Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (19:11): (1153) My adjournment matter is to the Premier, and the action I seek is for her to take a drive, or better still catch one of her so-called upgraded VLocity trains, to South-West Coast and see firsthand the devastation that her government’s latest tax, the emergency services and volunteers levy, and the other 60 taxes imposed on Victorians before it are having on our communities.

This new tax is nothing short of a slap in the face to every hardworking Victorian, especially those in the regions. Households will be paying double. For commercial properties, there will be a massive increase for them too. For primary producers, the people feeding our state, the levy has tripled – tripled – and the government has even managed to ensure that renters will cop it too, all this during a cost-of-living crisis and one of the worst droughts we have seen since records began in the early 1900s.

This week a Warrnambool paper reported 12 businesses are preparing to shut their doors because they simply cannot keep up with cost pressures – and it is not just dollars and cents. Farmers are telling me they are on the brink. The mental strain I am witnessing when talking to these stoic farmers, caused by this new tax grab on top of the drought, will have ramifications. Country people do not cry out for help, but when they do, you should listen. Instead Labor has lumbered them with another tax.

To make matters worse, the Allan Labor government has chosen to hand out a discount on this tax to multinational wind and solar developers, many of them foreign owned. These corporations, which already benefit from generous government subsidies, are being spared the financial burden that is being heaped on the shoulders of Victorian families, households, small businesses, renters and farmers. How is it fair that those doing it tough in a drought and a cost-of-living crisis are expected to pay more while multibillion-dollar companies are let off the hook? Farmers are expected to fund emergency services when they volunteer as CFA members.

The Liberal and National parties stood proudly today with thousands of Victorians on the steps of Parliament, announcing that we will repeal this tax if elected. But Victorians should not have to wait 557 days for the next election for relief; the government must listen and scrap the tax now. Premier, come to the south-west, look the CFA volunteers, struggling farmers, hardworking business owners, home owners and renters in the eye and explain to them why they are being punished and why multinationals are being rewarded. This tax is unjust and unfair and must be scrapped.