Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2023‒24 Financial and Performance Outcomes

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (10:41): I rise to speak this morning on the 2023–24 performance measures by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. We see in its report a range of recommendations, and the recommendations all speak of a common theme: a lack of scrutiny and accountability in performance measures. It is so important. Whether it is the Department of Health, which the committee pointed out, needing to report more on the outcomes of its programs; whether it is in education, including the rolling out of building projects across the portfolio with schools in such dire need of upgrades; whether it is police in the youth justice space or the youth crime prevention space, the committee makes recommendations that we need to see better reporting. Even in relation to the Suburban Rail Loop and the Department of Transport and Planning, it makes recommendations about updated costings on the SRL.

I want to highlight this theme this morning because at the heart of every controversy and every financial stuff-up that we have had to address in recent years lies an absence of accountability and scrutiny. The same thing happened with the Commonwealth Games. There was a lack of scrutiny. In fact the budget papers for 2024–25 actually failed to mention that before those budget papers were published the government had met secretly to uplift the cost estimates for the Commonwealth Games from $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion. That was not mentioned in the budget. It is what has happened in relation to major projects, where we have seen blowout after blowout, well over $50 billion in blowouts that cannot be accounted for merely by scope changes and construction inflation – just complete mismanagement by the government of major projects.

This theme is very important, and it is why last year the coalition released a policy on improving accountability and scrutiny in budget reporting. You cannot get better outcomes in the absence of visibility and scrutiny. If you do not have that, governments will always slide off the road, which is what has happened here. If you look at what we have seen over recent years in terms of trends, we have seen Treasurer’s advances, which are a very secretive way of dealing with poor planning, used for core business. They went from about $300 million in the last year of the Napthine government to over $12 billion in 2023. The contingency funds across the asset program and also outputs are in this year’s budget over $65 billion. That means that decisions have been made in relation to around about $65 billion of projects. We do not see it. It is all buried in contingency, and we need better outcomes there.

We see in budget reporting today the continued use in the last two years in relation to the biggest project this state has ever undertaken in the Suburban Rail Loop of ‘TBC’, even in the face of the government saying it has signed contracts for the SRL, and we know that that is about $7 billion today. But if the Premier and the then minister for infrastructure projects are to be believed, all contracts for SRL East will be signed before the next election. Why doesn’t that appear? Why doesn’t the $7 billion appear in this year’s budget papers?

The Victorian Auditor-General released a report earlier this year on major projects performance reporting, and it made the startling finding that budget paper 4 cannot be relied upon. On the cost estimates the government has provided in budget paper 4 for major projects – bearing in mind we have about $220 billion of projects on the go at the moment, new and existing projects – it said the estimates were ‘not reliable, meaningful or comprehensive’ – VAGO’s words, not mine.

I return to the point I opened with: scrutiny, accountability and transparency are vital if Victoria is to get out of the financial mess we are in. What this report highlights is that there is a continued failure by this government across outputs and the asset program to actually account to the Victorian people for the way their funds are being spent.