Wednesday, 19 November 2025

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (10:51): I am rising today to talk on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee 2025–26 budget estimates report, tabled in October, and I will be leaning into recommendation 8 and finding 3. Congratulations to the committee and the secretariat – the PAEC is probably one of the most arduous committees you can be on, so congratulations to all the members on there.

I just want to start off by talking about the fiscal strategy of the government. We heard the Premier yesterday talk about the fiscal strategy and how well they are doing. But the problem with the government, when they talk about fiscal strategies and economic responsibility, is that they tend to fail. The government always have a five-point plan for fiscal strategies. I would like to point out the previous five-point plan that the government has lived by for the last decade or so. Essentially, this government cannot manage money. They come out and they say, we have got a fiscal strategy. Their first fiscal strategy, as far as I am concerned, is constant budget blowouts. They cannot budget for anything. We are up to $50 billion in overruns on construction. You have got to get these things under control.

Fiscal strategy number two: introduce more taxes; that is how we are going to get the economy going. But at the same time, the cost-of-living pressure it is putting on Victorians is astronomical. Fiscal strategy number three: $21 million a day in interest. Everybody knows if you are going to get the interest down in the state, you have got to bring the principal down. But this government does not seem to want to work by those guidelines. They just want to keep borrowing. Fiscal strategy number four: build projects with no funding. We know the Suburban Rail Loop is not fully funded. We know they have this magic bubble of value capture, and we know the feds have not fully backed it yet. Even Infrastructure Australia is still not saying it is a good idea. Fiscal strategy number five for the government is to slash 3000 public service jobs. The government keeps forgetting to repeat that that is what is recommended, and the government will have to do that at some point in time. So the way this government is running the state of Victoria, when they talk about their fiscal strategy and their five-point plan, I just do not believe them. The rating agencies have got the government on notice – well and truly on notice. So it is time – maybe the government’s fiscal strategy will work, but I doubt it very much.

Now I would like to go to recommendation 8, which actually says:

In future budgets, the Department of Treasury and Finance and the Department of Health outline reasons why a project schedule was revised in Budget Paper No. 4 when a project has a revised completion date.

That is relevant directly to the seat of Narracan and directly to the West Gippsland Hospital.

It is absolutely straight down the line. The job was meant to start in 2023, as per Daniel Andrews’s election commitment in October 2022, but for 12 months –

A member interjected.

Wayne FARNHAM: It is not going well. The cows are still in the paddock. They will be baling hay soon. They have already done the silage. 2023 – we are now nearly into 2026. I could not get an answer for 12 months.

But clearly the recommendations are saying: give a reason. So give a reason. Tell the community why it has not started. Is it a lack of money – probably. Is it a lack of planning – definitely. Was it a false promise by then Premier Daniel Andrews – three weeks out from an election, all of a sudden they were going to spend $675 million in the safest Liberal seat in Victoria? That is all it was. It was an empty promise by the then Premier Daniel Andrews, and that promise has not been backed up by the now Premier.

If we are going to have these reports and these recommendations come through this chamber, the government might want to start reading the committee reports, because there is a lot of information in here that the government ignores. They will not take up the recommendations and they will not be transparent, because that is not in their DNA. They like to cover things up with cabinet in confidence. Trying to get an FOI out of this government is near impossible; you have got to go to VCAT to get that. Here is a suggestion for the government: actually read a report, read the recommendations and implement them.