Wednesday, 23 September 2026

 Anthony MARSH (Nepean) (17:31): Grievance – I mean, where do you start with this Labor government? This is my first one. I guess we will start with the Premier. The Premier wants Victorians to believe he is part of a new government. He tells us he is not Daniel Andrews, he is not Jacinta Allan. Well, he might have a different name on the office door, but he cannot rewrite the government’s record that he helped lead. Premier Carroll was not sitting on the sidelines. He was a senior minister. He was the Minister for Roads and Road Safety among many other portfolios. He was the Deputy Premier and he was a former premier’s partner in crime. He sat at the cabinet table while the scandals mounted, while the debt mounted and while our roads deteriorated and billions of dollars were poured into projects that blew their budgets. He was the second most powerful person in this Labor government, and now he wants Victorians to believe that he arrived to clean up somebody else’s mess. Well, he was instrumental in creating that very mess. Changing the name on the Premier’s door does not refund the $589 million wasted on the Commonwealth Games. It does not fix all the potholes. It does not help rebuild Rosebud Hospital in my electorate, and it certainly does not erase the decisions the Premier supported while sitting around the cabinet table.

This is the fundamental problem for this Premier. He wants the authority of an outsider coming in to clean things up when he was the ultimate insider, and there is nowhere that record is clearer than integrity. Today, the Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria began its work, and I suspect there were a few people nervous on the other side turning up this morning. For months this Premier told us Victoria did not need this royal commission. Labor resisted it, Labor blocked it, Labor dismissed it, and they attacked the idea. Then they changed leader and suddenly, almost overnight, the royal commission they said they did not need became the Premier’s first major announcement.

So what changed? The allegations did not suddenly appear in August. The concerns about corruption, criminal conduct and serious misconduct on major construction projects were already there. The opposition had been calling for a royal commission and Labor had said no. Then suddenly Labor said yes. The truth is simple: Victoria needed this royal commission all along; Labor just did not want one. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming. Fifteen billion dollars matters. In fact every dollar matters, because while billions disappeared into cost blowouts, wastes and projects plagued by corruption, communities like mine were constantly told there is no money. There is no money to rebuild the Rosebud Hospital. There is no money to finish the Flinders Pier. There is no money to properly maintain our roads and fix the potholes. Every dollar wasted is a dollar that cannot be spent in communities like mine, and when we are talking about a hospital, this is not just a line item in the budget. It can be a life-or-death choice.

Then there is IBAC. In March the opposition brought forward the follow-the-money bill into this Parliament. It would have strengthened IBAC’s ability to follow public money through contracting chains. The bill passed the Legislative Council and came into this chamber, and what did Labor do?

They killed it at the first reading, and the now Premier Ben Carroll voted it down.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Titles.

Anthony MARSH: Less than three months later Labor announced that IBAC would get follow-the-money powers. Now the Premier tells us these reforms are so important that they needed to be fast-tracked. Give us a break. In March he voted to kill them. Now he wants credit for delivering them. It is just another backflip from Backflip Ben. If these powers are so important now, why were they not important back in March?

Mary-Anne Thomas: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I understand the member has told us that this is his first contribution to a grievance, but there is no excuse for not using correct titles for members in this place.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member has twice used incorrect titles. I encourage the member to use correct titles and continue.

Anthony MARSH: Sorry, Deputy Speaker – the Premier who backflips. So why did Labor vote them down and why should Victorians believe that this government suddenly discovered a passion for integrity after almost 12 years in office?

Then we get to the special prosecutor. Labor announced it with great fanfare – Victoria’s first special prosecutor. It sounds pretty impressive, but there is just one slight problem: it is a special prosecutor with no powers to prosecute. This government’s own announcement says additional powers will come next year, so we are establishing a special prosecutor before giving the special prosecutor power to prosecute. Only this Labor government could come up with such a plan. At the moment the only thing particularly special about the special prosecutor is its inability to do what it says on the packet.

Sitting beside all of this is the public interest immunity. This Labor government was told to fix it years ago. Recommendation 91 from the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants recommended changing the law so public interest immunity could not be used to refuse to provide information, answer questions or produce documents to a royal commission. The Labor government agreed. They said they would do it, but we all know they did not. Four years later we have another royal commission, and a cover-up power is still there. Why? Because they want to be able to use it. They were told to remove the cover-up power, they agreed to remove the cover-up power and four years later they have deliberately left it sitting there.

We already know former Premier Daniel Andrews has form in this space. In 2023 when the Commonwealth Senate committee was examining the Commonwealth Games debacle, he pre-emptively claimed public interest and intergovernmental immunity to avoid any scrutiny. I suspect he will be very interested in that provision when the royal commission starts asking questions, and I suspect there might be a few other former ministers and current ministers interested in claiming that too. If this Premier is serious about transparency, he should have gotten rid of it. Do not leave an escape hatch for the very people this royal commission may need to question.

Then there is the cost of all this mismanagement. As we said, the Commonwealth Games remains one of the most extraordinary examples: more than $589 million not to hold the Commonwealth Games, but to cancel them. More than half a billion dollars, and Victoria got nothing. The Auditor-General found the original budget was unrealistically low, the business case was inadequate and agencies did not always provide frank, full and timely advice. This was more than $589 million for an event that never happened. Imagine what that money could do in our health system. Imagine what it could do for our roads. Imagine what even a fraction of it could do for my local hospital.

Then there is the SRL, the Suburban Rail Loop – billions upon billions of dollars. The Auditor-General found that, based on the available evidence, the SRL East was unlikely to be delivered within the government’s announced budget and timetable. The government published estimates of $34.5 billion, and the Auditor-General found that even that could be well over a billion dollars short.

While those billions disappear into Melbourne megaprojects, the Mornington Peninsula is told to hurry up and wait. Rosebud Hospital can wait, Flinders Pier can wait, our roads can wait, our coastline can wait, our community can wait. Well, my community has waited long enough, as has the member for Mornington on the Mornington Peninsula.

The roads should be particularly uncomfortable territory for this Premier, but now apparently roads are someone else’s problem. Ben Carroll was the Minister for Roads and Road Safety from 2020 to 2022.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Titles.

Anthony MARSH: Sorry – Premier. He recently reminded everybody that he is not the roads minister. No, he is just the Premier. Talk about a cop-out.

The Auditor-General’s report this month should embarrass every member of this Labor government. In 2021 around 39 per cent of Victorian state roads were in poor or very poor condition. That was already a pretty poor record, but by 2024 it was around 48 per cent – almost half of our roads in poor or very poor condition. The gap between defects recorded and defects repaired more than doubled between January 2025 and June 2026, and the department itself told the government the funding was insufficient to maintain or improve the network.

That was not an opposition talking point; that is the Victorian Auditor-General. They knew, and frankly people in Nepean did not need an Auditor-General to tell them any of that. They drive these roads every day. They hit the potholes. They damage their tyres and wheels and they put themselves at great risk. They report the same potholes time and time again. They watch the temporary patches fail. Motorists are sick of being told that this is not normal. They are sick of reporting potholes and watching nothing happen, and they are sick of paying the price of a government that stopped properly maintaining our roads. Apparently not everyone agrees. During a road maintenance debate in the other place in July a Labor member told the Parliament the residents on one road were ‘quite happy to have it full of potholes’ and that ‘they actually like it full of potholes’. We have all seen it. What utter nonsense. Nobody in Nepean has asked me for more potholes. Nobody has said that they want their road to fall apart as a traffic-calming measure. They want roads before they –

Mary-Anne Thomas: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, the member on his feet appears to be reading a speech.

Matthew Guy: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, I have been in the chamber and I have noted that Labor members have contributed to this grievance debate no differently to the member for Nepean. If the member for Macedon would like to set a precedent for her own members, I would be keen to see you rule on it.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is the member reading a speech or referring to notes?

Anthony MARSH: Referring to notes, like many other members opposite.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member to continue.

Anthony MARSH: The basic test also applies to community safety. People do not judge community safety by the number of press conferences this Premier holds. They judge it by what happens outside their front door and in their communities – whether their homes are broken into, their car is stolen or the kids are safe and whether local traders can close their shops at night without being threatened. Earlier this week a resident in my electorate informed me that three armed intruders broke into their house with machetes. Just last night a large group of young people caused chaos outside my electorate office in a Subway. The shop was trashed and the fight spilled out onto the street. That is not acceptable. Then, incredibly, this morning again we saw Labor vote down Jack’s law as introduced by the opposition – twice in just 12 months. Just last week the Premier announced that Labor now supported Jack’s law after resisting it and after dismissing it and after voting it down. But suddenly, just another backflip. The Premier now says that Jack’s law is so important that they will introduce it, but only after the election. They are in government today. They have the numbers today. They had the power to do good today, but they did not. They voted it down, and they are making Victorians wait until an election to give them basic safety. Why should Victorians have to wait? Why should our police have to wait? Labor could have helped get dangerous weapons off our streets today. Apparently enough changed for Labor to put Jack’s law on the election flyer, just not enough for them to vote for it in Parliament.

While Victorians are dealing with all of this, what are they getting from this tired Labor government? Another promise, and this one is extraordinary. I sat here listening earlier today to Labor member after Labor member telling Victorians about their wonderful new promise of free dental care. Not free dental care for some Victorians and not free dental care when someone is in great need and lucky enough to get an appointment – free dental care for all Victorians. That is their claim. The Premier said himself that every Victorian resident will be able to go to a free public dental clinic for a check-up every year – every Victorian every year. There are more than 7 million Victorians. How many people does Labor say these new clinics will treat every year? A little over 100,000. That is 1.4 per cent of the population. Let us do some maths, shall we? If they have the capacity for roughly 1.4 per cent of Victoria’s population every year, it will take roughly 70 years to get through the population once – not every year, once. So on average a Victorian will be waiting 35 years to get one of their free Labor dental check-ups. Maybe Labor is just hoping they have no teeth by the time they get there. It is mathematically impossible, but Labor again is more than happy to lie to the Victorian public.

I do not believe this is an accident. We are weeks out from an election, and after more than a decade in government Labor doles out promise after promise. This is just another promise built on a lie. The Premier tells 7 million Victorians they can get a free dental check-up every year, but then buried in the detail is the evidence to show that can never be the case. They hope that nobody does the maths before polling day. Perhaps we should not be surprised, but let us be honest, they know this promise is a scam. It is just another desperate attempt to cling on to power. This is the same Labor government whose own forecasts have Victoria heading towards $200 billion in net debt. Labor cannot count, or perhaps they can, but what they are really counting on is that Victorians do not notice and they do not do the numbers.

This is what happens when a tired government reaches the eleventh hour. Policy gives way to politics and delivery gives way to slogans. The numbers do not lie, and Victorians should not be lied to either. There is a common thread throughout all of this: mismanagement, backflips, desperation, cover-ups and a royal commission that was resisted but is now underway, but we all know this is the Carroll cover-up commission. Follow-the-money legislation was voted down, but now Labor wants credit for follow-the-money powers. They announced a special prosecutor who cannot prosecute. They were told to remove public interest immunity from royal commissions. Four years later, the cover-up power is still there. They spent more than $589 million on the Commonwealth Games that never happened, and half of Victoria’s state road network is in poor or very poor condition. Now they are promising 7 million Victorians can get a free dental check-up every year, knowing that is a blatant lie.

The Premier wants Victorians to believe none of this belongs to him. But he was there. He was a minister, he was Deputy Premier, he was at the cabinet table and he owns this shocking record. The consequences of that record are not abstract for my community. They are the Rosebud Hospital still waiting for the full redevelopment that it desperately needs. They are the potholes littered all across the Peninsula, wreaking havoc on our roads and on our residents. They are the taxpayers watching hundreds of millions of dollars disappear while basic infrastructure is left wanting. They are local businesses dealing with crime and antisocial behaviour, and they are families being promised things that simply do not stack up. The Premier says he is different and will do things differently. Changing the Premier does not change the record. The Premier was there. He was a minister, Deputy Premier and at the cabinet table, and he owns this shocking record. The only hope is now to boot out this shocking Labor government and give Victorians a fresh start.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I encourage members to be careful with the words ‘lie’ or ‘lying’.