-off of over 10 centimetres and they are not wide enough. So it is literally a case of them being very intimidated coming up against not only the road trains and the B-doubles and A-doubles that are still there but these B-quads, which are huge. You are trying to drive that at night around windy roads with all of the wildlife, which is about to get worse in the north-west of the state with the kangaroos, the foxes, the goats – and now the wild dogs, which farmers are not allowed to protect their lambs from. I mean, how on earth do you prioritise protecting wild dogs over livestock, over lambs? How are you comfortable with seeing lambs that have been mauled by wild dogs and going, ‘No, we need to protect the dingo. We need to change the unprotection orders so that we can protect them so their numbers can grow.’ That is absolutely insane. Next we will be hearing that lamb prices have skyrocketed again. The farmer probably will not pocket it because of supply issues. At the moment it is hard to sell lambs for more than $50 a head. I mean, it just defies logic – it absolutely defies logic.

Let me circle back. I got distracted by the wild dog thing because it is really topical at the moment, obviously, with the unprotection laws changing last week at midnight. I got a call from the minister’s office on the Thursday telling me that the orders were changing at midnight that night. How do I communicate that without an email blasting? It is not common practice for farmers to be sitting watching their emails at all hours of the night, but apart from doing an email or a text blast, how do you communicate that with your constituency out in the bush? Papers are still really important, and it will be in the paper.

A member interjected.

Jade BENHAM: No, it will be in the paper this week.

But I was talking about rail. Mildura is the only regional city in this state that does not have a passenger rail service. I know that those on the other side say, ‘Oh, well, that was cut out 30 years ago.’ Well, you know what, the windscreen is bigger than the rear-vision mirror. There have been decades to fix it. It is professed all the time. There have been promises to fix it. This is why people in the great north-west of the state get so furious when they see money being sunk into a big hole under the city and they still have to drive – the cost of living is biting everyone really hard, and the cost of petrol – to get to the city for health care, for appointments, because they cannot get them where they live. It is regional discrimination at its best.

While we are talking about health care, let us talk about the public hospital system, shall we? It is so far in deficit staff are not supported the way they should be. I get letters from staff and I get emails every single day. I have started compiling them into a nice little dossier binder – I do not even like paper, but it has got to that point – so that we can prove this, because those on the other side do not often believe that this is the case. I have letters from staff begging for us to dig deeper and look at the public health system and what is happening. At the end of the day –

Tim Bull interjected.

Jade BENHAM: Where on earth do you start? Do you start at the budget blowouts that are not being funded correctly? Do you look at the obvious wont to centralise services? Honestly, where do you start?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I remind the member that ‘you’ refers to the Chair.

Jade BENHAM: Apologies, Deputy Speaker. Where would the Deputy Speaker start? I would be interested to know in fact, because the state of our public hospitals at the moment is another example of a Labor government who cannot manage money, cannot manage projects and certainly cannot manage the public health system. Yes, we cop it all the time about public hospitals being managed by third parties. Well, honestly, that is their business, managing a hospital with a bank of specialists on call so you can get a specialist appointment when you need it. They can get investment when they need it. If they need 30 extra emergency department (ED) beds, they do not have to beg, borrow and steal from the government. They do not have to beg, borrow and steal for a $45 million top-up.

At the end of the day I do not care who manages them. All that we want is to be able to go to the hospital and know that the hardworking staff there are well supported to deliver the best health care possible and that we can take our kids to the ED when they need it and know that it is going to be there and the staff are going to be ready to deliver and are supported and have not had to be working overtime for weeks and months on end and are not stressed to the point where they are reconsidering their career. We do not want that, because those people that work in health care on the front line are angels doing God’s work, honestly. I admire them and I am in awe of them every day.

I did go and have a look at the feedback that I have been receiving over the past couple of months through the office, and the important issues that the people of the Mildura electorate are concerned about are no surprise. Guess what is number 1: roads. Roads and transport make up the bulk of complaints – potholes, shoulders not being wide enough and roads needing reconstruction because, as the member for Gippsland South stated in his grievance debate, the patch-up jobs that are being done are ridiculous. There needs to be some sort of accountability for the contractors doing this work, because in our part of the state when it gets warm – and it does; we have just had a week of 40 degrees ‍– whatever they are using to patch those up, as soon as a B-double truck or even a car runs over them it takes the road with it. It is ridiculous.

Number 2 is health and access to specialists and mental health services. Then there is planning issues, land tax and red tape. Everyone I think on this side of the house has spoken about land tax this week. The thing that I hear is, ‘Yes, we get that we need regulation, but honestly we are being strangled by red tape, taxes and admin.’

Housing – the member for Gippsland South also brought up the question of why you would disincentivise the private sector from investing in rentals. It is just ludicrous. I know that this gets ignored, because logic does by those on the other side, but you need the private sector to invest in rental properties because that is what is going to solve a housing crisis. Why would you disincentivise the private sector – mum-and-dad investors who own one property at best most of the time? Seventy per cent of property owners own one property, and we slug them for it. It is absolutely insane. They are renting them out to people that need housing and that need to rent – that cannot afford to buy their own house.

Emergency services, including the CFA and FRV up in our patch – there was a pumper that was 14 years old that broke down on a day of total fire ban the other day, which is insane.

Child care – I know I have only got 2 minutes left, but I could talk about this for 15 minutes – Hopetoun child care, for example. The member for Euroa spoke earlier this week about how three- and four-year-old kinders have had to be put together in the same room. That is absolutely insane for early learning. We hear all the time about how important kindergarten is – I could not agree more; yes it is. I hear this from the kindergarten teachers themselves. I had a phone call this morning, and I have got a public meeting to go to on Tuesday, because Hopetoun child care is at risk of closing down now because the stress of having the kindergartens all in together is insane. There are solutions to this. This is stuff that could take the stroke of a pen. It does not even cost any money. Separate them; change the hours. We need to incentivise people to go out to rural and regional centres – and they are different; we need to start talking about them differently – like Hopetoun to get qualified staff out there to make sure that community still has an early learning centre and still has a kindergarten. You close that kindergarten, and you lose the workforce in the town as well, because someone has to stay home and look after the kids.

I put out on my socials earlier the top three things that people wanted to raise. Obviously, roads was the top response. Actually, health care was the other one, so the top three were the housing crisis, the rural professionals shortage – roads was the first one – and health care. Staff safety as well came up multiple times. Danielle wanted to know why on earth Maryborough is getting such a big upgrade. It just defies logic as to why in one breath the Treasurer says the federal government needs to give us more; well, the Victorian government need to stop with their regional discrimination.