Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2024‒25 Budget Estimates

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (10:32): I rise this morning to speak on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) report into the 2024–25 budget estimates. I do so noting that I think one of the reasons the Allan Labor government presides over a financial mess of a budget is the lack of integrity, transparency and visibility into the way money is raised on behalf of taxpayers and the broader Victorian community and the way that money is expended for vital public services, whether it is health – the largest spending portfolio – or education and other vital areas. Clearly one of the reasons that Victoria faces this problem is if you do not have that accountability, scrutiny and visibility, you cannot see what the government is doing and, worse, the government does not respond to the necessity to be up-front with the Victorian people and the various stakeholders who speak on behalf of Victorians about how money is spent and whether output objectives are actually achieved.

The PAEC report that I am addressing this morning makes a number of recommendations into how departments such as the Department of Planning and Transport, as well as the departments of health and education, can better report on output and asset initiatives. What I really want to do this morning is put that against the backdrop of what the Victorian Auditor General’s Office has pointed out in recent months. I was absolutely dismayed earlier this year when I saw the Minister for Public Transport come out and publicly malign the Auditor-General’s office over its Major Projects Performance Reporting 2024. That report assessed about $145 billion of projects currently in the portfolio of infrastructure in the state. That represents about 70 per cent of the capital program at the moment.

I have never seen a government more unedifyingly attack an independent officer, whose position is protected, as you know, Deputy Speaker, in the Victorian constitution – that is how important the Auditor General’s office is – and publicly attack the Auditor-General when the Auditor-General and the staff of that important office were simply undertaking what was a very sobering analysis of the state of those infrastructure projects.

What it did find was startling. I want to quote them so as not to misquote them. They, I think at the heart of it, pointed out for all of us that the budget papers under this government cannot be relied upon. Now, that is a startling finding. Do not just take my word for it. Listen to what the Auditor-General’s office concluded about budget paper 4, which, for our viewers and those who will read these debates, addresses the capital program from year to year. It said of budget paper 4 under this government that it is ‘not useful or reliable for assessing major project performance’. This finding was based on footnotes that do not accurately or transparently report underlying factors impacting a major project’s performance.

Let us just take stock of what the Auditor General is saying: we cannot rely on budget paper 4. The Auditor-General goes on to say that the Department of Treasury and Finance:

… prepares BP4 for the Treasurer, it is a document produced at the government’s discretion with no format or content requirements set by legislation or ministerial direction. Any content in BP4 is therefore published at the Treasurer’s discretion.

There you go. We do not know the truth about how badly major projects in this state are being overseen by this government. When we see announcements like we saw earlier this week with the Premier spruiking $700 million to switch on the Metro project after nearly 10 years, I think it surprises all Victorians. It is the equivalent of an infrastructure corkage charge. Not only does it cost us $15 billion to deliver these projects but now we have to pay to open them. It is like being in a restaurant and someone saying, ‘We’ve got to charge you to open your wine bottle.’ This is the same with infrastructure projects, or the health portfolio, where we have nearly $16 billion of capital projects underway with no real visibility. That is what the PAEC report focuses on in its recommendations.

My plea to the government, although it has resisted this for years, is it is about time and past time that the Victorian people were given proper visibility into the way (1) money is raised on their behalf and (2), equally importantly, how it is spent on their behalf.