Thursday, 24 September 2026

 Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (14:42): I will have a bit of a chat on the motion as well. This is probably my last contribution in this Parliament. It is fitting, I guess, to run the hypothetical bizarro world that is put forward in messages from the other side, because it is concerning. It is concerning about possibilities that may happen and hopefully do not. Thirty thousand public sector jobs being cut is by no means insignificant.

AI gets a bad rap sometimes, and fair enough. We have to be very careful. I applaud the Premier’s and ministers’ strategy that came out this week. It makes a lot of sense. Actually, while I am on that, it is those sorts of decisions that are why we need Labor governments in Victoria. Obviously there is massive investment around the world. It is not just us. Everyone is competing for the investment in AI, but at what cost? It is not just the financial cost. We see the US bond rates now going up over 5 ‍per cent, along with many other parts of the world, because they are competing for the same investment that AI is competing for. That will have an effect on all of us, amongst many other things going on in the world. Even in that competing atmosphere in an industry where we want to get that investment in Victoria, we still need to consider at what cost. Knowing we have a government that says we need to have expectations from this industry to make sure that renewable energy is provided, that grey water is used or alternatives are found and that you cannot be close to residential areas – all really important things that our communities expect us to do – I do sometimes worry about the rhetoric from others that will only focus on, say, the investment side or the profit side and not necessarily the cost side.

Talking about AI, I did a google. It is good old Adam Bandt’s best line he ever said, ‘Do a google.’ The Victorian public service is currently about 58,000 people – give or take a few – or 55,000 full-time equivalent. I am going to guess that this 30,000 figure that is projected in the figures that have been put forward by others is going to be across the wider public service. Let us give them that benefit of the doubt. That wider public service, Mr Google tells me, is 322,000, so we are talking about a cut of around about 10 per cent. What would that do? I asked Mr AI that as well. Mr AI told me – and you can do it yourself to get the finer details, Speaker; I am sure you will do that as soon as you rush home after this wonderful day – that essentially it will increase unemployment by 1 per cent in the state of Victoria. That will be the effect. What will that do in a world with investment in government bonds and AI and a world where the oil price is going up because orange people are deciding to do silly things over in other countries? We are already risking recessionary triggers for not just our state but the Western world, if you like, and the whole world. This is a proposal from others that will potentially lift the unemployment rate by 1 per cent at the same time.

I do not downplay the significance of managing debt or the benefits of an operating surplus – or, if you want to project further, others on the other side have talked about net surpluses – and we can have those discussions, but at what cost? It will be the cost to the Victorian people. It is not necessarily the people who you may think directly use the services. It is also small businesses. If you own a nail salon or if you own an IT company or if you own the milk bar down the road – there are not many milk bars left, but still there are some – your clients are the very people that are affected by these things. If unemployment goes up by 1 per cent, that affects the very people who are the ones trying to build up the economy. That does not say you cannot make sense when you are making fiscal decisions, and sometimes they will have effects that are not always positive. That is the role of government. But be very careful. Whatever happens at the end of November, we have to be very mindful of the granularity of this. When you make potentially 30,000 cuts – and presumably it will be over time; I presume no-one is silly enough to come in and do it tomorrow – it has an ongoing effect, not to mention the effect of the lack of institutional wisdom that our public service has that you will never get back.

Look at the selling off of our public entities in the 1990s – and yes, we have continued it. I am so glad the Premier has talked about bringing road services back in so we can actually employ people and have institutional wisdom and we can have a system of having apprentices move up like we used to do in the SEC – and yes, we are bringing that back too. These things are important. Forty years of outsourcing everything – I have said this before, and I will keep saying it for as long as I have the grace to be in this place – whilst increasing productivity for a lot of that time has come at a cost. It has come at a cost that we now cannot get more blood from the stone, so now it is just cost. With all this, the economic boffins will tell you, ‘Yes, we need more productivity.’ Sure – of course we need more productivity. I ran a business. You have got to make a profit. You have got to do things. You have got to be clever. You have got to make more money. But if you do not have people who can effectively live their lives and have hopes and dreams and aspirations to bring their children up, you will not have that productivity, because you have just stuffed your society in the name of an economy, and that is the danger.

If people want to understand why there are orange T-shirts with a lot of popularity around the place, maybe have a think about the last 40 years and the hope that we have taken away from a lot of people without meaning to, obviously unintentional, but that is where we are. I think the world is ready. Again, for the Premier it may seem a small thing to say that road workers will now be employed by the government, and it will take some time to get that in place. But that is a very good step, and I hope the next government, in whatever form it is in, continues that because I think the world is ready for it to understand that this sort of gold-plated history that did not quite exist in the minds of some. We might want to remind people that the top income tax rate was about 56 per cent, unions had more power, industries were owned by the people and that was the world where you could buy a house on an average wage and could raise your kids, educate them and probably have holidays in your retirement. That seems to be the world that these people want, and why wouldn’t you?

There is a lot of benefit out of the last 40 years, but we have given that away. So on the motion and the options before the Victorian people, at what cost? Consider this: this Labor government has done a lot of good for the state of Victoria and, I believe, will continue to do so. And in the last 30 seconds, I did say a bit of a thankyou in my last members statement, so indulge me. I would never acknowledge the gallery because if my wife Rebecca was sitting there that would be against the standing orders, and I could not do that. But I thank her greatly for her assistance and love her dearly wherever she may be, and we will see how we go in another four years in this place and we can both share this together.

 Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (14:52): I was listening fervently to the member for Ashwood and his contribution with a smile on my face towards the end, but with great concern whilst he was speaking at the substance, because I concur with him. It was good to hear another small business owner on this side of the chamber – there are actually several of us. There are many who seem to think that somehow amongst small business owners, we must all somehow vote for the other way, and it is simply not the case. There are a number of reasons for that, and it is a conversation I have daily with people when they say, ‘But you owned a small business, why didn’t you vote Liberal? The simple answer to that question is, first of all, my values are very Labor. They always have been, and my parents values were Labor, and they were small business owners.

The second is that the Liberals actually never did anything for small business. Not for them, not for me and not for any of us. If anyone wants some proof in that pudding, let us even just look at payroll tax in this state. Under the previous Liberal government I think maybe there was a tiny fractional move in the last of their four years that they were in government. They did nothing else for the first three. The threshold for payroll tax has been increased by our government over time, and the rate has decreased, especially for those in regional areas. So I say if anyone wants to know who is out there helping small businesses, we have actually done tangible things to assist them. And in small business it is tough – it is always tough. Well, not always. There are some out there that might find the magic unicorn small business, but like the member for Ashwood was saying, you have to be smart, you have to be clever. Just because someone wants to open a small business does not mean it is always going to succeed. I know, I lived it myself. We bought a good business. We made it even more successful. We opened up another business, and it was tough going for those two years and juggling two and a staff of 40 between the two of them at once was really quite a stretch. It nearly did me in, to be quite honest. I was on the edge, and so we sold one. As the member for Glen Waverley just said, it helped me prepare for this job. It certainly did. I tell you what, it built my resilience. You need that.

But I have to say, in small business I learned a lot of things. I also learned that you have to be deft and you have to be clever, but you cannot control the economics around you. So nothing gave me greater fear as a small business owner than watching things like petrol rise in price, because discretionary spend drops when that goes up. It was well known amongst all of us in hospitality that you would sell fewer coffees and you would sell less food when petrol went up, because people’s budgets could only stretch so far. If all of a sudden the cost of their fuel went up by $30 in that week or more, they had less to spend on the coffee or the chocolate or whatever it was that you were selling, so watching that was always nerve-racking for me.

But the thought of $40 billion being ripped out of the economy – I would not be sleeping at night now if I owned my business, because the economy, the amount of money out there, is the pie. When you are in business, you get a fraction of the pie. If you are good at what you do, you can grow the fraction, but if you are not great, the fraction shrinks; it is pretty simple. But if the actual pie itself contracts, no matter what proportion you have of it, it is going to contract as well as a percentage. Your income, the money flowing into your business, starts to wither, but your costs do not. They pretty much remain static, and that is terrifying. If there are small business owners out there thinking, ‘I want to vote Liberal because they’ll take care of me,’ they have another think coming. There should be nothing that concerns them more than an economy potentially crashing and burning because $40 billion has been ripped out of it. Because if 30,000 public service workers in this state lose their jobs, all their wages and salaries go with them, and they cannot go and get their hair cut at the local salon and they do not go out for dinner at the restaurant and they cannot go and buy the coffee. They cannot do the basics, or they can only just meet the basics if they are lucky. For the small businesses relying on those people to have money to come and spend at them, all of a sudden, as I say, that pie will have shrunk, and their doors close. It is very, very hard.

For people working in construction, the tradies out there I have been speaking with, thinking that life will be grand when $40 billion comes out of the economy, I remember what happened in the recession of the 1980s. I remember my friends whose dads were tradies, and they lost their houses. I remember it as a kid. It was visceral and real, and there was fear amongst them all. Our next-door neighbour was an accountant. He ended up driving for Pizza Hut delivering pizzas. He lost his job in the city. My other friend’s dad was a plumber; his business crashed and died. I cannot express to people how dangerous it is. The proposed cuts from the Liberal Party, some Institute of Public Affairs dream that they are enacting as their policy, should cause concern for everyone in this state.

I was listening also to the member for Ashwood talking about bringing roads back in. I am thrilled that we are talking about government once again directly employing people to do the job, because in the fever dream of neoliberalism, of Thatcher, of Reagan, of the 1980s and 90s, which spread like some kind of virus across the Western world, everything that was sown then, those rotten seeds, we are reaping now, and it is terrible. It is terrible for all of us. We have seen it with the privatisation of energy. We ended up paying more and got a terrible service instead. The SEC was listed as one of the best electricity systems in the world at the time. I have spoken about it before here; I have put it into Hansard. I do not have it to hand now, but I can tell you it was revered internationally for how robust it was. Our energy supply was reliable. Do you know what happened when Kennett and the Liberals privatised it and they sold the poles and the wires off? There were so many good contingencies built into the SEC that if the power tripped, if there was an issue along the line, there was a contingency, a backup, a plan B that kicked in like that. Then when they privatised it, those companies that bought the poles and wires stripped out the contingencies to store them in a shed as spare parts. Then the brownouts started and the blackouts started and people started to go, ‘Why am I paying more for energy that’s no longer flowing into my house the way it used to?’

The fever dream of neoliberalism has turned into an absolute nightmare and we are all living it now. We have seen it bear fruit. For us to talk about putting direct employment of roads back into government hands should bring joy to the people of Victoria, because it means we will have direct oversight. We will be employing people who will take absolute pride in the work that they do, and we will have that direct oversight. As we pay these people to do the work, we will be able to see it, they will work for government and it will be secure. They will not have to be filling out their ABNs and their BAS reports. They will not have to worry about that, because they will have dignified jobs directly employed by this government. That is a fabulous thing. I am thrilled with where we are going in that direction, can I say.

But back to where I started, we should be very, very worried about what the state of Victoria’s economy looks like if the Liberal–One Nation coalition gets their way and slashes our budgets, because people will hurt. The hairdresser down my street in Belgrave will not have people flowing through the door like she does now – and she is fabulous, by the way; shout-out to you, Caz – because people will have less to spend. The physiotherapists out there – all of a sudden people who need to see a physio are not going to be able to go for their monthly tune-up. If they are lucky, maybe it is once every six months when they can scrape the money together again, because they have lost their jobs out of the public service. For every frontline worker left there – every nurse, every teacher, every person out there who needs backup support staff: do not take comfort from the fact that they are saying to you on that side of the chamber that your frontline job will be saved, because who will be left to do all the work that supports you in the background? No-one. Which means every frontline worker will be doing double the work they did for no more pay, and they will somehow have to keep delivering their frontline service while they are scrambling in the background to do the work that the previous support people used to do for them, because they are gone.

You cannot rip out 31,000 public service jobs and expect that service delivery in this state will be the same. People will suffer. The waiting lists will increase for elective surgery. Children will not get the attention they need at school. Where we are right now: our NAPLAN results for two years in a row are leading the nation. That is fabulous. It is not going to be the same if we are ripping out support staff from the public school sector. No way. It cannot. It does not work that way. Anyone thinking that the plan from those opposite is somehow clever, that it is some great way for our state to go forward, really needs to seriously consider what it looks like. I am very concerned about it. I am incredibly concerned. I do not say this for theatre; it is not antics. It is a deeply held fear that I have. I sincerely hope the people of Victoria think very carefully and very clearly about the choice they make at this election. I sincerely hope they do, because the alternative is frightening. I commend the motion to the house.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (15:02): Thirty thousand jobs and what that would look like for our state. Something that I think about almost every day is the historic outcome for our state with treaty and the treaty process. We actually had a meeting the other day, an historic meeting between cabinet and Gellung Warl, and we saw the two come together in unity, recognising the importance of a future shared, of working collaboratively and of driving much better outcomes across the board for everyone in our state through that unity of spirit. We know, and those opposite have already said very clearly, that one of the first things to go, should they be elected, would be treaty. I actually feel sick to the stomach when I think about that and when I think of so many years of advocacy on the part of our First Nations peoples and the truth-telling process, which was very important. It would have been extremely painful to share those stories, but they were necessary, and they are part of the healing of our country. All that incredible work, only to have it sliced just like that. It would be like a dagger to the heart, to be honest, and I am not exaggerating.

The duplicity, though – when I go to citizenship ceremonies and I have members of the Liberal Party go there and talk about 65,000 years of history et cetera, knowing full well they will come back in here and go, ‘Slice the treaty.’ I think to myself: do they actually mean anything that they say at that citizenship ceremony when they are feigning to acknowledge the importance of 65,000 years of history, all the while saying, ‘If we get elected’ – and that will be shared with One Nation, and we all know the position of One Nation when it comes to First Nations peoples, and it is not a pretty one – ‘we will slice and dice it, and that is okay’? There is not a lot of deliberation and consideration in those comments. It is harsh. I personally think, and I know everyone on our side, let alone our First Nations peoples, thinks – and I cannot reflect for every single person of course, that would not be appropriate, but those that I know would be absolutely devastated.

I know certainly in my seat, the seat of Albert Park, indeed there is strong recognition and respect for treaty and what it means. It should not be about an us and them. It is a shared, important process and a constructive way of moving forward. That is what really backs it in. That framework means that it has appropriate governance, it has structure and it has a purpose. Any of the cuts are going to have drastic ramifications. On a very personal level I am reflecting, but I know that my colleagues will share this despair at the thought that treaty could and would be at risk. And it would, because I have heard a number of times in the chamber those opposite quite emphatically say, ‘If we get elected, treaty’s gone.’ I think on many levels, fiscally but also emotionally, that would be absolutely devastating for our state, and it would be a step backwards. The hope is that in Victoria that step forward could then be shared across the country and actually inspire other states to move forward – I think there is some movement in South Australia – but more broadly that we can move ahead as a nation. I think that sometimes, rather than seeing it as just a cost, we know self-determination is critical in terms of empowerment and in terms of driving real outcomes when we are talking about employment pathways but also health and other basic and fundamental elements that we all should value.

I know when I was Parliamentary Secretary for Education I had the great privilege of attending many wonderful educational events on behalf of the now Premier. One of them was specifically about targeted work from our government through – and I say this – honouring the self-determination of those employed specifically, First Nations people, to provide targeted support to help more First Nations people reach year 12 and complete full schooling to drive better outcomes for the future. I could see some of the most beautiful outcomes as a result of empowerment and constructive processes targeted to drive the best possible outcomes. Of course education is a gift, but it should not only be a gift. It is something that we expect all Victorians to have the right to: a good-quality education.

On that note, I will say that thanks to Labor’s investments, Victoria’s students and schools are leading the nation. We have opened – well, it says here over 100 schools, but it is actually 121 schools. I note that it is Labor in the seat of Albert Park who have built the schools there, because if we had left it to those opposite, it would have been absolutely dire: South Melbourne Park Primary School, South Melbourne Primary School and Port Melbourne Secondary College. Narrarrang Primary School is the latest one, built with a kinder onsite, so it is also recognising that for parents the double drop-off can be quite convoluted and so simplifying those processes. I was actually at Narrarrang Primary School the other day with the Minister for Children, and they were talking about how there can be a really beautiful and supportive transition by having the kinder onsite with the school. They can take the kids gently to see the school, to get familiarised with it and to understand that connectivity and that transition in their lives. It is a little less intimidating but also something to look forward to as they mature. Free kinder is certainly something that we have backed all the way because on this side of the house we value education and we also value equity of opportunity.

The government and the AEU have reached an agreement that means that Victorian teachers are the best paid in the country, with the best conditions. According to the most recent NAPLAN data, Victorian students are leading the nation for a second year in a row. I can say that when the Liberals were last in power this was not the case. Again, this is the result of strategic and constructive backing in of our teachers and helping them to do what they do best and helping Victorian students to achieve their dreams and realise their best outcomes. I should say Victoria is ranked in the top two in 16 of 20 ‍measures, cementing our status as the Education State. But I lament that with 3000 cuts, sure as eggs, those cuts will be in our schools, in health – you name it, across the board. To be able to achieve the $40 billion worth of cuts, they are going to have to go far and wide. As has been stated already in the chamber, the ramifications would be fierce – longer hospital wait times, fewer nurses and fewer hospital beds. It will mean communities are less safe, and it will mean local infrastructure cuts. We know they are good for it. They have done it before; they will do it again. As a state we cannot risk a Liberal–One Nation government because of the devastating impact that it would have on our state.

There is one other point I want to make on something that always mystifies me. I am just going to do a little tangent into energy, because it is a secret passion of mine. Everyone is dependent on it. We all need it to stay warm and all the rest of it. We know that those opposite have already said they will sell off the SEC. What will that mean for the hip pocket of the average –

A member interjected.

Nina TAYLOR: It will mean nuclear, and we know there is no social licence for that. But what would this reckless political decision do? It would send bills skyrocketing by over $500 a year. It would destroy the reliability of the grid – I must dispel this baseload myth – and deprive regional Victoria of almost $10 billion in investment and thousands of jobs. I am coming back to the original premise of this motion, and that is: what do the cuts of 30,000 jobs look like? It certainly would deprive regional Victoria of thousands of jobs in the energy sector, let alone other sectors that we have discussed here. I think that would be absolutely devastating for our state. But there is a way through this, and the way through this is actually to vote Labor. Then you do not have to worry about all that, because we are backing it in. We are backing in the SEC, we are backing in education, we are backing in health and we are backing in transport. That is who we are. And we are backing in treaty.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): For the last time, member for Melton.

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (15:12): Thank you, Acting Speaker, and do not rub it in. I was not expecting to get up, and it took me a bit to get out of the seat. I was actually nearly nodding off there, with apologies to the member for Albert Park.

Nina Taylor interjected.

Steve McGHIE: It was a great contribution. It was not you. It was just a late night last night. I have to apologise for that. If I told you about my late nights here, this speech would go longer than 10 ‍minutes, I can tell you. We have had a few. I just hope that if the opposition do win the election they do not sack – I should not call them barmaids and bartenders and things like that – the people that run hospitality places, because that would really disappoint us. They are really good jobs, secure jobs and hopefully with good wages. When you go out in Melbourne each night when you are here, it is just fantastic. It is just amazing.

A member interjected.

Steve McGHIE: And in Melton too. There is good nightlife in Melton. But anyway, I am rising to speak on this motion, which of course is about something that matters to every family in my electorate of Melton, and that is jobs. Melton is the fastest growing area in the metro region, with another 200,000 ‍people coming into Melton over the next 20 years, which will double the population. All of those people will rely on jobs. They are going to be buying into the housing market or paying rent, and all of them will rely on jobs. We have a lot of people that work in the public sector in Melton. They are quite concerned about what is being proposed by the opposition. Jobs are not just about numbers. It is about security. It is about families being able to pay their mortgage or pay their rent, put food on the table and have a day out with the kids or even take their kids to sport or go away on a holiday, like some families are at the moment with the school holidays. That is what jobs are all about ‍– that security. People can plan longer term with the security of their job. It gives them independence. It gives them a purpose. It gives them dignity, and it can have an enormous impact on a person’s wellbeing and their mental health – having, again, a good job, good security and good pay. Thank God for the unions, the mighty trade union movement, for supporting workers in their wages and conditions, and they will continue to do that. Let us hope they do that well and keep securing people’s jobs. No doubt the public sector unions will fight very, very hard if they see any cuts in jobs.

I am concerned by what we are hearing from those opposite, and that is about the cuts to Victorian jobs. The prediction is about 30,000 jobs, even though the opposition say it will be through natural attrition. I will tell you about a bit of my history in the ambulance industry in regard to natural attrition and how they cut public sector jobs. Back in the Kennett era they cut a lot of public sector jobs, including ambulance jobs. They were the most senior paramedics within the industry. What they did is that they did a restructure and they changed the job titles and made station officers and assistant station officers apply for their own positions. A lot of these people had been in the industry for 20 and 25 years, the most experienced paramedics in the state of Victoria and the most capable paramedics in the state of Victoria. We are talking about this happening in 1993. What happened was they took these station officers and assistant station officers away. They changed their title to team manager. They made them apply for the new classification. They took them away in a brainwashing campaign. Most of those people put in for a redundancy because they did not think they would be selected for their jobs. What it did, effectively, is cut the number of people that worked on the road in the ambulance industry. That is how you get job reductions in the public sector. You change titles; you change classifications. You make people apply for their own positions that they have held for many, many years knowing that they are not going to be selected. That is what happens, and that is what will happen in the public sector if the opposition get into government.

The Liberals and Nationals have said it is just a hiring freeze, which they claim will deliver something like $22 billion in savings. Independent analysis by the Australia Institute has examined those numbers, and it concluded that achieving the $22 billion in savings through public service job reductions would require around 31,700 jobs to be eliminated. The opposition dispute the suggestion that its policy amounts to cuts on that scale. It says its announced policy would reduce the Victorian public service by only 7184 full-time equivalent positions through attrition. Even if the opposition’s figures were right, nearly 7200 positions are still a lot of positions. That is a lot of people that are out of work. That is a lot of families that will suffer, let alone the local communities around those families. And who knows, as I say, if historically what happened in the past was to happen again, to transpire again, with people fighting for positions that they have held for a long, long time just because they have changed the title or the classification. The opposition say 7000 jobs or just over 7000. The Australia Institute says it will be 31,700 jobs. There is a big difference, a big discrepancy there. I think the community need to consider that when they go to the polls in November. Reducing the workforce at that scale, as I say, has an effect, even if the opposition’s figures were right at 7000-odd. Again, what is the broader network in regard to those affected? Kids, families, school communities, local communities and local businesses are all affected because of the reduction in jobs, job security and income. Then also a number of those people will end up on Centrelink entitlements. How demoralising is that for some of those families that had secure work but then are out of that secure work.

You can see with the investment by our government over the last 12 years what has been delivered. If you have been driving towards Melton in recent times, there are 13 cranes on the skyline. It is unheard of, never been seen before. It is flatland. We have got roofs of houses, but now we have 13 cranes.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Steve McGHIE: My favourites are the six cranes at the hospital site, all coloured, absolutely glorious. Get out there at night. It is almost like real entertainment at night in Melton. We have got the coloured cranes at night, 13 cranes in Melton. It is just incredible. I think we have got more cranes in Melton than we have got in the city at the moment. It is really good.

It just goes to show what is being built in Melton. We have got a major hospital being built that will house 300 beds. It will be the most magnificent thing. I see the member for Footscray here. She has got the best hospital in the world, which has just been opened. It is five-star. You could not get a hospital better than that – if not a hotel better than that. A few of us have stayed in the hotels in the city here, and I will tell you what, I would rather stay in the Footscray Hospital.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Steve McGHIE: Give it a chance; I might make it. I know which room I want. I want the room overlooking the Flemington Racecourse in November. We will be right. We will get there.

The investment at Melton has been enormous in my time of eight years, with the Melton hospital, four level crossing removals, the new Melton station and six brand new public schools, and every other independent, non-government school has received an enormous amount of funding from our government to upgrade their facilities and build new campuses. Out of that there are thousands of jobs locally and thousands of apprenticeships locally. That money is retained within Melton for local businesses. That is what it means – investment by government to create jobs, to give people security, to give families money to enjoy themselves and to be able to spend money on what they want to spend their money on, not only just on mortgages and food and things like that but on entertainment.

Local sport is so important nowadays, and sport is not cheap. To put kids into sporting clubs and things like that is expensive for families. I have got to say the Get Active Kids vouchers are enormous. I think it is about the fifth time that we have run that program, and it is enormous. The take-up is enormous.

Secure work is important. Slashing 30,000 jobs is critical. The community need to consider that come November – the difference between the two sides of politics. It is about whether people want to be secure at work and be able to bring in a good income to be able to support their families. If they do, they need to vote Labor, and if they do not, then they are stupid. It is simple. I commend the motion.

 Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (15:22): It is a pleasure to follow the member for Melton. Thank you for your friendship and your learnings. You offer so much to this place. I have only known you for a short time, but it has been a good time. You have created a lot of memories for everyone here, and I look forward to a continued friendship, even though you will not be in this place.

A member interjected.

Eden FOSTER: Oh, yes, one of the privileges that many of us have had, particularly on this side, and I am sure many on that side as well, is being McGhie-ed. I will not go into detail as to what that looks like or define that. But, Hansard, I am happy to spell that for you later on. I digress. I just wanted to acknowledge the great member for Melton and the hard work that he has put into this place and in his former work as a paramedic as well. Thank you.

I stand here today in support of this motion and really to condemn the 30,000 jobs that will likely be cut under a coalition government. The choice before Victorians at this upcoming election could not be more stark, nor could the stakes for working families be any higher. On one side we have an opposition shackled to their junior partners in One Nation, marching to an extreme agenda that demands $40 billion in ruthless budget cuts and the outright sacking of at least 30,000 hardworking public sector employees. On this side, though, stands the Victorian Labor government, a government rooted in the community, proven in our delivery and unshakeably committed to standing shoulder to shoulder with working people.

Let us examine what those opposite mean when they talk about fiscal discipline. It is code for dismantling the social fabric of our state. When the Liberals were last in government, their bloodthirst for cuts saw them slash a billion dollars from our healthcare system. They went to war with nurses and paramedics. They shut 22 TAFE campuses and threw over 3000 vocational education staff into the scrap heap. They cut $130 million from Victoria Police and $66 million from our fire services. They have form, they have a history, and as independent economists have confirmed, their current $40 billion savings target is a mathematical fiction that can only be achieved by swinging a wrecking ball through our schools, our hospitals and our frontline emergency services.

When the member for Kew admits openly on TV that current spending is not sustainable and that schools will not be built or fixed, we must listen to what she is telling us. The Liberal coalition with One Nation based their policy of cutting one in seven public servant jobs on ripping money from our health care, from our education, from our public transport, from all of those services that Victorians need. It means fewer allied health professionals, fewer child protection workers protecting vulnerable children and fewer forest firefighters to keep our country towns safe. Worse still, look at who they choose to partner with. The coalition and One Nation are joined at the hip. In the other place the One Nation member has already voted in lockstep with the Liberals for spending caps that force deep cuts to public services. One Nation’s agenda is an Americanised race to the bottom. They want to privatise our hospitals, abolish the Department of Health, rip away penalty rates and paid parental leave and saddle regional communities with nuclear powerplants in our food bowls and near our waterways.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Eden FOSTER: That could kill people, member for Point Cook. The poor people of Narracan could be vulnerable. When working people needed a voice, One Nation has sided with the boss every single time – voting against industrial manslaughter laws, voting against protecting tradies from deadly silica dust and voting against same job, same pay. In stark and proud contrast, the Victorian Labor government has spent the last decade building a fairer, stronger and more resilient state. We know that a strong economy and a fair society go hand in hand. That is why we have added over 674,000 jobs since 2020 – leading the nation – and grown our economy to be 28.7 per cent larger than it was when we first came into office.

Look at how we support families across every stage of their lives. When it comes to regional support and infrastructure, we are upgrading and building regional hospitals, ensuring families receive world-class care close to home regardless of where they live. Closer to my home and closer to the home of the community of Mulgrave, we have put money into building the world-class heart hospital, we have upgraded Dandenong Hospital and we are upgrading Monash hospital. With regard to fair work and workplace rights, Labor has always backed the worker. We stand firmly for job security, fair wages and safe workplaces, rejecting the race-to-the-bottom mentality of the coalition parties. When it comes to early childhood and free kinder, we have delivered free kinder for three- and four-year-olds, and we are giving every child the best start in life while easing the cost-of-living burden on working parents. Just in my electorate we have had the Ngalambi early learning centre open this year and soon we will see the Carwatha learning centre open as well at Carwatha P–12. Community safety and emergency services have also been things that we have invested in. Unlike the Liberals who slashed police and fire budgets, we continue to invest heavily in our police, emergency services personnel and dedicated frontline workers to keep our neighbourhoods safe, and we are seeing this investment come to fruition. We are seeing the outcomes of it, with recent data showing that Mulgrave crime rates are down by 7.2 ‍per cent.

In the couple of minutes that I have, I want to just continue to make my contrast between this side of the government and those opposite and their coalition partners, One Nation – a choice that people have on 28 November We have heard that there will be cuts to education under a One Nation–Liberal coalition. We heard the thought bubble of bringing nuclear to Victoria if Pauline Hanson gets her foot in the door here. We have heard about the abolishment of the Department of Health if she comes into this state and joins forces with the Liberals. It would be detrimental to Victoria. Victorians have a choice, and I know Victorians are intelligent people. They will think wisely at the end of this year. They will make a wise choice for their families, their communities, their schools and their hospitals and for public transport. They will make the best choice. I trust in Victorians to do the right thing by other Victorians and vote wisely, because what is to come is a concern if there is a Liberal–One Nation coalition. It scares me as someone of colour. As a woman of colour, having One Nation trickle into this Parliament would be concerning. It would breed hate and it would breed division. My community is one of the most culturally diverse communities we have in this state, and I am concerned for their safety, their wellbeing and their mental health. So I urge Victorians: stand with one another, vote Labor and support a government that has invested in its people, that has contributed to this state significantly over the last years and has had to do so because cuts were made in previous terms under Liberal–National governments. If a Liberal–One Nation government comes into force at the end of this year, that will be detrimental to the people of Mulgrave and the people of Victoria. I commend this motion.

 Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD (Broadmeadows) (15:32): I rise in support of this motion, because what is at stake in this election in November is not an abstract line in a budget paper; it is a nurse finishing a night shift at Broadmeadows Hospital, it is a police officer walking the platform at Broadmeadows station, it is a teacher at Glenroy College helping a student find their path, and it is the route 536 bus that finally runs on a Sunday. It is every service that families in my community rely on, often at the hardest moments of their lives. Behind every hospital bed there is a nurse, and behind every nurse there is a roster that either has enough people on it or does not. Public services are not a cost to be trimmed, they are a promise we make to each other as a community that when you are sick, someone will care for you; when you are in danger, someone will come; and when your child walks through the school gate, someone will be there to teach them, to guide them and to hold their hand.

That promise is the opposite to what the opposition are putting on the table. The Liberals have announced a plan that requires more than $40 billion in cuts in its first five years. That is the Liberals’ plan. If they have to make a coalition with One Nation, which we know they will have to –

John Mullahy interjected.

Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD: One notion – they are, yes, but hopefully they never get to put one motion in this house. We know how divisive and hateful they are. We have seen the worst of the worst, but we can only imagine how much worse it could be.

The Liberals have announced a plan that requires more than $40 billion in cuts in the first five years. You do not find $40 billion on the back of a couch. You do not find it by trimming the stationery budget or cancelling a few consultancies. You find it only in the places a state budget has that kind of money – in the people who deliver our frontline services and in the projects that build our communities. The Leader of the Opposition has made it clear she wants to cut one in seven public service jobs. Can you imagine? That means at least 30,000 Victorians who keep our hospitals, schools, police stations and kinders running.

We have heard that they want to bring out a budget around Christmas time, like 30,000 of our families are going to find out they do not have work just over Christmas, and what a horrible Christmas present to receive from those people opposite and from their cronies in One Nation, and that will be the start of the disaster. Let us be very clear about who the people are that will suffer. The public sector is not some faceless office tower in the city. It is a ward clerk who makes sure your mum’s surgery is booked, it is the education support worker who sits behind a child with disabilities so that they can learn alongside their friends, it is a maternal and child health nurse, the TAFE teacher, the transit officer and the police administrator whose work keeps a police officer out on the beat instead of sitting behind a desk. When those opposite say, ‘Cut the public service’, they mean cut the people who make our services work.

Let me turn to what this would mean, starting with our hospitals – longer hospital wait times. In this year’s budget, the Labor government is providing a record $32 billion to our health system, including $3.9 billion in new investment. That includes a new fast track so children can see a specialist and get surgery sooner, and we know that if that does not happen, the lifelong impacts on them are profound. We know that with wait times for children in particular, they can miss out on some of those developmental milestones because they are in pain or because they are not able to participate in the things they want to do. So that fast track to see specialists and get surgery sooner will make a massive difference to their life and their trajectory.

We have opened the new Frankston hospital and the new Footscray Hospital, with hundreds of new beds, new operating theatres and capacity for tens of thousands more patients every year. We are building and upgrading hospitals across the state because demand is growing, our population is growing and people deserve care close to home. I have been out to the Northern Hospital a number of times with –

Brad Rowswell: Acting Speaker, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

Quorum formed.

Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD: I was talking about the recent visits we have made to the Northern Hospital. In fact I have made a lot of visits to the northern hospitals and, sadly, too many visits to hospitals in my life. I have spoken in this place before about my dad and his spinal injury and the incredible health care he got both at the Royal Melbourne Hospital but also at Caulfield rehab, and in the many years since I unfortunately have had three very complicated pregnancies. I cannot fault the health service that our state has provided over many years. When you are in the worst of times it is our nurses, it is our doctors, it is all of the care providers in the system who look after us.

When I was an adviser for ageing and carers, I saw firsthand how incredibly hard our aged-care workers work. We have got in the state public aged-care system nurse-to-patient ratios which work so well to keep people safe, and they did such a good job during COVID. It was so, so hard in the aged-care sector right across the board. We know the importance of having adequate and skilled staff, and we know that that sort of stuff gets cut. That is the first thing they cut, and I bet you it will be public aged-care beds and services that they will cut first, because they are heartless.

Back to the Northern Hospital, I have been there with a number of colleagues. The work there is incredible. It is still the busiest emergency department, I think, in the Southern Hemisphere. My sister works there with all of her incredible colleagues. They work so hard. They do such a good job. They often have some of the most complex cases. We are expanding it. We are doubling the size. We are building a whole new emergency department. We went out to see the ambulatory care centre. It looks incredible. All the workers were so happy to be working there. They could not wait to officially get their new patients in the next day.

There are so many things to be proud of that this government has achieved. The biggest worry for me is that if we are not in government again, we know how all of that can be gone in a second, gone with a stroke of the pen, gone at Christmas time when Jess Wilson brings out the scissors and cuts 30,000 ‍jobs. All of those families –

Brad Rowswell: On a point of order, I just want the chamber to note, Acting Speaker, that my degree of tolerance and self-restraint has had the opportunity to be expanded in the circumstances.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): What is the point of order?

Brad Rowswell: The point of order is that the correct use of parliamentary titles is within standing orders, and I would ask you to remind the member on her feet of that requirement.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): I remind all members to use correct titles while they are on their feet.

Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD: I apologise for not using correct titles. I am incredibly concerned, though, about a potential new Liberal–One Nation government coming in and cutting health services and 30,000 jobs potentially at Christmas. Instead of cutting out wrapping paper, you will be using the scissors on all sorts of things – not ribbons, 30,000 jobs going. No presents to wrap for those 30,000 families – people going without care.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD: Yes, coal in the stocking. That is absolutely right. It is really not something to laugh about. It is incredibly concerning to me – the cuts in the health system in particular, the cuts in police numbers, the cuts in ambulance services, all of the things that we rely on.

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (15:42): I am very pleased to follow my good friend and electoral neighbour the member for Broadmeadows in supporting this motion, which states:

That this house notes that the Liberals have committed to cutting $40 billion from the budget, requiring at least 30,000 public sector jobs to be cut, devastating the frontline services Victorians rely on, meaning:

(a)   longer hospital wait times;

(b)   fewer nurses and hospital beds;

(c)   less police; and

(d)   cuts to local infrastructure.

On every single one of those metrics, you better believe it, at this election all of these things and so many more are on the ballot paper. We are a welcoming, inclusive, vibrant state, and I want Victoria to remain that way economically, socially, and culturally as well. As someone who is a member of the Victorian Labor government, which was elected back in 2014, we have continued to do the things that matter for every single Victorian and every single Victorian household when it comes to the cost of living, job creation, education, transport services, health and wellbeing services, community sport investment, major events, tourism and visitor economy, real action on the environment, climate change and renewable energy, and also when it comes to matters around social justice, community safety, prevention of family violence and so much more. We have been very clear all the way through as a government that these are the things that are a priority for government, but they are also a priority of course for the community. They have been on the ballot paper every single time we have gone to an election – in 2014, 2018, 2022 and again in 2026.

To be perfectly frank, we really do not know to a large extent where the Liberal–National–One Nation coalition stands on many of these things because they have been silent on a lot of these things. They have been silent intentionally, because just as much as you need to look at what people say and what political parties say, you also need to look at what they do not say. There has been a deafening silence, I have got to say, from many members on that side of the chamber with respect to where they stand in terms of, should they form government, how and where they would be investing in these areas. They have been silent because they have no intention to invest more in any of these areas. The reality is if they were to come to government, there would be $40 billion in cuts at a minimum across the Victorian state budget. They are absolutely kidding themselves if they believe this is not going to impact frontline services. The maths has been done that it is at least one in seven public servant jobs that will go. That will have a devastating impact on frontline services right across the public service, hospitals, police stations, schools, classrooms and so much more. They have no intention of investing in these things that matter, I have got to say.

On the contrary, we have continued to invest since 2014. We have created almost 900,000 jobs; I believe it is in the order of about 600,000 that have been created following on from the pandemic years to today. That is because we have been investing in all the frontline services – that is more doctors, that is more nurses, that is more police officers, that is more people working in the community and social services spaces. It is in the construction sector. Many of our big infrastructure projects have generated thousands of good, well-paying jobs for good, ordinary working people, men and women, that have built the Metro rail tunnel, which the opposition opposed and would not have built; that are building the North East Link, which the opposition and Liberal Party never would have built; and that have delivered in the order of 100 level crossings, four of which are in my community at Moreland Road, Munro Street, Reynard Street and Bell Street. The two stations, Coburg station and Moreland station, created jobs. Again, the opposition never would have delivered those level crossings through the project on the Upfield line. Whether it is the new hospitals; the upgrades that are happening at the Northern that the member for Broadmeadows was talking about, which services my community; the upgrades at the Austin Hospital in the member for Ivanhoe’s electorate, which also services my community; or the ongoing investments in the Royal Children’s, the Royal Melbourne, the Royal Women’s and that whole Parkville precinct, which is so important and employs many people from my community – that never would have happened under the opposition.

In community sport we have upgraded the Cole Reserve precinct for the Coburg Districts footy club, with $1.25 million to provide a new outdoor playing surface, new lighting and greater facilities. Again, that never would happen under a Liberal–National–One Nation coalition. We have upgraded local schools. The amount of funding we have delivered for local schools I am particularly proud of, because I grew up at a time in the 1990s when we had a Kennett Liberal government in this chamber that decided to close hundreds of schools across our community. Twelve of those schools were closed in my community of Merri-bek, and one of those schools they decided to shut, sell off and demolish was the original Coburg High School that my older brother and sister used to go to prior to its closure. The school was sold and closed, and that meant a generation – mine – really did not have a viable local high school for much of the 1990s. We had to go to other schools as a result of that decision. That was one of the big decisions that really got me interested in politics, because I realised very quickly, for better or worse, that governments have a huge impact on the life chances of local communities.

Fast-forward to today and it is a Labor government that is investing almost $18 million, the biggest ever investment, in the new Coburg High School, which was reopened from 2015 onwards with about 250 kids originally. There are over 1300 students enrolled now, as of this year. We are delivering a new $18 million technology hub which we are looking to open before caretaker, but it is probably more likely going to be in November or December that I will hopefully be able to cut the ribbon on that new technology hub. There is $6.1 million for Merri-bek Primary School to help them deliver their concept master plan – a beautiful school community. Again, it is an investment that never would have happened under those opposite – or the Greens, I might say, who never would have been able to deliver that investment. It is a Labor government that is providing that funding and will see that project through. We have delivered funding, $22.5 million, to build the new Coburg Special Developmental School, a brand new school in the heart of Coburg, and so much more.

But it is on so many other metrics as well that we continue to invest and support our community, including in our community sporting clubs. I just want to congratulate, on that note, as the Parliamentary Friends of Football here in this chamber with the member for Hawthorn, the Brunswick Juventus Football Club on their senior men’s side recently being promoted to the top flight of Victorian football. We are supporting grassroots football, and the opposition would never support and invest in that matter. But these are the clubs we are investing in, these are the community groups that we are investing in and those opposite simply would not be in any way, shape or form.

When it comes to transport too, I am very pleased to say that we have introduced more services on the Upfield and the Craigieburn lines. This is something I have been campaigning for for a very long time with the member for Broadmeadows and my other northern suburbs colleagues. We have introduced, as of August, 20-minute services from first train to last train – on average every 20 minutes or better. Again, that is a huge uplift from the previous situation – which was an average service outside of the peak period of 30 to 40 minutes – that we have managed to deliver. We have started to roll out the new X’Trapolis 2.0 trains that are proudly being built in Ballarat, creating local jobs in Victoria. Again, the contrast there is very simple: the opposition would never invest in the Upfield or the Craigieburn lines, and they have said they are going to build new trains in Barcelona, not in Ballarat. We have removed those level crossings, but we have also got the business case and the planning underway for further upgrades through the northern rail corridor study, because we know we need to do more to continue improving the Upfield corridor.

On buses I am so proud of the investments we have made – through a lot of community advocacy, I might add. The 526 bus to North Coburg will be running every 20 minutes, seven days a week, including on Sundays for the first time. The 508 bus from Brunswick West will run every 15 minutes during weekday peaks, with weekend services doubled to every 20 minutes and extended services running until midnight Monday to Saturday. The 503 bus in Brunswick West will have an additional 25 weekly services and 20-minute weekday frequencies outside peak times. The 561 bus from Pascoe Vale to La Trobe University will have increased weekday peak and weekend frequencies, and the 542 ‍bus in Pascoe Vale will receive a full service uplift from Monday to Saturday, with Sunday services extended to 10 pm.

When it comes to trams, again the contrast is very stark. On this side we are investing $115 million to redevelop the Brunswick tram depot, which is at the heart of our local Brunswick tram network. It will help to almost double our tram stabling capacity once completed. I thank the community for their patience during the roadworks. We have had different times when Sydney Road and Moreland Road have been closed to through traffic. That is all going to be completed by the start of October. We have got funding in the budget this year to start planning for accessible tram stops along Sydney Road, which is the first step towards finally delivering accessible stops down Sydney Road. We are progressively rolling out the first of the 50 new Melbourne G-class trams. They will be firstly rolled out for my community along route 58 on Melville Road, but the Brunswick tram depot project will help boost services along Sydney Road route 19, Moreland Road route 6 and Nicholson Street’s route ‍1 too.

When it comes to environmental action, we continue to invest, whether it is in Moonee Ponds Creek, Merri Creek, Edgars Creek or the container deposit recycling scheme, which is going gangbusters across my community. Or community safety – more police, PSOs and police reservists. We are taking real action on serious crime and the root causes of crime. That is what is at stake at this election.

 Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (15:53): I rise to support this motion. The opposition has promised a $40 billion cut to the state budget, including $22 billion from the public sector alone. The Liberals and the Nationals say they can achieve that through a hiring freeze on back office roles, without redundancies and while protecting essential services. But analysis from the Australia Institute disputes that. It estimates that delivering those savings would mean around 31,700 fewer positions by 2036–37. That is an enormous number, and there is a very human side to it. In my role, I meet with public service workers across so many areas of government, and so often somewhere in that conversation one of them will say to me, ‘Actually, Kat, I’m one of your constituents.’

Public servants are a core part of the community that I represent, so when we talk in this place about tens of thousands of jobs disappearing, I know there are people in my community listening and wondering whether we are talking about them. Losing a job can turn a family’s life upside down. It can mean suddenly worrying about the mortgage or rent, updating a CV you never expected to need and wondering what comes next and how you are going to provide stability for the people you love. For someone who has spent years building a career in public service, there is more at stake than the pay cheque. There is the loss of colleagues, expertise and work that often gives them a real sense of purpose and meaning. So when I hear 31,000 jobs being discussed as an efficiency measure, I think about the people I meet every day – the person sitting across the table from me talking about women’s health, family violence, energy or education. Those are the people behind this number. Because I work with public servants every day, I know the value of the work that they do. There is a tendency in politics to use terms like ‘back office’ as though they mean ‘unnecessary’. They do not.

Through my work in women’s health, I have seen public servants help turn years of advocacy by Victorian women into 20 dedicated women’s health clinics in Victoria. Women told us they were living with endometriosis, pelvic pain, debilitating periods and symptoms of menopause without getting the care they need. They told us they had spent years navigating a health system that did not always listen to them. We made a commitment to do better, but a commitment made in this place does not magically become a clinic that a woman can walk into. People make that happen. Public servants worked alongside health services, clinicians and advocates to take what women told us and turn it into a model of care that could actually be delivered. It is the same with the early parenting centre we are developing in Northcote. It will be there for families at a time when getting the right support can make all the difference, whether they are just starting out with a new baby or are a little further down the track.

These services start with ideas and commitments, but it takes skilled people to make them real. Through my work across government, I see the value of that public sector expertise every day. There are people in our departments who have spent years, sometimes decades, understanding complex policy areas, working with communities and organisations and learning what it actually takes to turn a good idea into something that works. Good policy does not start from scratch every time there is a new challenge; it builds on what has been tried before, what has worked, what has not and what communities have told us along the way. That knowledge takes years to build, and once we lose it, it is not easily replaced. Yet the work does not disappear. Government still needs good advice. It still needs people who know how to design and deliver services. Strip too much of that capability out, and the government ends up paying private firms to provide that expertise back. The Victorian Auditor-General has warned about the risks of consistently outsourcing work traditionally undertaken by public servants, including the risk of deskilling the Victorian public service. Of course there is a role for specialist expertise, but I would rather build expertise that stays with the Victorian people than create a government dependent on buying its own capability back.

This is where I come back to the sheer scale of what is being proposed, because once you have cut as deeply as a One Nation–Liberal coalition will, what comes next? Where does the rest of the money come from? Do you start closing hospitals? Do you close TAFE campuses? Do you cut nurses and other frontline workers? Do you start winding back the nurse-to-patient ratios we have fought so hard to strengthen? These are not small savings that can be found down the back of a couch. If you are promising savings on this scale, Victorians deserve to know what you are prepared to give up to find them. We are not starting from a place where our communities are asking for less. There is genuine need out there. In my community we are expanding the Austin Hospital emergency department so it can care for thousands more patients. We have opened a mental health and wellbeing local in Darebin because people need support closer to home. We have strengthened nurse-to-patient ratios because nurses fought for safer workloads and patients deserve safe care. We have spent years strengthening our response to family violence, because when a woman reaches out for help, the answer cannot be that there is nobody there to support her.

We know these questions are not theoretical, because we have seen what happens when governments pursue cuts. When the Liberals were last in office, more than $1 billion was cut from health, TAFE funding was slashed, campuses were closed and thousands of staff positions were lost. So when I hear promises of billions more in savings today, I want to know where they will end, because after you have hollowed out the public service, there are still billions of dollars left to find. Then the question becomes much more confronting. What services do Victorians lose so that the numbers add up? History matters when Victorians are being asked to accept that savings on this scale can be delivered without consequences.

But ultimately this is about more than the public service itself. It is about what we want government to be able to do for our community. That is why I am particularly concerned about women’s health. Our women’s health clinics exist because women told us the old system was not good enough. They provide dedicated care for endometriosis, pelvic pain, heavy periods and menopause, as well as sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion care. As the former Parliamentary Secretary for Women’s Health, I have seen what it meant for women and girls to finally have access to health care that affirms their choices and treats them with dignity and respect and how devastating it is when they are dismissed and disempowered. It is why I have spent the last few years focused on expanding women’s rights and access to health care. We have delivered the biggest expansion of dedicated women’s health services in our state’s history.

This brings me to something that chills me to the bone: One Nation’s national policy explicitly seeks opportunities to roll back abortion laws. The Leader of the Opposition has said Victoria’s abortion laws would not change under a Liberal–Nationals government, but it may not be a Liberal–Nationals government and protecting the law and protecting access are not the same thing. A legal right is only meaningful if the health care is there when a woman needs it. At best, the One Nation–Liberal coalition could simply close our women’s health clinics and sexual and reproductive health hubs, and that would have a devastating impact on women’s access to this critical health care. That is why funding matters, services matter, having people there to deliver that care matters – and having a Labor government matters. Labor has spent these precious years finally giving women’s health the attention it deserves. A One Nation–Liberal coalition will spend the next four years undoing everything we have fought for and taking women’s rights backwards. This is no joke; we have seen this happen across the world with the rise of the far right.

The same is true when it comes to climate action. Victoria is transforming our energy system because we know we need to act on climate change and build a cleaner, more sustainable future. We are on track to reach net zero by 2045. We are investing in renewable energy at scale, making homes more energy efficient and reducing household bills. In less than a decade we are set to power our state with 95 per cent renewables. One Nation have said they will burn up our net zero target while they burn more coal. They will restart the climate wars. This should horrify any progressive and environmental voter and make them seriously consider what is at stake at this election. One Nation–Liberal cuts will be with us for generations.

In my final moments I would like to echo the disgust of other Labor members who have spoken today about what the cuts mean for the progress made on First Peoples’ rights and self-determination. The Liberals and Nationals have committed to repealing Victoria’s treaty in their first 100 days of government. Inevitably this will lead to cuts to and closure of vital Aboriginal community controlled services, undermining First Peoples’ access to self-determination and culturally safe care. In the inner north we are immensely proud of our history of Aboriginal rights activism and the strong network of First Nations organisations and services that work every day to give support, hope, aspiration and opportunity to First Nations people. That is why I support this motion.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (16:03): I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise and speak on this motion, having walked into the chamber to follow on from the fantastic member for Northcote to make some reflections on what the member spoke about in her contribution but also to realise that I have of course turned up without any notes. But I am very pleased to be able to report – in stark contrast to what we see from those opposite, which comes to the devastating cuts, the 30,000-plus jobs that will be lost, the more than $40 billion that is at stake being ripped out of schools and hospitals – and reflect on, as the member for Northcote has done, the significant investment and the opportunities, which have come from sustained and continued investment, that have arisen from this government.

What has been really clear in the journey of the motion throughout the course of this afternoon from listening to the contributions of members on this side of the house on important local projects, whether they be investments in community hospitals or investment in local roads – investments in the things that matter to Victorians – is a knowledge and understanding that it is the members on this side of the house that work hard to listen and work hard to understand the needs of local communities, whether that be through committees or through meeting constituents at a street stall, through doorknocking or at events. I know, Acting Speaker Lambert, from following your social media, just how many events you do, as do so many others on this side of the house. I am not sure the member for Melton is ever home, because he is a very busy member.

Steve McGhie interjected.

Josh BULL: Indeed, you cover a lot of ground, member for Melton. The point is that that is how you listen and you learn and you interact with local communities. The opportunity to do that and then bring that through the parliamentary processes; to speak to ministers and to be able to deliver for local communities, as the members for Northcote, Melton, Macedon, Werribee, Clarinda and Hastings and all my honourable friends on this side of the house do; and to see those opportunities and then put that in stark contrast to the sort of shabby outfit that we see from the other side is something that is very concerning.

More concerning than that is the report of the Australia Institute. When you go through the pages upon pages of that report – and I heard the very learned member for Essendon and his contribution; they certainly are going to be missed – and when you listen to the member for Essendon and some of the reflections around the budgetary process, some of the investments that get made and the work that has been done by this government to invest in the services that matter, and then compare and contrast that with what we will see in those job cuts, what we will see in the cuts to service delivery and, most concerning for me, being somebody that has lived in Sunbury for more than 40 years and seen the growth –

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

Josh BULL: That is very complimentary of you, member for Macedon, but I will not take up the interjection. My folks moved to Sunbury in the mid-1970s, and the town’s population was, I think, about 12,000 people. We are now at 40,000 and projected to grow to 80,000 by the mid-2040s. To be able to see that growth is to know that those projects – whether it be roads, whether it be schools or whether it be community health – are important work of the government. To read the report from the Australia Institute and get a sense, I think, of what those damaging and devastating cuts are going to mean for Victorians is something that I think every single person, every single member of the Victorian community, should be really concerned about. They will have a significant and long-lasting effect on local communities.

I speak to people like David Wild and Peter Donlon, who work at Omnia Community Health in Sunbury, and the Premier and I had the opportunity to be there just a few weeks ago. With a growing population and for important local services the damage that is going to be inflicted by a $40 billion stripping of the budget is something that I know people in growing communities and people right across the state are very concerned about. We on this side of the house will continue to do that important work around listening and investing. Making sure that we are doing that work is something that we remain focused on. We know and understand that this is important work.

I do want to take the opportunity to thank all of those that have been involved in delivering those projects. I know that some members have spoken about a really long list of opportunities that they have been able to work towards achieving within their own electorate. I want to thank the vast array of amazing community organisations in my electorate, whether that be Omnia Community Health or whether that be all of the work of the local schools – my old school, Sunbury College; Sunbury Downs; Salesian; Gladstone Park Secondary; Sunbury Primary; St Anne’s; Sunbury West; Our Lady of Mount Carmel; Sunbury Heights, my old primary school; and all of the schools within the southern part of my electorate, including Tulla primary and Gladstone Park Primary School. All of these amazing schools and school communities do terrific work. Speaker, I am really pleased that you have come in for this part of the contribution. This is a really significant and important opportunity to acknowledge the work of our educators and thank them. That builds upon the recent closure of the EBA for teachers, and I extend that to our volunteers and all of those right across the electorate that have worked really hard to invest in and make for a better education and better opportunities for our young people.

I do want to of course build on that and make the acknowledgement that we have made the Sunbury line level crossing free. We have also opened the Metro Tunnel for more train services more often, making sure that we are investing in local communities, and that is something that is really important. But I do go back to those community organisations that have had such an important role to play locally on the ground and make an acknowledgement of the contribution of all of them for their work. The opportunity for our local community organisations to be able to do the work that they do and to be able to have what I think is a really important conversation about just how much of a value-add they give to local communities and to the economy – I think this is really important work.

We of course go back to what is at stake in November and what we have seen from the report of the Australia Institute. We remain very concerned about what that is going to mean for jobs and what that is going to mean for schools and hospitals and growing communities. That is something that I know members on this side of the house are very concerned about. More importantly, I know and members of the government know that this is something that we remain very concerned about when it comes to investment. Put that in stark contrast to what we are offering – and I touched on this yesterday in my contribution, Speaker, which I have no doubt you would have tuned in for as well – and that is around dental care and the importance of making for better dental health. That is something that I know we are deeply committed to on this side of the house.

I do notice at this time that the chamber is filling up. I think there is a very important contribution that is to be made very soon. I very much look forward to the contribution from the member and acknowledge of course the member’s contribution to not just the Parliament but the local community and the people of Victoria. I want to finish my remarks by again saying the choice cannot be clearer in November. It is a choice between more than $40 billion of cuts and 30,000 jobs lost or of course investment in schools, investment in health and investment in the things that matter to Victorians. We remain focused on that, and we will keep doing that work every single day.

 John LISTER (Werribee) (16:13): I will take the house through a few notes on this motion in the lead-up to our great colleagues on this side giving their valedictories. I want to cast everyone’s minds back to 2014, the halcyon days of 2014. The music was fantastic. I recall the Hottest 100 in 2014. It was a great line-up, but what was not great was this figure: Victoria had the second-fastest population growth and its second-slowest job growth in 2014. It was as described by the Age at the time as ‘Kennett-style unemployment’ in Napthine’s government. It was absolutely brutal. Contrast that to only a few months ago. In May 2026 more than half of all jobs created in Australia that month were in Victoria. An additional 22,000 Victorians were employed in May, the highest total for the month. We have grown faster than any other state and added 877,000 new jobs. Why is this important? I note that during those weird years of the former Liberal government we did have the second-fastest population growth, and for a community like Werribee, we did our fair share of the heavy lifting. But of course with people moving into our beautiful community, we need to make sure they have somewhere to work. One of the main employers in the outer western suburbs is our public service. It is not only just in those frontline services like the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing and our child protection workers. Of course there are our amazing teachers, my colleagues back in the classroom –

The SPEAKER: Order! The time has come for me to interrupt business in accordance with the resolution of the house today for the member for Mill Park to make her valedictory statement. I remind visitors in the galleries that no photography or filming is allowed.