Thursday, 13 November 2025

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (10:14): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the report by the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee on the 2025–26 budget, and it is an important time to reflect on that report, recently tabled, and the significant departure of the opposition from that fiscal strategy. That is something that the member for Brighton led as then Shadow Treasurer, but he had to take a sideways step for the member for Kew. But we have seen the loss in revenue as high as $11.1 billion.

Now, the revenue source from the last state budget was about $108 billion to support Victorians to service frontline workers: our critical nurses, our teachers, our emergency services – people who are on the front line supporting and servicing Victorians each and every day. If we think about what an $11.1 billion drop in revenue looks like, it is a significant impact on the Victorian economy and on the confidence of our state and undermines the hallmarks and findings of the Public Accounts and Estimates report. Because we are in surplus in Victoria, we have a significant strategy to pay down the impact of debt in our community, and the gross state product demonstrates where that might be. But those opposite have an austerity approach – a cut-and-carnage approach of $11.1 billion in revenue. So it is concerning, seeing the report and the smart way that we are investing in jobs and supporting services and building our economy, to see the Liberals and Nationals wanting to take an axe to vital frontline services in our state. This will be cataclysmic for Victorians who rely on frontline services. Those opposite will cut teachers, they will cut nurses, they will cut frontline workers, and that is the $11.1 billion revenue gap that those opposite have not accounted for. We were hoping that in some of the questioning that came through to inform the public accounts and estimates report we would see some of the strategy open up on what they would do, but still to this day we see nothing – nothing at all – from a policy standpoint other than cuts, austerity and harsher conditions for Victorians. That is the kind of thing that we have known of those opposite, the Liberals and Nationals –

Peter Walsh: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I would ask the member for Mordialloc to give us the page reference for what he is talking about, please, because on my recollection it is not in the report. So I would ask you to bring him back to talking about the report, please.

Tim RICHARDSON: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, the revenue and fiscal strategy, member for Murray Plains – former Leader of the Nationals – is on page 14, and we know that these reports –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I think we have had a little bit of contrast from both members now, and I encourage them to speak on the committee reports.

Tim RICHARDSON: I just have great concerns. If the strategy that has been outlined in the public accounts and estimates reports on the 2025–26 budget were to divert in such a cataclysmic way to undermine our teachers, our educators who support our kids each and every day; our nurses, who front up in our health service each and every day –

Peter Walsh: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I think the member for Mordialloc was inviting another point of order. Can you bring him back to the to the report, please?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Let us try and stick to the reports.

Tim RICHARDSON: So the outlined fiscal strategy has Victoria in surplus. It has us leading the nation as the engine room of the nation’s economy. We have created 896,000 jobs since we came to government, and this is the confidence and investment; we are outstripping the nation with business growth in Victoria. This has played out in this report. It is not good reading if you are a coalition member, because it shows Victoria’s strategy of investment and of being the engine room of the nation’s economy. With the jobs growth that is articulated here, with our budget being in surplus, with the confidence of our state and the investment outstripping the nation, it is not the doom and gloom that others might want to talk down our state with. It is a reasonable plan from a Treasurer who is delivering for our state and a Premier who has a great vision, with the Economic Growth Statement complementing those hallmarks in the public accounts and estimates report, and this is why Victorians trust Labor governments to deliver vital services.