Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Government performance

Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (16:31): I rise to voice a grievance on behalf of Victorians, including locals in my electorate of Mornington, regarding the litany of failures under this Allan Labor government and indeed this Labor government over the last 12 years. This Labor government will have been in for nearly 12 years in a row by the election in November next year and they will have been in government for 23 out of the last 27 years here in Victoria. From unfair taxes and economic mismanagement to community neglect and cuts to services, this government has failed Victorians by every single metric. Instead of fostering economic prosperity and focusing on policies that enhance productivity, encourage investment, improve the business environment, streamline regulations and cut red tape, this government has become the modern-day Sheriff of Nottingham: corrupt, greedy and taxing Victorians to fill their own budget black hole.

Let us look at the emergency services tax. This is a tax that will undeniably impact so many Victorians, indeed so many hardworking Victorians. All landholders across Victoria – farmers, small businesses, suburban home owners, renters and volunteers – will be forced to pay more under this tax. In fact the government’s own budget papers show that this tax will rip $765 million a year from Victorians – over $2.1 billion in just three years. This is a big, indiscriminate tax on property, and the member for Mordialloc, who spoke before, seems to think that such a tax is great for farmers and great for volunteers, but it is not. The impact on farmers and rural communities is especially pronounced. Farmers are being slugged with levy hikes as high as 150 per cent. Farmers and so many Victorians are furious. They are fighting government fires and volunteering as well, only to be rewarded with an unjust new tax, all while many are facing drought as well. They are so furious, thousands have attended protests on the steps of Parliament and elsewhere across Victoria in recent weeks.

The Victorian Farmers Federation and 79 local councils have opposed this money grab. Indeed the VFF Mornington Peninsula, who I have been speaking with closely about this, have opposed it as well, and they even went so far as to give four different alternative options that will raise the government revenue without impacting upon farmers. Many local CFA brigades, from Mornington to Mount Eliza, Moorooduc and elsewhere, have approached me about their concerns about this tax as well. And many local farmers in the Mornington electorate and indeed across the Mornington Peninsula and elsewhere, from cattle farmers to dryland farmers, horticulturalists, vineyard owners and others, have expressed extreme concerns about the rise in their rates under this tax.

But Premier Allan and Labor have rushed this tax through Parliament, as we have seen recently, in the darkness of the night, doing a dirty deal to get it over the line before their budget and cutting off debate so as to pass it through the Assembly at about 1:30 the other Friday morning. This is a government that are looking to purely raise revenue to offset their skyrocketing state debt, which is looking at growing to $194 billion in just a few years time, which is $29 million in interest a day, which is $1.2 million every single hour.

As I mentioned in a speech earlier today, that is more than a home for every single Victorian every single hour that is being paid on interest by taxpayers that could actually be spent on infrastructure and services. This is a Labor government that is broke, and it is making the community pay on the back of goodwill towards emergency services workers and others. Labor have always wanted to tax farmland, it seems; now they have found a sneaky way to do it – even more so than before – with this emergency services tax. A Liberal and National government, if elected in November 2026, will have no higher priority than scrapping this unfair emergency services tax and restoring fairness.

Let us face it, the 2025–26 Victorian budget is an absolute disaster. We have a debt bomb set to burden future generations. As mentioned before, debt is forecast to reach over $167 billion this year, with an eye-watering $194 billion within three years. This is the highest debt of Victoria’s history, nearly double what it was just a few years ago. By 2028–29 interest payments in total will be over $10.5 billion a year, almost as much as the entire budget for public order and safety at the moment – $10 billion in interest that taxpayers have to pay, money that is not building a single school or hospital, just lining lenders pockets because of Labor’s endless credit card spending frenzy. That could build schools like Mount Eliza Secondary College in my electorate, which is more than 50 years old in terms of its infrastructure. They need an entire school redevelopment, which is not forthcoming at this point in time. All they need is about $30 million to $40 million to do so. The interest payments are much more than that even at the moment, and so many other schools are missing out as well.

And let us face it as well, Moody’s recently delivered what it called Victoria’s final warning, slamming reckless spending, lack of debt management strategy and weak budgetary transparency. Moody’s bluntly noted that the government has no credible plan to stabilise the debt without ‘more restrained spending and sustained momentum on reform’. They also urged broader financial reforms. If we cop another credit downgrade, it will sharply increase the interest on Labor’s debt bomb. I am seriously worried about the trajectory of Victoria’s debt. This is the final warning. We have such strong language being used by Moody’s, such as ‘reckless’, ‘weak’ and ‘lack of strategy’. This is serious stuff, and the government should take this seriously.

There are countless real-world examples where a failure to control debt has led to economic crises. I will mention they are perhaps a bit more extreme examples than Victoria, but this is a situation we do not want to end up in. Argentina: we have seen chronic overspending, inflation and reliance on debt, which led to repeated defaults in 2001, 2014 and 2020. The consequences were skyrocketing inflation, currency collapse, mass poverty and a reputation for default that haunts the economy. Italy’s debt remains the highest in the world – over 140 per cent of its GDP – with decades of sluggish growth. This means constant scrutiny from bond markets, reliance on European Central Bank bailouts and limited fiscal flexibility. In Puerto Rico they have had decades of borrowing and government mismanagement that have led to $70 billion in debt, with the government ultimately defaulting in 2015. The consequences are cuts to public services, school closures, mass emigration and so forth.

I acknowledge that these are extreme examples and that thankfully Victoria is in a relatively better situation at the moment than many of these countries. However, there are so many lessons to be learned. You just cannot borrow, borrow, borrow, putting everything on the credit card with no plan to rein in debt. So what is Labor’s response to this debt crisis? They have increased taxes – more than 60 new or increased taxes – and they have cut services, infrastructure and more. We have seen cuts to public schools. We have seen cuts to fisheries offices, including in the Mornington electorate – although they have backtracked recently with much advocacy to at least keep the Mornington fisheries office open – and more. The Victorian government has led Victoria to have the highest taxes per person in Australia.

Going to the public school funding, from which I mentioned that $2.4 billion has been cut, that betrays a promise to meet Gonski education standards.

This is a sneaky cut concealed in budget papers which delays critical funding that public schools were counting on, making Victoria the lowest funder of public schools in the nation. Children starting prep this year – like my son, who is in prep – will not see full school funding resources until grade 6, an entire primary education underfunded. What an appalling breach of the government’s duty of care to students and teachers. If we look at public sector cuts, we see zero transparency or care for workers. The government has vaguely promised $3.3 billion in savings by slashing thousands of jobs but provides barely any details. As usual with Labor, it is spin first and substance later, if ever. While some of the cuts may be warranted efficiency measures, we are again sacrificing people’s jobs, careers and livelihoods to pay for the government’s reckless spending.

What will we do in contrast? The Liberals and Nationals, if we form government in November 2026, will not stand for this horror budget. We will stand for responsible budgeting and transparency. A government must live within its means, reining in debt, not axing things like school funding, and stimulating the economy, not taxing Victorians. A coalition government will restore trust by opening up the books and charting a real path to stabilising debt. Victorians deserve an economic plan grounded in reality that is not a debt-fuelled house of cards. As raised by the member for Brighton in his budget reply earlier today, we will scrap five taxes that have already been put up by this Labor government. This includes in particular the emergency services tax, which is impacting volunteers, farmers, renters and others right across Victoria. We will also scrap their GP patients tax, their holiday tourism tax and their schools tax.

Importantly, a fifth announcement today was that we will scrap stamp duty for first home buyers up to $1 million. Home ownership has been going down, particularly amongst young people, and we must help to get them into homes in the first place, so they are not just putting money on rent or filling other people’s pockets. They need a home of their own, and we need to be a party – we need to be a government – that provides opportunity, that gives aspiration, that gives hope, that enables young people to fulfil their dreams by not doing what the Labor government is doing, which is increasing taxes and removing investment, trying to drive away investment from this state. We need to be a government that drives up investment and brings in new revenue which will help to pay down this horror debt that Labor has built up.

If we look further, we can look at crime, for example. Crime has surged in Victoria to the highest level in nearly a decade. The latest statistics show that there were over 605,000 offences in 2024, a 15.7 per cent jump from the previous year, with the crime rate per 100,000 people up over 13 per cent year on year. This links in with the debt levels as well. We have a shortage of more than 1000 police. We have many stations where hours have been reduced or where they have been closed. We need to actually fill this gap in the police force and enable the community to have the safety they deserve, but instead we have a rise in youth offending, with crimes by children aged 10–17 hitting their highest levels since records began in 1993. What was the government’s response? A rushed, tough-on-crime bail bill only after much pressure from the public and the opposition. We brought bail bills of our own many times, which were blocked by this government.

Look at other issues as well. We need to go into things like housing. On housing, the Labor government’s record is equally dismal. The Labor government’s grand promise of 80,000 new homes a year has been a dramatic failure. As I mentioned earlier, if were not in a few years time going to be paying $1.2 million of interest every single hour, there are many, many, many homes that could be built. I am sure the member for Tarneit would enjoy living in one of those homes as well if it was not for the taxpayer paying interest. Recent data on public housing also shows that we have over 60,000 Victorians on the waitlist as well. That is a situation that we should not be in. People should not be living in crisis accommodation. They should actually be going into proper accommodation. The debt levels that this Labor government has built up mean that we are not investing in public housing the way we need to.

If we go further, let us look at my electorate of Mornington. Time and time again, the Mornington Peninsula community has been overlooked and underfunded by this government. If you want proof that Labor governs for its own electorates rather than all Victorians, you just have to look at the electorate of Mornington and our experiences.

We have many schools in my electorate. I mentioned Mount Eliza Secondary College, which is over 50 years old in its infrastructure and urgently needs an upgrade, and there are so many other schools as well. Moorooduc Primary School’s pavement looks like the pavements that I saw in Kosovo when I was living there. It is terrible, and it should not be in that state. We need a government that actually look after our schools and provide fairness to schools and fair funding to schools, not just to schools in their own electorates.

One thing I will mention is that there was one positive announcement, which was the Mornington to Hastings cross-peninsula bus service that was announced in the budget. That is a good thing, but that has taken many, many years and much advocacy by me and others to happen. We also have some funding set aside for Mount Eliza North Primary. It is not new funding. It has taken years for a commitment that was made in 2022 to actually be budgeted. It will be delayed, but this will now go ahead. But with more and more funding being available, the Labor government could do a lot more. They need to better manage the economy, as we would do in government.