Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (17:01): I grieve for Victorians because they just had to listen to 15 minutes of rubbish from the member for Footscray, and absolute rubbish it was. I am going to go straight into it. I am going to rebut the member for Footscray straight off the bat. She said we have lost sight of aspiration when it comes to home ownership.

Members interjecting.

Wayne FARNHAM: They are the member for Footscray’s words, not mine. Isn’t it interesting that the former Premier of this state said people would rather rent than buy a home? The government’s whole policy is ‘rent to build’. Rent: that is their policy. You see it on everything. So for the member for Footscray to jump up and say the Liberal Party has lost sight of aspiration for millennials and gen Zs is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard. This is why we grieve for Victoria, because those on that side of the chamber just keep regurgitating the same rubbish over and over again when the facts are completely different. Those on that side of the chamber have talked themselves into believing that this state is in a good condition. They do. They have talked themselves into it. If this state is in such a good position and in a good condition, why are so many people struggling? Riddle me that, Batman: why are so many people struggling? Why is the cost of living out of control if this government is doing such a sterling job of running this state? Why are our housing targets in the toilet? Why is it that our millennials and gen Zs cannot afford to get into a home? Because 43 per cent of the cost of our homes is made up of taxes and levies that this government introduced – 32 of them since 2014.

The member for Mornington rightly pointed out earlier our homelessness crisis, and he is 100 per cent correct. When we had back in 2014, 10,000 or 11,000 applicants and today we have over 65,000 ‍applicants, how can that side get up and say, ‘We’re doing such a great job with housing?’ They have failed. The government has failed to deliver housing to this state. They did not have an idea of what to do till 2020. It took them six years to figure out a housing policy – six years. Call that paralysis by analysis. They absolutely failed housing at every turn. They are failing the construction industry and they will not have enough builders to deliver what they want. Targets are already down ‍– 46,000 homes short in the first two years. Oh, yes, they are doing a sterling job; they are doing a ripping job. That is why I grieve for Victoria.

I grieve for Victoria because the cost of living is out of control. Baw Baw Food Relief is in my electorate. You go talk to them about the people coming through their door – people that have never, ever been there before – because they cannot afford to live anymore. And they are humiliated. They sit in a car deciding whether to go in or not. Yes, this government is doing a great job. That is why there are so many people attending food banks now, because everything this government does is costing Victorians more, and they cannot afford to live. Olivia’s Place is a not-for-profit charity in my electorate that supplies clothes to new families. They supply baby formula and nappies and all those types of things. It is a fantastic organisation. The area they cover now – it was just Warragul and Drouin, but they now cover from Morwell all the way down to Berwick. People are driving to Olivia’s Place to get help with the basic essentials associated with having a new baby. If this government is doing such a good job, why are so many people going there? Why are so many people going to Olivia’s Place because they cannot afford the basic essentials for a child? Yes, they are doing a great job.

Everything has gone up. Gas is up, water is up and power is up. Council rates are up, interest rates are up. Fuel is through the roof, and the basic, basic thing that people need – food – is up. This government is doing such a good job that everything is out of control, but they sit there and they go, ‘Oh no, there’s nothing to see here. We’re doing a great job. We’re doing a really good job.’ The fact is that we are paying $1 million per hour in interest. This government are great fiscal managers. I have said it before: they do not know how to make money; they just know how to spend money. And when they have spent it all, they come after you again and again and again.

This government is criminal the way they treat Victorians. We are heading to $190 billion in debt, and remember that interest bill is if we keep the current credit rating. I asked in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee whether they have done any modelling on if we lose the credit rating. There has been no modelling. What will that interest be per hour then? $24 million a day in interest is the absolute epitome of mismanagement. You cannot be that incompetent and still be in government – it absolutely astounds me – and that is why most Victorians cannot wait till 28 November. They cannot wait to get rid of this absolutely incompetent government, a government that has not been honest with Victorians. It has not been, like the member for Mildura stated earlier, transparent with Victorians. That is what Victorians deserve but they do not get under this government. There is no transparency at all.

Then the worst kept secret of all: $15 billion of corruption payments through the CFMEU to criminal organisations. I said it last week: the government keeps denying this, saying it is a made-up figure and it is subjective. Then have the investigation into it. Be transparent. Give IBAC more powers. It is a pretty simple solution if you believe it did not happen. But what do we get out of the government? The same old line. They are not answering any questions on this in question time. It is just the regurgitated line time and time again. They will not answer the questions. They will not have an investigation into it. They will not be transparent with Victorians to let them know where their money went – their $15 billion. And if it is not $15 billion, how much is it? If it is only $1.5 billion, that is just as bad, but they do not want anyone to know. The Premier has quite often stated that she referred it on. Great. I will tell you what, why don’t you do this: grab the documents from when the Premier was told and then produce the documents from when you referred it. Let us find out the timeline. Would it have been the next day? I would have. Or is it a year later? We are never going to know.

I grieve for regional Victoria because we are the ones who get screwed over all the time, shafted all the time. That is as good as I can put it, because it is the truth. When we have 25 per cent of our population living in regional Victoria and we only get 12 per cent of infrastructure funding, at what point in time is that fair? At what point in time is that reasonable? Our roads are crumbling. In my electorate in Narracan I have had not one new government school for over 50 years, yet I hear the Minister for Education stand up there and spout ‘built a school here, built a school there, built a school there’ – in Labor seats. The ultimate in pork-barrelling is this government, but not one new school in Narracan – not one. How is that fair? How is 12 per cent of the infrastructure spending in regional Victoria fair?

That is not even getting to the West Gippsland Hospital. A commitment made by this government in 2022 was ‘We will start this hospital in 2023’ – their words, not mine. ‘We will start this hospital in 2023’ – and even as I stand here today, I have still not had an update from the Minister for Health on where the hospital is at. The Minister for Health tried to refer me off to the Minister for Health Infrastructure. It is not her responsibility if the Minister for Health has not done her job. So do not sit there and defer me off – answer the question. The community deserves to know. They are happy to see $15 billion float out the door, and I cannot get one answer to a very simple question to update my community on where the hospital is at.

Of course I grieve for this state. I grieve for this state because of the incompetence of this government. $13 million on machete bins, for goodness sake, that we are going to put outside a police station where a criminal is going to walk up and go, ‘Oh, sorry. I hit someone with this. You can take it now.’ How stupid – absolutely stupid. There was another way to do it, but they did not think of that. And it has not helped our machete problem in this state. Crime is rampant. It is out of control. In my electorate it has gone up by 12 per cent. Coming back to the infrastructure spending, I have got one 24-hour police station for 4500 square kilometres in my electorate – one 24/7 station. Drouin’s police station was built in 1974, when they had a population of 4000 people. The two towns of Warragul and Drouin now have a combined population of 43,000. No investment into Drouin for a 24-hour police station – none – but ‘Oh, no, we’re doing a great job’.

Of course I grieve for Victoria. I grieve for Victoria because this government is so incompetent. Let us look at what they did to the timber industry. They decimated the timber industry. It was meant to run through to 2030, and the government pulled the rug right out from underneath them. They suffered, and they went through so much rubbish with this government for the best part of a decade. Then when the government said, ‘Okay, we’ll shut you down in 2030,’ they lied about that. They pulled the rug out from them in 2023. Timber workers had millions and millions invested in machinery, but that did not matter to the government. They did not care. They were not working, were not getting paid. It took them ages to get their payouts.

Then we go to the Commonwealth Games. Oh, my goodness, this is how good this government is: $600 million to hold the games in another country – $589 million, $600 million, to have the games in another country. They still have not delivered the infrastructure they promised when they cancelled the games. But not only that, they lied about that. They basically said, ‘The Comm Games are begging us. They are begging Melbourne to have it.’ They did not beg Melbourne. Melbourne took them out. They bought them dinners. They courted them to have the Commonwealth Games. They did not beg them. What a load of rubbish.

Then the reason was because it was going to cost $7 billion, but there has not been one document to substantiate that figure. It was an inflated figure. It was even admitted that they doubled the figures so it looked like it was justifiable to cancel the games at $7 billion. That was a lie. The government lied. They misled. I can use heaps of ways to describe it, but at the end of the day what the government did was blatant. Fancy doubling the figures to justify cancelling the games. As the member for Bulleen rightly pointed out the other day, thank goodness British Airways are flying directly to London now; it will be quicker for us to get to the Glasgow games. How utterly incompetent this government is. That is why we grieve for Victoria, because we have to put up with this incompetence, but not for very much longer, because I feel the mood in Victoria is changing very rapidly. I feel Victorians have had enough. They have had enough of the corruption, they have had enough of the secrecy and they have had enough of the misleading of the Victorian public. The reason I really grieve for this state is because Labor have stuffed it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Northcote, I remind members again about parliamentary language.