Wednesday, 1 May 2024

Matters of public importance

Cost of living

The SPEAKER (16:01): I have accepted a statement from the member for Sandringham proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house condemns the financial mismanagement and economic recklessness of the Allan Labor government, which is causing a cost-of-living crisis for Victorian families and businesses.

Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (16:01): On the Wednesday before Tuesday’s budget next week I could not think of a more important thing for this house to be talking about than the impact of the decisions of 10 years of Labor, the impact of a Labor government on this state after 10 years.

On the eve of the 2014 state election, on the steps of this very building, the then Leader of the Opposition, soon to be Premier, pledged on Channel 7 news that there would be no new taxes under a Labor government. A decade on there are 53 – almost 54 – new or increased taxes at the hands of this Labor government. Every one of those new or increased taxes is making life harder, making life more difficult, for Victorians at a time when they can least afford it, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, when education costs are going up, grocery costs are going up, energy bills are going up. The cost of living is going through the roof. Victorian households are doing everything they can to try and make ends meet, pushing and pulling and stretching and sitting down at the kitchen table at the end of a busy day, having put their kids to sleep, trying to figure out how they are going to pay the mortgage with increased interest rates, figure out how they are going to pay the school fees, with Victoria being the highest costing state in the nation to send your kid to a state school, figuring out how they are going to pay their grocery bills and how they are going to make ends meet. This is what is on the minds of Victorians, and it has not been helped by an Andrews, now Allan, Labor government who say they care but really do not.

Just yesterday, on the front page of that august publication, the Age newspaper, we learned of the government’s intention to introduce their 54th new or increased tax – that is right – Labor’s home ownership tax, an expansion of the growth areas infrastructure contribution. We know that their GAIC, that half a billion bucks, has been sitting there propping up the bottom line of Labor’s budgets for many, many years now, not being used for its sole purpose, which is to deliver infrastructure in growth suburbs. Lo and behold, days before the budget, what do they do? They make an announcement of where the GAIC is going to be spent, and I was very interested to see that about 100 million bucks of that half a billion dollars will be spent in the seat of Werribee. An equivalent GAIC applied to development right across this state does not limit this growth area infrastructure contribution – Labor’s tax – to growth areas but expands it to every local government area.

The impact of that will be this: if you tax housing more, housing will get more expensive. This cost will not be absorbed by developers. This cost will not be absorbed by builders. This cost will be passed on to Victoria’s most vulnerable at a time when they can least afford it. Those people, those Victorians, all they want, all they yearn for, is a roof over their head. All they want is the security, the protection and the stability of a home, of four walls, of a roof and a floor, from which they can then contribute to their community, from which they can then provide for themselves and provide for their families. And what is Labor doing? What is this government doing? The same thing they have done for the last 10 ‍years: putting the interests of Victorians last. They do not care one little bit whether Victorians have got a roof over their heads, whether they have got the stability of a home. And do you know why I know that? It is because if they did care about that, their actions would speak louder than their words, and all we have got from Labor up until this point are empty words, empty promises. They do not really care. If they did, then it would be more than announcements, it would be more than photo ops – it would be actual delivery. They have had 10 years to do it, and Victorians are worse off after 10 years of Labor.

This government has pledged for the last decade to keep energy prices going down, down, down, and we know on this side of the house – because we, unlike the Minister for Small Business, which was very apparent during question time today, actually speak to small businesses in our community and around the state – that energy prices have in fact gone up, up, up. And of course they have, because this government, for purely ideological reasons, want to ban gas. I have said it before in this place and I will say it again: if the legacy of this government is to ban gas, is to ban the Bunnings barbecue, is to ban the wok, then my goodness, I do not want to have any association with them whatsoever. That is not just un-Victorian, that is un-Australian for them to be doing that. It is an absolute furphy to say that we are going to bring energy prices down, down, down whilst banning gas. It is an important part of our energy mix, and at least on this side we understand that.

We understand that, because as recently as two weeks ago I was in the electorate of Bentleigh. Do not go too far, member for Bentleigh, I have got a story for you. I was in the electorate of Bentleigh with my upper house colleague Georgie Crozier, an upper house member for that region. We were meeting with local businesses in the Bentleigh electorate who were telling us that because of the taxes and the tax increases in Labor’s last budget – their rent tax, their jobs tax and their ideological drive to push up energy prices – those small businesses in the Bentleigh electorate are finding it harder to make ends meet. They are having to cut staff. They are having to work longer hours. They are having to work harder than they have ever had to work before, in a cost-of-living crisis, with no support from the Allan Labor government. But this trip, member for Bentleigh, did not just end in Bentleigh. I was also in Hastings with my upper house colleague there and in Ballarat as well. And, guess what, every small business owner that we spoke to had a similar story of woe, had a similar story of not just doing absolutely everything that they could to keep their business afloat and alive, but they still, after Labor has taxed them to the absolute hilt, have an aspiration to grow their business, to give more Victorians, more people, more residents in Ballarat, in Bentleigh and in Hastings the opportunity to know and truly understand the dignity of work by giving them a wage and independence by putting cash in their pockets so they can provide for themselves and their families, to pay their education bills and to pay their mortgages. But no, they cannot do that at the moment because of the economic conditions, because of the circumstance of the policy settings of this Labor government that simply punish Victorians instead of supporting Victorians who want to put their hand in own pocket and give things a go. That is the Labor way after 10 years of Labor.

You look at health. Health is an absolute basket case after 10 years of Labor, and we know it because we see the pictures on the TV news and in the newspapers most days of the week. Ambulances are ramped right around this state. There was a story the other day on 3AW of a young boy waiting some 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive –

Roma Britnell interjected.

Brad ROWSWELL: Sorry, he waited 3 hours, member for South-West Coast, for an ambulance to arrive, and his parents then had to take him to hospital.

He now has some ongoing, permanent injuries, which his parents are trying their best to manage. The point is this: debt has consequences. Economic irresponsibility – economic recklessness – has consequences. And here is the great tragedy of that: the people who are on the receiving end of those consequences are not the executive here. They are not ministers here. They are not even the mid-tier parliamentary secretaries or the backbenchers. No, they are Victorians, and often they are vulnerable Victorians who are in need of a service provided by the state government whether it be in education, health, community services, police or community safety that in ordinary times under good, responsible economic management would be provided to help vulnerable Victorians in a timely way. But that is a near impossibility because of the way that this government has mismanaged things in the last decade.

We hear that education standards are going up, up, up. I would believe the Shadow Minister for Early Childhood and Education the member for Kew any day of the week over this government, and she will tell you that education centres in this state are in fact going down, down, down – not just standards but also outcomes. Housing in Victoria is an absolute mess. Of those 53 new or increased taxes, around 50 per cent are on housing. This is the inclination of this government: to make life more difficult for Victorians.

We set all of that aside. Let us talk about debt. Let us talk about interest payments. Debt is on track to be $177 billion at the end of the current forward estimates. That is more debt than Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania combined. As of today we are paying 15 million bucks each and every day just to service that debt. If our debt stays at $177 billion after next Tuesday’s budget, and it will not because the trendline is heading towards $200 billion, we will be paying more and more daily interest. If it is $177 billion, that means we are paying $24 million in interest today. That is a new primary school in my community; that is a new primary school in the member for Croydon’s electorate, in the member for Kew’s electorate, in the member for Gippsland South’s electorate, in the member for Caulfield’s electorate or in the member for Narracan’s electorate. This is the cost of Labor’s economic recklessness. Because of the way that they have mismanaged this economy we have less opportunity to deliver the services and the infrastructure that our communities rely upon, whether it is schools or whether it is teachers in schools. At the start of this school year we were 1500 teachers short. Imagine if the economy here in Victoria was better managed. Imagine having the ability to do more or to get more teachers in classrooms at the start of the school year, but no, no, no. Debt has consequences. Imagine having the money in the bank to be able to provide the nurses in hospitals and the ambulances for paramedics and to increase paramedics in this state. Imagine having the money in the bank to be able to get more police on the beat to keep our community safe. Imagine the missed opportunity at the hands of the Allan Labor government.

Next week we know that this Labor government will deliver a budget that will continue to punish Victorians, that will continue to make life harder for Victorians and that will continue to make Victorians responsible for the economic mismanagement and the economic recklessness of decisions made by this government. I think that is deeply, deeply, deeply unfair, but that is the state of play here in Victoria. My plea to Victorians is this. I ask them: after 10 years of Labor government do Victorians feel safer? Do Victorians feel like they are living a better, healthier life? Do they feel like life is getting easier? My final question to Victorians is: do they feel like they can trust the Allan Labor government to deliver what they need at this time?

The people that I am talking to right around the state, whether it be small businesses, whether it be families, whether it be singles, whether it be older Victorians, are telling me time and time again that this Victorian government cannot be trusted. Every member of the government, especially those members in marginal seats on Labor’s backbench, should understand that the message that Labor is not delivering for Victoria is resonating with the Victorian people – it is absolutely resonating with the Victorian people. Those members of the Labor caucus in marginal Labor-held seats really, really need to start doing everything they can within their own caucus to advocate for a better and fairer go for the people that they say they represent in this place.

After a decade of Labor, the last thing that Victorians, especially vulnerable Victorians, need is a Labor backbench full of passengers just enabling the Labor ministers to run the show – allowing a kitchen cabinet to run the show – and to make life harder for Victorians at a time when they can least afford it. In closing, after 10 years of Labor Victorians are worse off. My invitation to Victorian Labor in next Tuesday’s budget – (Time expired)

The SPEAKER: I ask members not to bang the table when they are making contributions.

Tim Richardson interjected.

The SPEAKER: Member for Mordialloc, I have been very patient with you so far. You are warned.

Nick STAIKOS (Bentleigh) (16:17): I have been giddy with excitement about this MPI all day; I have been looking forward to it all day. I always look forward to a matter of public importance put forward by my old mate the member for Sandringham, but something that happened earlier in the day in this chamber really unsettled me. It was during debate on the Commercial and Industrial Property Tax Reform Bill 2024. There was a member who emerged from hibernation. It was the member for Bulleen, and he made a speech of biblical proportions.

Members interjecting.

Nick STAIKOS: To be honest, member for Brighton, I felt the building shaking when the member for Bulleen was speaking. I tried to think back to the last time the member for Bulleen made a fiery speech like that, and it was in 2021.

Danny O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, as entertaining as the member for Bentleigh is trying to be, I am not sure what relevance this has to the MPI at hand.

The SPEAKER: I will give the member for Bentleigh the benefit of the doubt as he has only spoken for a minute or so, but I do remind him what the MPI is about.

Nick STAIKOS: The last time we heard a speech like that from the member for Bulleen was 2021, and what happened shortly after? He returned to the leadership. I said his speech was of biblical proportions, but the reality is that Lazarus was only brought back from the dead once – just once. If they give it to the member for Bulleen again, they will have to rewrite the entire Bible. This is what this is going to mean. But what really unsettled me about that speech and about the member for Bulleen possibly returning to the leadership is not that I care a dot about the current Leader of the Opposition, whose days are numbered anyway, but do you know what else happened when the member for Bulleen returned to the leadership in 2021? The member for Sandringham was put on the backbench. This is why I am concerned about the wellbeing of the member for Sandringham.

Danny O’Brien: On a further point of order, Speaker, I renew my point of order with respect to relevance.

The SPEAKER: Member for Bentleigh, I ask you to come back to the MPI.

Nick STAIKOS: I am talking about the proposer of the MPI, and –

The SPEAKER: Order! I ask you to come back to the actual content of the MPI.

Nick STAIKOS: The member for Sandringham knows very well that I am a fan, and I want him to remain the Shadow Treasurer for many, many years to come.

Anyway, here we are on the MPI. An MPI like this really is an invitation to talk about what this government inherited 10 years ago.

Members interjecting.

Nick STAIKOS: I am going to continue talking about you because what this government inherited 10 years ago was the highest unemployment rate in mainland Australia. It was 4.9 per cent when they came to government in 2010, and it rose to 6.8 per cent by the time we came to government in 2014. If we talk about a cost-of-living crisis – and we acknowledge there is a cost-of-living crisis – there is a housing crisis, not just here but across the rest of Australia and, if you have done a bit of travel, across the rest of the world. We also acknowledge that under our government there are more people enjoying the dignity of work than there were under that government. You can talk all you like about a cost-of-living crisis, but that was a government that presided over a massive unemployment rate and did nothing about it. Since we have been in government, in those 10 years, 800,000 new jobs have been created in Victoria, and that includes 560,000 new jobs in less than four years, since September 2020. Over the four years that they were in government 39,000 jobs were created – 39,000 jobs in four years of a Liberal government. Why were they such a disaster when it came to job creation? They were such a disaster because they did things like slash a billion dollars out of TAFE. Do we remember Baillieu’s TAFE cuts? It did not get better under Napthine when Baillieu was not Premier. Do we remember Baillieu’s TAFE cuts? We do. What did we do when we came to government? We made TAFE free, and that has meant people getting the skills they need for a secure job.

I have got an excellent TAFE campus in my electorate. I have got the Moorabbin campus of Holmesglen TAFE. It is really the jewel in the crown of Holmesglen, and because of the support of this government if you are a nursing student, for instance, at Holmesglen, if you are doing your diploma of nursing, you are saving up to $15,000 and you are doing it for free. If you are doing your bachelor of nursing – and Holmesglen is the only TAFE institute in Australia to offer the bachelor of nursing, thanks to this government – you are also getting your study for free. These are the things that you can do as a TAFE sector when you have got a government that backs you in. When they were in government they slashed the guts out of TAFE. That is not the approach we have taken. If you talk about a cost-of-living crisis, here are people who are able to return to TAFE, get the skills they need, save thousands of dollars each year and be on a path to a secure, sustainable job, to be able to provide for themselves and their family and to have the human dignity that comes from that because of the actions of this government.

There is a cost-of-living crisis. We acknowledge that. The member for Sandringham talked a lot about housing and talked a lot about vulnerable Victorians, but the test is going to come when this government continues to implement the housing statement. We want to build 800,000 additional homes over 10 years, and that is going to mean consolidating in electorates like mine – for instance, over at Moorabbin. Moorabbin is one of the 10 activity centres that we have identified as an activity centre that should grow and that should accommodate more housing, and it makes sense that Moorabbin should grow. It is close to the city. It is the gateway to the best parts of Melbourne, in my view. It is a place where a lot of people want to live, and we had our first community consultation session on what that growth should look like and how we should shape that growth. But I will tell you what: as sure as night follows day, I am going to be subjected to a campaign from those opposite about inappropriate development. The Liberals are just like the Greens – blocking new housing, blocking new housing development. The only thing I can surmise from the contribution of the member for Sandringham is ‘We care about vulnerable Victorians as long as they don’t live in our electorates.’ ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is the mantra of those opposite.

But, you know what, I was born and raised in my electorate of Bentleigh. I was born at Moorabbin Hospital in East Bentleigh. I have never left Bentleigh, and I am very fortunate that I have been able to purchase a home in my electorate. I want other young people who were born and raised in my electorate to also have the opportunity to live in my electorate. That really is what we should all aim for. I do not say that just because we have got this housing crisis right now, the government should just say, ‘Well, you can all live 1, 2 hours out of town.’ The reality is that we need to consolidate in the middle ring of Melbourne. We absolutely need to consolidate in the middle ring of Melbourne. The first Suburban Rail Loop station, in the first stage, is Cheltenham, and it is in the member for Sandringham’s electorate. I know he opposes the Suburban Rail Loop, and I am sure that he is also going to oppose the higher density housing that will be surrounding the Suburban Rail Loop station at Cheltenham, but I would really appeal to him to get on board with that. The reason for that is that there is no room for the usual politics when it comes to addressing this housing crisis.

When it comes to housing, the ugliest politics I have seen was way back in 2010. In 2010 in Bentleigh there were two major housing developments that were funded under the former Rudd government’s stimulus package. One was in Moorabbin and one was nearby in Bentleigh. The ferocious campaign against those two housing developments, fuelled by those opposite, was something I had not seen until then and I have not seen since – the things that the prospective tenants of those housing developments were called, the way they were denigrated and the petitions that were circulating. The names on those petitions, by the way, would be very familiar to this house – names like Elizabeth Miller, who at the time was the Liberal candidate for Bentleigh and who served one term as the member for Bentleigh, and Wendy Lovell, who was the Shadow Minister for Housing at the time and then became the Minister for Housing. They opposed these two affordable housing developments, one of which was directed toward women. It had survivors of family violence living in it.

Let me tell you what happened just a couple of years after the 2010 election. I was working for the late, great Simon Crean at the time. Simon officially opened the particular housing development that was directed at women. And guess who turned up on behalf of the then state Liberal government? Wendy Lovell and Elizabeth Miller, as though they never ran the campaign against building it. This is the politics those opposite play when it comes to housing, and we are going to see it again. So all this stuff we just heard from the member for Sandringham about vulnerable Victorians, about the housing crisis, are just words. They will not be matched by any actions. We will just have the same old gutter politics from them. That is what I am expecting, and that is absolutely what is going to happen. Nonetheless, the member for Sandringham is a decent person, and I would appeal to his better character to get on board and actually support this housing strategy.

The member for Sandringham also pointed out that he was in my electorate recently. I knew that he and Georgie Crozier were going to be in the electorate, because the local businesses he was going to meet with did give me a heads-up about it. The first time Georgie Crozier was doorknocking up and down Centre Road, Bentleigh, was when she was collecting signatures on a petition against our level crossing removals, and that did not go too well. In fact – it is May, isn’t it? So it is eight years since we removed the level crossings at Centre Road, McKinnon Road and North Road, and we have removed since then a total of 76 level crossings. There are plenty in the member for Pakenham’s electorate and in other electorates. We are very excited about that program. We are heading for that magic number of 110 level crossings removed. Under the previous government there were no level crossings removed. This was something that the former Premier Denis Napthine said could not be done when we promised 50 over eight years. Well, we have removed 76, and the people of Victoria are very happy about it.

Then think about the fact that the former government did not build a single new school. This is the fastest growing capital city in Australia – not one single new school built by those opposite. We are building 100, and one of those is actually in my electorate. It is a second campus of McKinnon Secondary College – again opposed by those opposite. They actually opposed a second campus for one of the most popular state schools in Victoria, and that was absolutely shameful. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard they were opposing it, let me tell you – very, very bad politics indeed.

While I was relishing the opportunity to speak on this MPI, I was rather disappointed by it. I expected a bit more oomph. I expected a bit more gravitas. 10 years in opposition – God knows they have had a lot of time to practice, haven’t they. Usually practice makes perfect – not in this case. This is an opposition that just gets worse. There are a few things awaiting the Leader of the Opposition later in the year as well, which will not bode well. But I think really at the end of the day what we have to focus on now is Australia and the entire world have real problems when it comes to cost of living and when it comes to the housing crisis, but we have got to respond in practical ways. We have done that by making kinder free, by making TAFE free, by bringing back the SEC and by doing a whole host of other things like Solar Homes. We actually have to do these practical things to make life easier for hardworking Victorian families – not this gutter politics we see from those opposite time and time again – because there are real challenges, and we need to put aside the usual gutter politics so that we can address these challenges for the future.

Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (16:31): I rise to support the matter of public importance moved by the member for Sandringham:

That this house condemns the financial mismanagement and economic recklessness of the Allan Labor government, which is causing a cost-of-living crisis for Victorian families and businesses.

Let there be no doubt that for all those people in Victoria who are suffering under a cost-of-living crisis ‍– and they are – it is real. We all find this coming into our electorate offices. People are struggling to pay their energy bills, they are struggling to pay their mortgages and they are struggling to pay the education fees for their children. Even if they are going to public schools, they still have to pay more than any other state in Australia to send their children to public schools. A lot of those costs are being driven by the policies or the tax increases of the Allan government. If you think about just a couple of examples, we have constantly heard the Minister for Energy and Resources come into this place and say she is going to drive energy prices down, down, down, down, down, down. And what have they done? They have gone up, up, up, up, up, up. If you actually go to the Essential Services Commission report for this year, energy prices are going up 25 per cent. So they have not gone down, down, down; they have gone up, up, up.

People are paying the price for Labor’s mismanagement of the economy, and in this case a policy decision particularly to ban gas. Why would anyone ban gas? All those that are talking about how we move to net zero by 2050, all the experts, say gas is part of the transition – ‘Don’t ban gas now.’ We have had the federal minister coming out today saying we actually need more gas, but we have got a government here that is actually banning gas and driving up energy prices for households and for businesses.

But I want to spend some time talking about housing. If you go through the 53 new or increased taxes of the Allan government over the last two terms of government, 27 of those taxes actually have a direct impact on the price of land, the price of building a house or the price of renting a flat or a house. I am going to go through those. It goes back to 2017–18: a new stamp duty on property transfers between spouses. How much of a grinch is the Treasurer to bring in a tax for when you want to transfer property to a spouse? In 2017–18: a new stamp duty on off-the-plan purchases. One of the incentives for developers to build high-rise multi-unit buildings was to have people stump up and buy off the plan so they could get the deposit and could actually take that to the bank and say, ‘We’ve sold these properties,’ and that would help finance the building of those properties. There is a new tax on doing that. A new so-called vacant home tax was brought in in 2017–18. There was a widening of the vacant residential land tax on uninhabitable properties. There was a new annual valuation to increase land tax: ‘Instead of valuing it every two years we’ll value it every year and we’ll increase the land tax take over those particular things.’

The cladding rectification tax – another tax on buildings here in Victoria – is particularly an issue for rental properties in apartment buildings. There is increased land tax for homes with contiguous blocks on separate titles. If you have got two blocks, you are going to get taxed twice on that land, whereas before you would have been taxed once. If I go through the list – and I will repeat it a number of times ‍– there have been continual increases in the fire services property levy, in 2015–16 and 2019–‍20, and there is another one further down the list as I go through. There have been some increases in foreign ownership stamp duty. Again, that has an impact on the global market for properties here in Victoria and the price thereof. There is an increase in the absentee landowner surcharge for those people, another increase in the absentee surcharge and a third increase in the absentee surcharge as you go through.

There is a new affordable housing tax, or the windfall gains tax as it was called. It has stopped property development. The day that was announced one of the real estate agents I know was doing a deal near Ballan that would have opened up a whole new farming block. Three bachelor farmers who wanted to retire were going to sell that. It came straight off the market because that tax, that direct tax on them, would have meant it was not economical to do that, so that has reduced the land supply coming into the market. It would have been a great opportunity. And Ballan is just an example; every regional city has somewhere where people will no longer be doing that in the future.

There is increased land tax on taxable landholdings above $1.8 million, increased stamp duty on property transactions, the increased fire services property levy again – up, up, up, up, up. There is a narrowing of the land tax exemption for charitable institutions by harshly insisting that charitable institutions exclusively use their land for charitable purposes, otherwise triggering a full land tax charge on the entire landholding. If you are a not-for-profit, if you are a church, and you rent out a meeting room to the local CWA, in the country case, or the local kindergarten committee or whatever to hold a meeting, you lose your charitable status and you pay land tax. That would be one of the most absurd taxes I have ever heard of, because those charitable institutions provide a service by making available meeting rooms at a pretty low charge compared to commercial places. Why would you have them lose their charitable status and have to pay land tax based on those issues?

There is increased land tax on landholdings above $300,000 and then a land tax on landholdings between $50,000 and $300,000; they are both called the rent tax. Again, I think everyone on our side of politics would have people coming into their office saying, ‘Why have I got land tax on this building? I have never paid land tax on this building from the start,’ or, ‘I paid a very small amount of land tax and all of a sudden it has gone from $300 to $2000 or $3000.’ They are rental properties. A lot of people buy residential houses to be part of their retirement plan. That is part of their income for their retirement, that they own this property. They do not necessarily trust the large institutions with superannuation. They want to be able to touch it and see it. They are now having to put their rents up to pay their land tax.

That is driving a problem with the cost of rental properties and also the availability of rental properties, because what some of those owners are telling me is they are selling their Victorian property and buying one in Queensland where they do not have to pay land tax – or New South Wales, but particularly in Queensland. We saw in the paper today that the median house price in Brisbane is outstripping the median house price in Melbourne because it is a better place to invest. The land taxes ‍– all these taxes I have talked about and the fact that 27 of the 53 new and increased taxes in this state are on property – mean that people are choosing to invest somewhere else. That is reducing the supply of rentals, the supply of new houses and the recycling of people buying a new house and putting their current house on the market, which frees it up for someone else to buy.

There is the holiday and tourism tax. There is expanded land tax on vacant residential land, or the holiday house tax as it is called, and there is an expanded land tax on unimproved residential land. If you go through all those, 27 of 53 of the new and increased taxes by the Allan government over the last two terms just fuel the housing crisis, fuel the cost-of-living crisis that people have here in Victoria.

In the couple of minutes left to me to speak about this, the other issue I want to touch on, which affects a lot of country towns, is the new health tax. Why would you tax doctors? The government says nothing has changed, but for a doctor they have got this huge tax bill that they have to pay. They will no longer be able to afford to offer bulk-billing opportunities in all our electorates, and that will drive up the cost of living because people will have to pay more to go and see a doctor. They will be less likely to see a doctor because they cannot afford it. Their health will suffer, and when they get really sick that puts a huge cost on the state government with people going to the emergency department. So why would you have a tax that takes people away from delivering bulk-billed health services in this particular state?

The one I was just going to finish off on was the education tax. Why would you start taxing private schools for delivering education? We know that nearly a third of children in Victoria are educated in non-government schools. The Victorian government – it does not matter who is in government – cannot afford to build enough new schools to educate all of those children if the private system does not do it, so why would you put a tax on private schools for delivering great educational outcomes? If you go to a government school here in Victoria it actually costs you $1000 a year more per student than it does anywhere else in Australia. The cost-of-living crisis that Victorians are feeling is being driven by policy decisions and tax decisions of the Allan government. Victorians need to know that. It is not someone’s else’s fault, it is the Allan government’s fault.

Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (16:41): I am just so glad that the Leader of the Nationals finished off on education, so let me pick up there. We have had some excellent advice from those opposite. The member for Sandringham had advice for me as a member of a marginal Labor seat: he believes that we need to deliver for vulnerable Victorians and provide the services that they want. Speaking of education, just two weeks ago I learned of a different school. I did not know that the Plenty Primary School was cut by Kennett and closed. I did not know that. So that is the Plenty Primary School as well as the Kalkallo Primary School – neither of those exist anymore. Luckily Doreen Primary School managed to put up a strong enough fight at that time and remains open, and not only does it remain open but it is currently being upgraded under this government, because we are the government that cares about education.

I am not surprised that those opposite were taken in by that fake news of how much it costs to send children to state schools in Victoria, because they do not know about state schools – they would not know. Their spokesperson for education is too busy worrying about high-fee private schools to know what the actual experience is for parents of state school students, such as me. I know that I certainly did not pay $10,000 last year or whatever ridiculous figure was quoted. They do not about government education. They do not know about the support that is provided. As well as providing the support for education and the fantastic learning that my child has received, we also provide cost-of-living support for parents through the schools. My daughter’s school at the moment has the Smile Squad van parked there, and they are working their way through treating all of the children’s teeth. If you think collectively of the money that is being saved by the parents at that school – we know how expensive dentists can be, so they are saving quite a lot of money there. But it is not just the pearly whites, it is the eyes as well. My daughter has been in glasses since she was 15 months old. We are always so glad that we caught that early so that it has minimised the impact on her learning and socialisation. That is why I am so glad that our government has a Glasses for Kids program in schools to check kids’ eyesight, to make sure that they can see the smartboards and that if they need glasses they are supported into glasses – another cost that is not borne by the parents.

I will just finish off there. My daughter currently is at Auskick. It is her first ever Auskick session right now, and I hope she is having a fantastic time. Certainly when I paid the registration fee for that, I thought, ‘That’s not affordable for everybody.’ But our government is there for those parents as well, with our support for sports vouchers for parents who need them, because all kids should have the opportunity to participate in sport, especially the vulnerable Victorians that we heard about from the member for Sandringham.

Those opposite are discovering that there are vulnerable Victorians, and those opposite spent a bit of time just now talking about health as well and the difficulty that there can be to see a doctor or a bulk-billing doctor. They spoke about nurses. They spoke about emergency departments. Let me just run through a few quick facts for the benefit of those opposite. It was not that long ago that I stood with the fantastic Minister for Health, our Premier and my colleagues in the north to announce the doubling of the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department. The virtual emergency department is essentially one of the biggest emergency departments in Victoria, and that is a nation-leading work by our government. And if you need to see a doctor urgently for free, we have the priority primary care centres. I have been there many times with my children, and they are fantastic.

The member for Sandringham said we have got less opportunities to deliver services that Victorians want. He said, ‘Why can’t you pay for nurses?’ Let me tell you about something. It is called nursing scholarships. We are supporting people to become nurses through providing scholarships, and I have met young people that have taken up those scholarships. I am super proud of them, and I cannot wait to see them working in our hospitals. I hope that some of them will be in our new community hospital in Mernda, which is another service that we are delivering, and that will provide free additional health services close to home for our community.

The question I want to pose to those speakers opposite is: if they care so much about Victorians, then why are they fearmongering? Why do they go on and on with these false premises, fearmongering amongst members of the Victorian community? We have heard a bit about health services. We have heard a bit about education. I would like to touch on now what they are saying about the ‘bas gan’ or gas ban that they have invented, which does not actually exist – the member for ‘bas gan’ here? No. We need to state clearly the facts. Do they want to keep Victorians on expensive gas? Do they want people in social housing to be too scared in winter to put the heater on, because they are scared of the bill? That is what making sure that people stay on gas does. It means that there are cold people in winter at home. This is a cost-of-living support measure for Victorians. We know that electric heating and cooling are cheaper than gas.

When we talk about vulnerable Victorians, which they have discovered today, let us talk about people in social housing and this government’s work to make sure that people in social housing do not have to stay on the expensive gas that those opposite want them to stay on for ideological reasons. That is why we have our energy efficiency in social housing program, providing energy efficiency upgrades to public, community and Aboriginal housing. We do not want people to be cold in winter. We do not want people to be scared of their gas bill. You are creating fear where fear does not need to be created. People are scared of their gas bills, so I do not know why you would want to make them scared of electricity. People running their heater in winter, people being cool in summer – that is what it is about, without meaning that they have to go without other essentials in life. I think the fearmongering just truly needs to stop – the fearmongering and the falsehoods talking about energy prices. The reality is that we know with the default offer Victoria has the lowest wholesale prices for residential and for business, and that is because of our move towards renewables and away from bas – sorry, gas. I do not think that you should continue to do that.

Those opposite like to tell us that they are the experts on regional Victoria. We have spoken a bit today about how it was actually this government that reduced the cost of stamp duty in regional Victoria on our way to now abolishing it. It was this government that reduced payroll tax for regional Victoria as well. They love it when we speak about regional Victoria, so I am going to keep doing that. We know that in fact it is under this government that since March another 6700 people in regional Victoria have found jobs. It is our government that has created an all-time high in the number of people employed in regional Victorian communities – now at 828,500, with unemployment very low. If I knew which region you were representing, I could probably quote it to you, but you could definitely check the ABS stats on that. We know that under the last coalition government full-time employment in the regions actually went backwards. It went backwards by almost 14,000 jobs.

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (16:52): This is a fantastic matter of public importance brought forward today by the member for Sandringham. This house absolutely condemns the financial mismanagement and economic recklessness of this Allan government, which is causing a cost-of-living crisis for businesses and families, in particular in an electorate like Polwarth, where so many of the increased taxes and charges and the lack of ongoing government funds to look after basic infrastructure are really, really hitting the hip pocket not only of families going to the supermarket every week or trying to send their kids to school but of small businesses, which are the backbone of rural and regional Victoria.

I would like to talk about two things mostly today, and they are the effect on housing and the effect on our roads. Take housing, for example: the rental tax, which the government calls land tax, is an absolute 100 per cent hit on regional Victorians, this year particularly. Up until this year most affordable homes for low-income, fixed-income country Victorians who are renting did not suffer at the hands of a rent tax. This year they do. This government has slashed the threshold that once existed that actually sought to some extent to protect people in rental properties, but that does not happen anymore. For the first time ever literally thousands of low-income homes right throughout regional Victoria have a rental tax put on the cost of their rentals each week, and that varies depending on where you live. In an electorate like Polwarth, if you are living in some of our smaller inland towns that is about $20 to $25 per week on your rental. That is a big increase for the lowest paid people in the state, and they are not getting anything for that $25 tax. We know that that $25 tax is coming straight back down here to Melbourne to pay for that big vanity project that this government is insisting on going ahead with.

If you are one of the people that live in one of our coastal communities, you might be working in one of our famous restaurants, you might be providing important healthcare services or you might be looking after kids in a school, and you might be living in a house that is pretty basic but unfortunately is worth a lot of money because it is on one of the best coastlines in the world. Well, if you are living down there, you are up for nearly $100 a week that you are paying in your rental to this government. On every level, while we have a real labour shortage in rural and regional Victoria and our high-tourist towns, we have now got this government making sure that accommodation in those towns is even more difficult. Talking to real estate agents across my country towns, over the last six months since this government flagged its massive increases to rental tax what we have found is that houses are going to Airbnb quicker than ever before. Of course that is bad for my community. It is bad for the workers; it is bad for the towns. But, guess what, this government wins anyway. Why do they win? They win because they are putting a tax on Airbnbs as well, so they are going to get the people who live in those houses or want to stay in those houses or contribute to those towns anyway. You can go for a holiday in Victoria and help pay for the tunnel, or you can go for a holiday in Queensland or overseas or somewhere else with Airbnb and you will not have to be fixing up the messes that this Victorian government has caused.

What it also means in those towns with those long-term rental accommodations, country towns like Torquay, Lorne, Apollo Bay and other places, is that they are losing places to put workers that they desperately need. Their kinders are short. The school in Apollo Bay cannot get anywhere to put their staff. It is a long drive unless you live in the town. These are real issues being exacerbated. People are not, ultimately, a charity for this government. They have to pay their bills. They have to get on with their lives, and they cannot afford to try to keep their much-needed jobs in rural areas only to find that they are paying big fat taxes to this government to help pay for its messes here in Melbourne.

The government will not be at all familiar with the disastrous effect on the country road network. I hope colleagues across the aisle are waking up here, because they need to listen to this. The milk – that basic product that comes into supermarkets and that every family across Australia needs – comes on our roads. For those people transporting the milk from wonderful little towns like Cobden in my electorate – every night, big trucks, fresh milk delivered to Melbourne – their single biggest cost, even bigger than their fuel bill, is the wear and tear on their transport infrastructure because this government cannot afford to maintain their roads any longer.

It is not me grandstanding about the parlous state of the roads. Every country Victorian knows how bad our roads are. We have now got the poor buggers, the poor people, building the roads also complaining. We read in the Weekly Times today of a 95 per cent cut to the resurfacing of roads in Victoria at the moment. What does that look like? One of the contractors that I speak to a bit in my patch uses 30,000 cubic metres of aggregate on resealing in a normal year. That is what he supplies to road contractors in Victoria. This year it is 1000 cubic metres. That is an even bigger cut than 95 per cent. It is a massive slaughtering of the welfare and wellbeing and the safety of country Victorians on the roads.

What this government does not realise is that letting that basic infrastructure of roads wear down – not replacing and resealing our roads every 10 to 12 years like they are supposed to but instead letting it blow out to 20-plus years – just adds to the cost of food and produce in our supermarkets. I know my colleagues up in the north, out in Gippsland and further along in South-West Coast and all country members know how much it adds to the cost of getting food and produce to market here in Melbourne when you cannot do it reliably and safely. It wears out tyres. It wears out suspensions. It causes deaths. We know it costs lives. These are the costs that people and families are bearing in regional Victoria because this government is simply broke and cannot afford to do the things it needs to do.

It does not matter how this government tries to disguise it, the massive increase in WorkCover premiums is one of the things that I think every MP, certainly on our side of the house, is getting. I imagine if there is ‘WorkCover’ in the subject line on a Labor Party MP’s email, they probably just delete because they do not want to know about it, but everyone else is copping it big time. This is a massive increase in the cost of providing goods and services across everything. It is costing plumbers more to turn up to fix basic plumbing needs at your house. It is costing the electrician more. It is costing all service people more to turn up to your home to provide basic repairs and maintenance to your home. It goes straight to the bottom line of the cost of living for Victorians, and that is because this government is broke. It is not managing its systems properly. It is galling for Victorians to see, and it will be interesting to see what is delivered up next week in the budget.

What this government has consistently done is increase those hidden taxes and charges only to then take a cash dividend out of them to help prop up the budget. These taxes and charges are no longer transparent, they are no longer there to help keep the costs of business down, but they are actually actively increasing the cost of business here in Victoria on basic services that all Victorian households need and rely on.

We have also seen the new health tax – with only a minute and a half to go. The average Victorian family does not need to be reminded about how expensive it is to go, at the best of times, to see a GP or an ophthalmologist or to go and see the dentist or a physiotherapist. It does not matter what the health service is. If you are going to those services, particularly if you are in regional Victoria, you are not likely to be getting very close access to bulk-billing or other discounted rates; you will be paying full tote odds. This government is ensuring that they have increased the tax component for those practitioners – all health practitioners right across the scale of services that families access on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. This is a huge increase in cost, and many health providers have made it clear that they will not be able to sustain the increase in the tax and the only other option they have is to pass that through in its entirety to the families, to the children, to the elderly people, to those on pensions and on fixed incomes that are currently already quite often having to go without the service because they simply cannot afford it. This state is in a mess with its finances, the taxes are out of control and this government’s ability to prioritise in a sensible, methodical, logical manner the money it collects and the way it spends it is lost.

Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (17:02): I am very pleased to rise this afternoon to make a contribution on the matter of public importance (MPI). Notwithstanding the doom and gloom that is portended by those opposite, the Victorian economy is actually in a very strong state. I want to just draw the house’s attention to some of the information that came out of the 2023–24 mid-year financial report that was released about a month ago. That identified that Victoria’s gross state product (GSP) increased by 2.6 ‍per cent in 2022–23 and the economy is now 8.6 per cent larger in real terms than it was before the pandemic. The labour market is strong, with the unemployment rate at or below 4 per cent so far in 2023–24. As we heard, we inherited a much larger unemployment rate when the government came into power in 2014, and we have seen that unemployment rate decrease over that period of time, even through the one-in-100-year pandemic that we all experienced. State final demand rose 2.1 per cent over the year to September 2023, and this was driven by strong growth in business investment, public consumption and public investment.

I do want to just reflect a little bit on the Leader of the Nationals, who seemed to attribute all of the world’s problems, including the inflation pressures that we are under, to the state government. I do recall that there are sections of the media that like to blame the former Premier for everything that has happened in the world, but even the former Premier would not claim credit for mortgage rate increases that might happen in the United States or even in Western Australia. For people in Western Australia, it is a different economy over there, but they still have cost-of-living pressures and they still have the same mortgage rates that people in Victoria do. So there are many international factors that are in play which are impacting upon the cost of living, and we as a government have repeatedly, over many budgets, been looking to address those cost-of-living measures. Many of them were outlined by the member for Yan Yean in her contribution. It is for that reason that we need to have a strong and growing economy but also make sure that we do have the services and infrastructure that all of our community – everyone who lives in the state of Victoria – needs.

I do want to reflect a little bit on the debt. There were quite a lot of contributions that have made reference to that. We do need to think about this and put this in some context. As a state, we borrowed money during the pandemic, and that was the cost of saving lives. I recall the member for Malvern –

James Newbury interjected.

Paul HAMER: The budget was in surplus before, member for Brighton. The member for Malvern, who was the Leader of the Opposition at the time, was insisting that balancing the budget at the time was more important than borrowing money to save lives and keep business operating. I am sure every single one of the small businesses that received support through the state government was very, very thankful that that support was available. I have never heard one small business operator in my electorate come forward and say, ‘You know what? We didn’t need to have that money during that period of time.’ We saw the federal government through that time had the JobKeeper program. There had been a lot of pressure from the Labor opposition at the time and from the unions to introduce a JobKeeper program, and credit to the federal government at the time. They borrowed heavily. They were already in far more debt than the Victorian state position, but they borrowed heavily so that they could make sure that Australians were able to keep their jobs and keep food on the table and have housing over their head through that one-in-100-year pandemic. If we had taken the approach that those opposite would have taken, we would have had none of those supports. Everybody would have been left on their own fending for themselves, because that is the Liberal way.

What is the debt also paying for? The debt is paying for our future investment – the future infrastructure that we need to service our growing population. I would like to look at this in a historical context of where our debt to GSP sits at the moment and compare that to where it was in the past. I think if I am correct our debt-to-GSP ratio at the moment sits just over 20 per cent. Now, if you look at that historically, back in the 1960s it was over 50 per cent and then 46 per cent in 1970. I know that the coalition are very fond of reflecting on the premierships of Bolte and Hamer, and those governments did see the benefit of borrowing money to put in place the infrastructure programs that future Victorians would rely on. One of the big projects that Henry Bolte embarked on and was continued by his successor was indeed the city loop project. I would like to just read into the record some –

James Newbury: Did you go back to the Argus, did you?

Paul HAMER: The member for Brighton would well be aware that the Argus was no longer in existence at that time, but the Age certainly was. In 1968 the Age said:

The Victorian Government’s plan for an underground railway has been attacked in a … report which warns that to go ahead at present would be a serious mistake.

This sounds like I am reading from a current Liberal Party press release, in fact:

It accuses the Government of recommending the expenditure … without competent planning or research.

…

Many of the arguments put forward to support the construction of the … loop line are misleading or irrelevant ‍… The evidence is strong that to proceed with the underground at present would be a serious mistake.

It proposed instead that it should just change shopping hours. That was its solution for the time. Now, think of all of the Victorians who have benefited in the last – when did the city loop open, the early 1980s – more than 40 years since the city loop opened and all of the benefits that have come, not just with the travelling public having better access into the city but also the economic development opportunities that have been created by the city loop, particularly in the eastern part of the CBD and the northern part of the CBD. This was a project that released all of that. The government of the time, to their credit, needed to borrow money to invest in the projects of the future, and projects of the future they are. But if you had that scenario today, presenting a Liberal government with an opportunity to have an infrastructure project that would last the course of time and deliver lasting benefits for generations of Victorians, they would say no. They would find an excuse to not spend the money, not borrow the money, because they would prefer to stop spending and to reduce the revenue. They would oppose the project in all its forms.

This is what this MPI really is about. It is really about a difference of the values of this Labor government and what we represent and what we are planning and setting up for the future versus a Liberal opposition whose focus is on cutting services, stopping spending and reducing revenue and opposing housing.

James NEWBURY (Brighton) (17:12): I rise in support of the member for Sandringham’s matter of public importance:

That this house condemns the financial mismanagement and economic recklessness of the Allan Labor government, which is causing a cost-of-living crisis for Victorian families and businesses.

There is no greater recklessness and financial mismanagement than with Labor’s approach to the great big housing con that they announced in September last year. The former Premier stood up, as his swan song, to announce a commitment to 80,000 new homes each and every year. I understand the department advised him to commit to 60,000 new homes, but it was not good enough for a retiring Premier. He wanted to up it to 80,000 because it was his big final commitment when leaving the Parliament after 10 years, so he said, ‘Let’s say 80.’ Well, hasn’t that been an incredible con on the dreams of first home owners in this state. That is what it is, and that is why the con is so craven.

Kathleen Matthews-Ward: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I seek your advice. Is there a point of order against assaulting us with all that noise?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.

James NEWBURY: I understand how embarrassed the Labor government are about being called out on the housing con that they are perpetuating on first home owners and Victorians. Eighty thousand homes were promised each and every year in September last year. And last year how many were delivered? 53,711 – almost 30,000 short. The end of July figures for this year have us at a historic low of 51,000. The Housing Industry Association projects that next year the government, who promised 80,000 homes next year, will deliver 52,000 homes – again, nearly 30,000 under – and the year after, in 2025, 55,000. At no time over the next 10 years will the government ever reach the promise they have given to Victorians to build 80,000 new homes each and every year over the next 10 years. It is an outrageous con perpetuated on people who dream of owning their first home.

What do the experts, people in the industry, say is happening in Victoria as a result of the government’s housing statement and the taxes, the charges and the assault that has occurred? Bricks & Mortar Real Estate say:

Why would you ever want to buy in Victoria? It is the most expensive state to hold a property.

Kay & Burton say:

It’s creating a lot of angst. Locals could not believe they were going to be slugged with even higher taxes …

This is what people are saying. Interstate agents are saying things like:

… investors are “arriving in droves” because of the high taxes and living costs in Melbourne.

That was Sotheby’s. Propertybuyer says:

There is definitely an exodus heading north because of the lower stamp duty and higher … tax threshold.

Clover Financial Solutions said:

Brisbane is hot.

That is what people are saying. They are saying there is a problem with taxes in Victoria and the money is heading interstate. We know that is true. We know that is absolutely true, and we know that not only is the money fleeing, the investor money is fleeing in that property sales are occurring.

The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute’s recent survey found that of 1700 investors, a quarter of the investors had reportedly sold at least one rental property in the last year. Perhaps one of the most profound interventions in recent weeks came from Mike Zorbas, the chief executive of the Property Council of Australia, who recently said:

Victoria is Australia’s ball and chain on international investment.

The Victorian Government’s positive words on investment are at odds with the state’s actions on tax settings and planning.

That is a polite way of saying the government are a bunch of liars and they tax too much.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member knows that word is unparliamentary.

James NEWBURY: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Mike Zorbas said:

They amount to system wide risk for investment in the state.

…

This is about Victorian policy settings saying the exact opposite of the claims made by Victorian Government’s leaders.

Read: the Victorian government. We know that is true. What is worse is that only a few weeks ago we saw a council mayor get up and look, frankly, the fool by calling for a 3.3 per cent charge on all future property investment. Quite resoundingly, industry – everybody – heard what he said and said, ‘There’s always some fool who comes out at the end of the show and says why don’t we jack a price onto everything else Labor’s charged.’ Following that, the Victorian government this week confirmed they want to scrap their growth areas infrastructure contribution charge and expand a charge on all home owners in Victoria – so from seven councils to 79 councils. So when this poor mayor came out looking quite the fool, little did he know he was actually leading the charge on what the state government’s next tax would be. Next week I am sure the 54th new tax will be a charge on every single home owner ‍– a great big new tax.

We know it does not matter what the government says, because if you talk to anybody, you know that the property sector is on its knees. When you look at the numbers that are being released, we know the property sector is not building anymore. We know that investment is not coming into this state. And you ask why. Look at the urban development institute’s recent data, which shows that the combined taxes and charges on a greenfield site equate to 54 per cent of the lot price. That is just highway robbery. On an apartment it is 28 per cent. Seriously, why would you do business in this state? The government is just a bunch of rip-off merchants. When it comes to apartment prices, the figures from the experts show 28 per cent on the final apartment price goes to taxes and charges, and the average on greenfield is 44 per cent, so almost 30 per cent on an apartment and 44 per cent on greenfield. I also have some modelling from a significant developer who looked at their works and the taxes and charges on what they build: on apartments it is 22 per cent and for foreign purchasers 32 per cent on apartments.

So we know when you are buying something in Victoria what you are doing is you are paying partly for a property but you are spending a heck of a lot of your money on the government tax take – that is what you are doing. The government has announced a great big housing con, promising to deliver homes, when all it is is a cover for new taxes for the government to rip off Victorians and do it under the craven promise of delivering homes. That is what this housing statement is – it is a fake promise. We know what these charges are; these charges are in black and white. The housing statement is a cover for new taxes, and in the budget next week there will be more. We know that 27 of the 53 new taxes are property related, and next week we will see another great big new home owner tax perpetrated on the people of Victoria who can least afford it, especially those who are dreaming of owning their first home.

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (17:22): I just thought I might bring the volume and the tone down a bit. I understand the member for Brighton was quite passionate, but in contrast there is a lot to be discussed here which is very important indeed. I would like to actually address the matter of housing, which the members for both Brighton and Polwarth raised as issues. Cost of living is an issue which is affecting many people, and that is absolutely understood. But I would like to point out – and looking at two different sources of very current data – a group called SQM Research just released the houses and units rental prices across the nation. I would just like to put on the record that as of 28 ‍April ‍– being three days ago, if I can still count – Melbourne’s house prices on average were $744.57 per week in rental and units were $558.39 per week in rental. Sydney was $1060 for houses, $712 for units. Perth was $789 per week for houses and $600.88 for units. Brisbane was slightly lower on houses but was higher on units at $577.22.

So at this point in time, whilst people are doing it tough in Melbourne, our house rental prices and unit prices are actually some of the lowest in the country, and as the second-largest and soon-to-be the largest capital city – or did we become the largest capital city?

A member interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: We are the largest capital city in the country as of only a couple of weeks ago – thank you – and yet we are much cheaper at the moment for rental. That is not to take away from the fact that it is difficult for people, but let us have some perspective here instead of just hyperbole. In Domain’s research, which was released for the March 2024 quarter, their averages showed $700 for Sydney per week, Melbourne was $550, Brisbane $590, Perth $550 and Canberra $570. Combined capitals were $620. I will just reiterate again that Melbourne was at $550. There are some facts and some perspective just to start my contribution.

There have been some great contributions made here today. The member for Yan Yean, the member for Bentleigh and the member for Box Hill, I was listening to what they had to say, and they reminded us of a few things which I would also like to point to. Cost-of-living crises and cost-of-living pressures sometimes tempt conservative governments to go down austerity paths. We know that in times gone past that is precisely what has happened in this state, and it is precisely what has happened in the United Kingdom. I do not think anyone here is crowing about the state of their economy at the moment, because austerity tends to basically benefit those who are already quite well-to-do and hit those struggling the most. It hits them absolutely the hardest.

I have heard a lot in here from those on the other side of the chamber about how terrible things are and blaming the Victorian state government for a cost-of-living crisis, which is quite extraordinary when you consider that it is a cost-of-living crisis affecting the nation and most parts of the world at the moment too. I did not know we were that powerful – and all kidding aside, I know that we are not. At the end of the day a cost-of-living crisis is something that happens because of macro-economic forces that go well beyond just our area and this part of the country. So the actual premise of the matter of public importance is disingenuous to start with, and in a way I am actually quite offended by it, because it is contemptuous of the Victorian people to peddle falsehoods like this. They are smarter than that, and I think people do understand that this goes beyond our state and therefore our state government cannot be blamed for the situation as it stands. I will say that what we have done is our absolute utmost to relieve these cost-of-living pressures for Victorians. There are a swathe of measures and initiatives we have undertaken, which often get pooh-poohed by those on the opposite benches. Every time we initiate something to benefit Victorians it is castigated, it is talked down and it is turned into something negative. So I would like to posit a question: what on earth is the opposition’s actual solution to any of this? What I hear is, ‘Let’s just oppose all that Labor has achieved,’ and if that is the default setting for their policy, it is a very sad day indeed.

The member for Bentleigh talked about free TAFE, and TAFE is quite emblematic in a lot of ways. It is so crucially important, and being able to go out and upskill and cross-skill without cost is a huge way to assist people with cost of living. It improves their chances and capacity to earn more money, to be able to find other jobs and to be able to open up the doors of opportunity for them. So our free TAFE program has real and tangible benefits. Because I grew up in Lilydale I recall when, during the last coalition era of government in this state, the Lilydale TAFE was closed. Padlocks on the gates – the symbolism was there for us all to see. And I remember the wonderful former member for Monbulk being at the absolute spearhead of making sure that that TAFE was reopened, and it was and it is thriving. It is a fantastic TAFE at Lilydale. It is outside of my electorate, but it services the people of my electorate. I cannot tell you how important having that TAFE open and now providing free TAFE has been for the people of Monbulk and wider in the outer east. That is where we assist there.

It was mentioned by the member for Sandringham that we have some shortages in teaching. I would just like to remind those opposite of what we are doing in this space, because we have not sat idly by. We have absolutely not sat on our hands and gone, ‘Oh well, too bad, so sad.’ We have been proactive, because that is what we do. When there is a problem, we tend to go out and find a solution, and then we put it into action. We have introduced free teacher training for those wanting to become secondary teachers – free. I would have loved that when I did my teacher training, because it cost me more than my degree by the time I had gone back to do it. It was actually quite a struggle to get through and do my diploma of education, but I got there. But we are offering free teacher training for those who want to teach in secondary schools and in state schools. It is a $229.8 million package to grow our school workforce, and it is up to $93.2 million of new scholarships to support teaching degree students with the cost of studying and living. That is absolutely to be applauded. And the shortage of teaching is not limited to Victoria and it is not limited to this country. Once again it is actually a global phenomenon. We have not sat there and gone, ‘What a shame.’ We have actually put some work into this, and we are delivering.

For those who have interest in the regions and rural areas, we have actually put a further $27 million to continue and expand the targeted financial incentives program. That gives incentives of up to $50,000 to teachers to take up rural, remote and otherwise hard-to-staff positions in government schools. Again, we target our approach where it is needed the most.

I know the member for Yan Yean was mentioning Glasses for Kids in schools. That has been a $2.5 million program. There has been so much else we have done to assist with the cost of living for parents of children at school, because when you have kids and they are not able to go out and earn, it is some of the most expensive time in your life – I know that for a fact. Since July 2015 we have provided – and here is a figure to make you all pause – $748.9 million to assist families with the cost of living through education. $78 million in breakfast clubs – I have talked about it before. I will never stop talking about breakfast clubs. Children cannot learn when they are hungry. When they come to school and they get fed, their brains switch on. They are not distracted by hunger pangs or low blood sugar or feeling faint. Filling the belly of a child with nourishing food is half the battle to get them to learn, so $78 million we have spent on breakfast clubs.

I do recall that the last time the coalition was the government of Victoria it cut the free fruit program. I mean, that is the worst penny pinching that I can actually think of. Other things we have done too are $48 million towards affordable school uniforms; $9 million towards period products, because period poverty is a real problem; and $367 million towards the Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund. The clock is running down. I have not got through my list once again, but I just want to reiterate that we are assisting people with the cost of living.

Tim McCURDY (Ovens Valley) (17:32): I am delighted to rise and make a contribution on this matter of public importance by the member for Sandringham:

That this house condemns the financial mismanagement and economic recklessness of the Allan Labor government, which is causing a cost-of-living crisis for Victorian families and businesses.

I note that many on the other side admit that we have a cost-of-living crisis. The first thing when you have got a problem is admitting that you have a problem. It is just that none of them will take any responsibility for it, and that is our concern. The member for Monbulk asked what we would do in the same circumstances. I do not know why she asked, because I do not think Labor ever listen. But I will tell you now: the first thing you could do is stop overspending on projects. Get rid of some of these massive projects, like a tunnel from nowhere to nowhere that is going to cost billions and billions of dollars and send us further and further into debt – that would be a great start. Then you would not have to tax people so highly, and that would help with the cost-of-living crisis.

Never has there been a more important time to debate something like this than now. We have got a budget coming up next week that even those on the other side are scared about. They are all genuinely concerned about what is going to happen in this budget. It really is a budget that is going to cut to the core. We are all feeling it; all Victorians are paying the price because of Labor’s incompetence, and it really is at critical levels right now. And we know many of the perpetrators have moved on. They have passed the baton. The former Premier created all this mess, and now he has passed the baton on. Some of the senior cabinet ministers have vanished into thin air. Even the Treasurer has got one foot out the door, and he is the only one that gets really pale when the Speaker yells, ‘Lock the doors.’ He starts to go into frightened mode because he thinks he might get locked in here forever. He is the one that says, ‘I don’t want to stay here any longer than I absolutely have to,’ so he is going to deliver the budget and then he will be gone.

Then there is the backbench. They sit on their hands. They are too scared to speak up.

Members interjecting.

Tim McCURDY: They are pretty loud in here. What are they like in the caucus? They are frightened to speak up and they are too scared to speak up, and the ministers here at the front – they draw the big bucks – are just throwing them under a bus. Anyway, you are prepared to take that opportunity.

Belinda Wilson interjected.

Tim McCURDY: I write my own speeches, thanks. Financial mismanagement is in their DNA. In fact it is not even embarrassing for these guys to have financial mismanagement; it is a badge of honour. They see it as a badge of honour. Every project there is a cost overrun, every big build is billions over, but this government refuses to learn from its mistakes. And the first thing – 101 – is you should always learn from your mistakes, but they do not.

Danny O’Brien interjected.

Tim McCURDY: There are a lot of mistakes, member for South Gippsland. The current Premier has not deviated from what the previous Premier was doing – spend big, tax big – and Victorians are starting to push back. 53 new or increased taxes – we have heard about those. We are the highest taxing state in Australia. Energy prices are through the roof. Hospital wait times have doubled in my region. I do not know how your regions are going. Ambulance wait times are longer than ever before, and the school tax is hurting big-time.

Sonya Kilkenny interjected.

Tim McCURDY: Well, it might be helping in the seat of Carrum, but certainly in the Ovens Valley electorate we cannot get an ambulance for 2 hours in some cases. The GP tax is making it dearer to visit a GP. The above list – they are not wants, they are needs. When we talk about energy, ambulances, hospitals and schools, they are not wants. The wants went out the window last year. They are all needs ‍– needs that we have to have. The Allan Labor government will grind this state to a halt. We all remember – well, some of us do – the Cain–Kirner years. What great years they were. By the time they finished, the state could not even afford to pay their nurses, could not afford to pay the police and could not pay frontline services. We were absolutely broke, and we are headed back there right now. We are headed for a $200 billion debt. We know that, and they know that, but they still choose to do nothing about it. $15 million a day we are currently paying, and that number will go up as the debt goes up.

I need stage 3 of a P–12 school in Yarrawonga. We put in stage 2. We needed $15 million to get stage ‍3 done. I have been waiting 10 years. That is one day’s interest for this government. One day’s interest of $15 million would give that community – the fastest growing town in regional Victoria – the school they need. That $15 million – one day of debt – would be their solution. It really is sad that we are spending this much money on interest, and it is going to go up.

In my electorate and in many others there is certainly a housing crisis – a lack of affordable housing. Rentals are hard to find, which then turns into trying to find staff, because they cannot move to the region, they cannot move to the town. Businesses are saying to me that they cannot get staff because of this flow-on effect from the housing and the rental shortage. The shameful thing is, we could all see it coming. The priorities of this government have been all wrong, and now we end up with a housing crisis. And the housing crisis we have got is like a watertable. It did not happen overnight. It does not go up overnight. It takes years for these things to happen and we could see the writing on the wall, but still nothing was done about it. Again, Labor not only sat on their hands, they threw fuel on the fire. They made the problem worse with land tax and extraordinary rental concessions for tenants. They drove landlords and property owners out of the market, and they wonder why there is a housing crisis. It is like a surprise that there is a housing crisis. But the Premier, like the last one, blames others. ‘It’s not our fault. Sorry, it’s not our fault. It’s interest rates, it’s the federal government, it’s the weather, it’s all these other things – it’s never our fault.’

Brad Rowswell interjected.

Tim McCURDY: Yes, and they even go back to the Kennett government. I do not know how far they can go back – maybe Bolte, maybe further – but they will always say it is somebody else’s fault. You need to take responsibly for your own mess and start to clean it up. Victoria has more debt than New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania combined, and while Victorians suffer, big business, unions and consultants are absolutely thriving.

Land tax is one of the 53 new taxes that has come into Victoria. It is really hurting in my communities, and it is a cruel body blow to all Victorians trying to help themselves, trying to get their families ahead. These are middle-class people that are just trying to look after their own retirement or get their families educated without being a drag on the government and needing handouts and cash. Because they can look after themselves, these middle-class people. They can manage, but I tell you what, with more taxes and more things that get thrown against them, the cost-of-living crisis is hitting them just as much as it is everybody else.

The concern I have got is that middle-class people, when you make life so difficult for them, fall down to that next category below and need more services. They need handouts, they need help and they need assistance. This is what is happening now, and that just creates more pressure on all of our services and more pressure on the government to fund things that people normally used to fund themselves. They slip into that stage, and as I say, it puts more strain on all the amenities. In my electorate, like many others, there is a lack of new housing, there is a lack of new shop developments and there is a lack of business investment. It is due to a lack of confidence, and that lack of confidence is largely as a result of having the highest taxing government in Australia.

I want to quickly touch on education. Between the lack of schools being built, certainly in my electorate – and I hear every day about schools that are getting built and expanded in Melbourne and metropolitan seats. But the education costs for a family – it is just out of this world now what it costs to send a child to school. The latest numbers are saying $108,000 to educate from prep to year 12 – so much for the Education State and so much for free education. Last year the Allan Labor government even got caught out stripping money out of schools where there was a surplus in schools in the 2023 budget. That is just distressing for those schools and the education costs for families.

In the short time I have got left, I will not take a deep dive in health, because I do not have time, but waiting lists have grown. Ambulance waiting times have blown out. Last year $930 million was ripped out of the health budget, and who knows what is going to happen next week? Those on this side of the house are fully aware we are in a crisis. We are in a black hole, and those on the other side know we are in a black hole as well. It just comes down to what they are going to do about it and whether they are going to make sensible decisions. Are they just going to tax people higher next week, or are they going to try to stop some of these stupid projects that cost too much money?

Katie HALL (Footscray) (17:42): Well, it feels like groundhog day today in here. I am again following the member for Ovens Valley. I would have thought representing one of Victoria’s most beautiful electorates would have cheered him up a bit, but the second verse was the same as the first. That was the exact same speech we heard earlier today in a bill contribution by the member for Ovens Valley. We heard about the weather, the backbench and the vibe, so that was interesting, hearing all of that again.

Anyway, I had the singular misfortune of also hearing the member for Brighton and his contribution. I did not even have the TV on and I could hear him down in the annexe. I just want to comment a little bit about his contribution. He spoke a lot about housing, and he spoke about our landmark reforms in housing and the housing statement. My first memory of the member for Brighton is of him opposing social housing in his electorate. Heaven forbid people who were doing it tough should live in Brighton. He letterboxed, and he was out there doorknocking. He was very, very angry – so angry, so outraged about public and social housing going into the electorate of Brighton. Well, I am so proud of this government’s Big Housing Build and record investment. It is the largest investment in Australian history into public and social housing – $5.3 billion – so whether you live in Brighton or Broadmeadows this government is working very hard to make sure that if you need the support of public or social housing, this government is here to build it and to provide it for you and the people who need it. It is Labor governments who believe in public and social housing. We are the ones who fund it. We are the ones who support the people who need to live in that housing, unlike the member for Brighton, who has spent so much of his time railing against it in his community.

I would like to focus on a little bit of a compare and contrast in terms of what happened under the previous four years, the great opportunity the Liberal Party had to lead the great state of Victoria, when unemployment rose from 4.9 per cent in 2010 to 6.8 per cent in 2014, and the previous Liberal government cut over a billion dollars from our TAFEs. They closed 22 campuses and facilities across the state, costing hundreds of dedicated staff their jobs and tens of thousands of students their dreams. I am pretty proud. I have got the great story of Victoria University in my electorate of Footscray and the impact that their free TAFE courses are having on another great Labor initiative, which is free kinder. In the electorate of Footscray, Victoria University is now graduating more early childhood educators in their diploma course than any other tertiary provider in the country. Last month 800 ‍students graduated to enter a career in early childhood. I congratulate each and every one of them, but I am also enormously proud to be a part of a government that delivered that reform.

I am also proud to be part of a government that is providing free kinder, because we know that education starts from the day a child is born, that the first thousand days, the first five years of a child’s life are the most crucial in terms of their education. Delivering free kinder means $2500 in savings for families who are juggling that expensive time when they are looking after young children before they start primary school, but the brilliance of this is that while it is obviously a great education reform, it is also a landmark social reform. It is changing the way women – it is predominantly women still – carry the overall burden of caring for children and stay out of the workforce. It provides those women with the option of going back to work as we transition to a 30-hour pre-prep year in the Education State of Victoria.

The previous government cut $550 million from the education budget when they were in government and 39,000 jobs were created in the four years of Liberal government. This is a bit of a ThePrice is Right moment because you will not believe the number of jobs that have been created in the last four years. We had 39,000 under the previous Liberal government, and 560,000 new jobs in the less than four years since September 2020. Now of course we have had a global pandemic – it has passed those opposite by – and we made some deliberate choices, like many other governments, including the Commonwealth, around what we were going to do to support businesses, to support our health sector and our health system, and we now have a COVID debt recovery plan that we are implementing. We are the only jurisdiction in Australia that is doing that, taking that decisive action.

We have a pathway forward. What Victorians cannot possibly cope with is another Liberal government, who were so mean that they cut Fresh Fruit Friday when they were in government, plus the student conveyance allowance, the education maintenance allowance, the School Focused Youth Service, Reading Recovery tutors and the police band – all gone. Retail electricity prices under the previous Liberal government increased by 34.1 per cent. The 2014–15 Napthine government budget was delivered by the then Treasurer Michael O’Brien, the member for Malvern, and he cut funding to energy and resources by 17.8 per cent.

In terms of cost-of-living relief, I have touched on a few things. Free TAFE is obviously one of my favourite initiatives locally in my community, which has supported 157,000 students and saved them $436 million in fees. So when we talk about cost-of-living support, that is from your education through to the solar home programs, from free rego for apprentices to bringing back the dental van, which has been a great initiative of this government that I am enormously proud of, and I know on this side of the chamber we all are. The $250 power saving bonus is enormously popular in my electorate of Footscray and of course the wonderful school breakfast club program. As the member for Monbulk beautifully articulated, it is the kind of program that if you have not been to one of yours locally, I would encourage you all to do so. Feeding our youngest little learners so that they can start their day with a full tummy and ready to learn is a really important thing and makes a massive difference to their lives and to their future as well.

Sixty-three times we have cut or abolished taxes and charges since we came to government in 2014. We have cut the regional payroll tax rate. You do not see the member for Ovens Valley talking about that. It is now the lowest in the nation.

Jess WILSON (Kew) (17:52): I am delighted to rise to support the member for Sandringham’s matter of public importance that this house condemns the financial mismanagement and economic recklessness of the Allan Labor government, which is causing a cost-of-living crisis for Victorian families and businesses. From the outset, can we make it very clear that the cost-of-living crisis here in Victoria and that Victorians are suffering every single day is a result of the Allan Labor government’s inability to manage money.

We have a budget next week which will be a culmination of 10 years of Labor’s economic mismanagement – 10 years of rising taxes, 10 years of greater pressures on Victorian families and Victorian businesses. Next week the Victorian people will be looking to the government to provide cost-of-living relief, and unfortunately, it looks very unlikely that that is going to be delivered in this budget. We have had the Treasurer come out already and flag the fact that there are likely to be cuts in this budget – cuts to education, cuts to health services, that this is going to be a horror budget at a time that Victorians can least afford it.

I thought I would start by just addressing a few of the falsehoods that have been put by those opposite ‍– to start, the proposition that this government continuously creates new jobs. It is the private sector – it is businesses in this state – that creates jobs, not the government. It is also not the case that it is the Allan Labor government’s money; it is the Victorian taxpayers money that is being spent, that is being wasted at every opportunity by this government. We hear about programs like free kinder and free TAFE. It is certainly on the talking points of those opposite today, but these programs are not free. Unless there is a magic money tree that the Allan Labor government has access to, then these programs are being funded by the Victorian taxpayer. The Victorian taxpayer may well fund a range of programs, but it is not the government’s money. It is their money that this government continuously wastes and then comes back and taps again and taps again through higher taxes.

We are seeing Victoria’s debt levels increase, to $177 billion by 2027. That is going to be more than $24,000 per person. Each Victorian is going to carry the burden of $24,000 of that debt. This government continues to spend. It continues to rack up that debt. We see deficit after deficit, and to the government that is of no consequence. But perhaps that would have more weight if we were not in a situation where Victorians have come off the back of 12 interest rate rises and understand and feel the pain of interest rate rises. They understand what debt means and what interest rate rises mean to their mortgage repayments.

That $177 billion of debt by 2027 is going to represent a whopping 25 per cent of the Victorian economy. If we cast back to the Cain–Kirner recession, a government that is widely held as the worst in the state’s history, net debt as a percentage of gross state product back then peaked at 16 per cent, in 1993. Victoria’s net debt at the time of the Cain–Kirner recession was $18.8 billion in 1995. That is equivalent to around $35 billion today, so compared to the worst recession in Victoria’s history, we are now $100 billion further in debt than at the worst time in our state’s history.

The Shadow Treasurer the member for Sandringham has rightly pointed out time and time again that Victorians are paying more than $15 million a day in interest, and our net interest bill is set to reach $8.8 billion by 2027. That means by 2027 Victorians will be paying $24 million a day of taxpayer money in interest repayments alone. No Victorian household would run their budget in this way. It is simply not possible. No business, no family, would run their budget in this irresponsible way, because they simply would not have the capacity to do so.

As we look at that $15 million a day in interest repayments, climbing to $24 million a day in just a few years time, as many of us on this side of the house have pointed to, the consequence of that is that we will have less funding for essential services – less funding for education, less funding for health care, less funding for our police services. That means that we are not going to have the ability to ensure investment in our schools. We have crumbling schools across the state, schools with toxic mould, schools with walls that are falling down and schools that do not have the capacity for students in their classrooms, and we will not be able to make investments for those students.

If we look at health care, we see a situation where ambulances are not meeting the state’s own targets when it comes to being able to call an ambulance and have confidence that it will turn up in time and your health will not be put further at risk. We are not going to be able to make the investment in our paramedics and in our ambulances to make sure that our health services are meeting the needs of Victorians.

When it comes to our police, we know that our police are under-resourced. We understand that they need more support on the beat. We understand that we are seeing youth crime in particular increase, and time and time again police will say to you, ‘We simply don’t have the resources to respond.’ These are all the consequences of having a debt that is continuing to rise, a debt that is tracking towards $200 billion and beyond in this state. The fact is that with that climbing debt we have to spend millions and millions of dollars of Victorian taxpayers money to make sure that we can service that debt alone.

Coming with that record rise in debt under the Allan Labor government, Victorians continue to pay the highest taxes in the country. Whether it is property taxes or whether it is a broad range of taxes, Victorians are paying the highest taxes in the country. We all know that on the eve of the 2014 election the then Leader of the Opposition Mr Andrews made that bold call that there would be no new taxes under his government. Since 2014, with the culmination of 10 years of this Labor government next week with their budget, we have seen 53 new or increased taxes under this government – 53 new or increased taxes hitting Victorians at a time that they can least afford it. We know –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The time has arrived for the joint sitting to fill the Senate vacancy. The member for Kew will have the call when the MPI resumes.

Sitting suspended 6:00 pm until 6:05 pm.

Jess WILSON: In the time remaining on this contribution, as I was previously saying, Victorians are paying the highest taxes in Australia. That is particularly flowing through to the property sector, as we have seen more than half of those 53 new or increased taxes flow through to housing and property in this state. We know the impact that is having on rising rents, we know the impact that the government’s increase in land tax is having on investment properties right across Victoria and of course we know the impact that the Allan Labor government’s increase in payroll tax is having on businesses across Victoria. Whether it is housing and increasing housing costs, whether it is rent or house prices or whether it is energy and seeing a 25 per cent increase in electricity bills, we are seeing small businesses in particular being hit by the cost of electricity and we are seeing families being hit by the cost of electricity at a time they can least afford it. And we are seeing the impact on education. We saw the Allan Labor government in the last budget impose a tax on education – a tax on choice – which has seen school fees rise by an average of $1000 across the state, with more schools to be hit in the coming years as that tax is not indexed and more schools will be added to the list and more families will be hit with that education tax.

I finish where I started: the Allan Labor government need to realise that when they are putting taxes on Victorians they are hitting the cost of living, and when they are wasting taxpayer money they are wasting Victorians’ money, not their own money.