Wednesday, 23 September 2026

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (16:01): Thank you for the opportunity to grieve for the people of Victoria, my last opportunity in this 60th Parliament. And sadly, there is much to grieve about in Victoria today: 12 long, wasteful years of the current Andrews, Allan, and now what is his – oh, Ben, Premier Allan, government. We have had an opportunity to make Victoria a place where people want to live, where people want to invest, where people can grow their businesses, look after their families, have their children well educated and have the best health care and fantastic transport services. And what do we find after 12 years? After 12 years we find a government that after three Premiers has no idea what they did with $15 billion of extra spending on overgrown, overblown projects.

Here in Victoria, for those of us in regional Victoria, we have missed opportunities. We have our highways, our byways, our country roads falling to pieces, crumbling. Our roads are in chronic disrepair. And yet for those of us from the west, particularly, we make the journey to Melbourne – and some of us might do that this week with the grand final – and we get to the now-open West Gate Tunnel. It was supposed to open back in 2022, but part of the $15 billion was the excruciatingly long amount of time it took for the government to get anywhere with that project. We get there now, and the joke going around about the West Gate Tunnel is that people are wanting to book it for their 21st birthday because you know no-one else will be in there. It will be an open venue, it is well-lit and you do not have to worry about anyone else being there. It is a private venue. It is like some sort of subterranean nightclub for most people these days. It is not used by the people getting into the city because this government did not consult well. Do you know what it did? The West Gate Tunnel typifies the lack of good governance and accountability of this government – it was billions of dollars overbudget, it was years overdue, and no-one knew why they built it. No-one knew where it was going to. It dumps you at a spaghetti web of intersections on the north side of the city and still does not get you to where you want to go – and it is not just me saying that, it is the tunnel itself. The Minister for Roads and Road Safety is sitting here. The minister for roads can have a road convention down in that tunnel he is now in charge of. He will not have to worry about anyone getting in the way, you could have whiteboards all through it with pictures of his pothole fixing that he is doing. And my goodness, he will need a tunnel that is kilometres long because there are that many potholes he could show people in his exhibition.

But quite frankly, this lost 12 years is a real disappointment. We have missed out something chronic in country Victoria. We have got the potholes, we have got our roads and then of course there are people in regional Victoria that want to use public transport. Let us take the Warrnambool line, a crucial piece of infrastructure built back in the 1870s and 1880s. Since that time we ran trains regularly and on time every day of the week, to and from the metropolis all the way through to Warrnambool. And on that train every day we provided food, we provided seats, and we provided toilets, even. Most people did not have them in their houses in 1870, but you got it on the train.

Fast forward to today – we have 10,000 less seats a week. Could you imagine that? Going fast forward to 10,000 less seats a week on the Warrnambool train. Not only that, but there is also no food. You have got to pack an esky. If you are coming from Warrnambool or, heaven forbid, from Portland in the morning, pack an esky, take your own food and bring your own water. If you are bringing the dog along, bring the kibble. There is nothing you can get on the train. Worst of all, if you are a school group from Polwarth or, heaven forbid, from the U3A, a wonderful group of people in Western Victoria – the U3A are going to a concert at midday at the wonderful Arts Centre here in the city – god forbid if you want to get on the train and all have a seat. No, having a seat in this day and age is a long-forgotten tradition now in regional Victoria. You can expect to stand – stand all the way to Melbourne and stand all the way back – and that is if you do not have to dodge any number of misbehaviours or other things that may happen on the trains now because the government has just refused to support those working on V/Line in making sure people are sitting where they are supposed to sit and behaving as one would expect them to behave on such a service. We have missed those opportunities. We have seen money wasted in Melbourne, and we have had a very, very poor return indeed.

Also over the last 12 years we have had the situation that this government has, in its wisdom, listened to the community to a certain extent. It heard the community had said that in the electorate of Polwarth we have this wonderful state asset called the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road is an icon not only for the people of Polwarth but for the state and the nation as a whole. It is a wonderful place, and the Great Ocean Road itself – the physical road – is the world’s longest war memorial. You would think that managing that would be quite simple, but sadly over the last 12 years the highlights of the Great Ocean Road – the Loch Ard Gorge, the Cape Otway lighthouse, the functioning harbour down at Apollo Bay, Point Grey at Lorne, all these iconic places along the Great Ocean Road – have been left to decay and crumble.

Back in 2018 the Liberal federal government at the time generously gave $200 million to the state of Victoria to get some projects up and running along the Great Ocean Road. Well, fast forward to today and we have got the government flat out trying to get these projects finished before the election. It is going to be interesting to see how open they are before the election. We might wander in and still see the scaffolding everywhere. They are down there desperately trying to get them open, even though they have had the money through 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. For nine years they have had the money – nine years – and they have not been able to get these projects done. The cost of that delay is that the people in Kennett River have been short-changed. They are no longer getting sealed car parking and sealed roads; they are getting gravel. The people at Skenes Creek are no longer getting their walking track because we cannot afford that now. That has been cut from the agenda. The poor guys down at the Apollo Bay harbour are getting a reduced project. They are still waiting to get their fish and chip shop open. They are still waiting. It closed last year. It will be closed again this summer. Two lost years because this government is incapable of finishing a project.

Not to mention the tourists – we love the tourists along the Great Ocean Road. We love the tourists coming through Polwarth. We have spent in excess of $150 million on a very elaborate toilet block down at the Twelve Apostles. You have got to wonder how you spend $150 million on a toilet block when you have not even bought the land yet. That money does not include the purchase of the land, because the poor farmer down there, we took the land off him. We took it off him two years ago now, I think. He still has not been paid. Instead he is in court fighting to get paid by the government. They have not paid a cracker, but they have spent $150 million on a very elaborate toilet block and a big dam with no overflow and a car park – a great car park that is probably going to have all sorts of lighting on it too that will really help with the atmosphere down there. We will see what happens, but we do not know yet.

One of the great joys that people have down there is the opportunity to go on a helicopter flight. Well, the government’s decision to site everything where they have without consulting the community has meant that we have put the helicopter joy rides at risk at the Twelve Apostles. So it will be a great experience for people. They will get down there. There will be no Loch Ard Gorge to see, no arch to see, no coastal walk to go on and no helicopters to go on. All these things after 12 years have been taken from us.

We have lost seats on trains. We have lost opportunities for tourist activities on our iconic coastline, and of course all that money that has been spent, the $150 million, was not money spent on the roads. Quite simply, the missed opportunity and the reason we grieve in Victoria, and we certainly grieve hard in the seat of Polwarth, is that we had opportunities to get this right. We have spent the money, but we have spent it badly. We have spent it without wisdom. We have spent it without consultation. This government has been on a frolic and a folly of its own to the detriment particularly of the people in Winchelsea.

Another opportunity arising is for good education, and I am passionate about education. I was raised and educated in my electorate. I know the opportunities there. Good education can deliver great outcomes to the kids and the young people in my electorate. Disappointingly, can you believe that since COVID the already low attendance figures at the schools in my electorate have gotten even worse. Under this government we drive around with our Education State number plates, and yet this government’s focus on making sure that kids have the support and the reasons to turn up every day to school – they have just turned a blind eye to them. I have got schools in my electorate, my secondary schools, with 36 per cent attendance, 38 per cent attendance or in the low 40s. In fact I have only got one secondary school in my entire electorate with an attendance rate over 60 per cent. That is not something we as a state should be proud of. Twelve years of an Education State should have delivered way better outcomes than that to the students and the young people of an electorate like Polwarth.

I have been proud so far to make an announcement that we are actually going to start doing something about that in the electorate of Polwarth. We are going to look to put support to the Winchelsea school, for example. The Winchelsea school was rated one of the poorest maintained schools in the whole state, and it is in a growing community, with no plan, no horizon for its redemption. It is a great school. It has got a strong community. It has got a great teaching staff. And yet this government has expected the teachers and the kids to operate with minimal fencing. It must be the only school in the state that is on a dual-lane double highway with no 40-k zone out the front of it. It is unable to have spouting. It is riddled with asbestos. It has got possums in the classrooms. And then we go, ‘Wow, the kids in the Polwarth electorate are only turning up to school 30, 40 per cent of the time.’ That is because this government has turned its eye away from those kids and those young families in regional Victoria, and I grieve strongly about that.

One of the other great grievances that we have in the electorate of Polwarth is the way this government has turned its back on gas. As someone who has lived and worked his entire life in regional Victoria and in Polwarth, many of my communities – Colac, Camperdown, Cobden, Winchelsea – all have strived for a long time to have gas connected to their towns. They got it, and what did that mean? In the end, it means we are now the biggest producers of dairy product in the country. We produce milk for the supermarkets. Western Star Butter only this past month celebrated its 100th anniversary of being produced and made and manufactured in the electorate of Polwarth, because gas is available in Cobden. We have got the manufacturing of AKD, Associated Kiln Driers, the largest timber producer in the country. Thirty-odd per cent of the construction timber in the whole of Australia comes from the resources of that company, which needs the gas-fired kilns that it uses to produce the product. That is not only important for my community but absolutely essential for the nation as a whole. It cannot be done without gas. We have the gas line, we have the gas processing facilities and we have the infrastructure; we just have not had a government for 12 years to approve and authorise the expansion of that gas field. In fact what that has done has set back confidence and the ability of those big producers to continue to invest, because this government has refused.

A member interjected.

Richard RIORDAN: The former minister sitting up there making a little bit of a noise – she is tweeting away up there – was responsible over these 12 years for denying my community and the industries in my community the ability to invest properly, because of her self-inflicted restriction on gas.

She did not ever have any of the gas companies knock on her door and say, ‘There’s no gas.’ They had them knocking on her door saying, ‘Please give us permission to explore and develop those important gas fields that exist in the Otway Basin.’ But no, this government, the 12 years – I grieve for that. That lost opportunity has set investment and set confidence back. In fact because of that we are down to only 20 per cent of the capacity. There is huge capacity down there, which would bring the cheapest, most cost-effective gas to market in the state.

Members interjecting.

Richard RIORDAN: Absolutely. Instead we have bleaters on the other side here who have no idea where their gas comes from. They have no idea. They somehow think you can use a hair dryer to process gas and milk and other things. No, you need real energy, you need real resources. You need to have an understanding of how these things work, and sadly, that has been denied for my community.

Lauren Kathage: On a point of order, Speaker, I take offence at the blatantly sexist comment from the member for Polwarth.

The SPEAKER: Are you seeking a withdrawal? Member for Polwarth, I seek a withdrawal for the member for Yan Yean.

Richard RIORDAN: I withdraw from –

Lauren Kathage interjected.

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Yan Yean, enough.

Richard RIORDAN: I blow-dry my hair.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Polwarth’s time has expired.