Thursday, 24 September 2026

 Juliana ADDISON (Wendouree) (17:13): I want to thank the Attorney-General for bringing this motion to the house on what is a very, very significant issue that needs to be debated here so we can really look at what cuts of more than 30,000 public servant positions across our state mean for Victoria. I am proud to contribute on this motion because I want to put on the record my grave concerns about these cuts and what they could mean, particularly for regional Victoria and my hometown, the city I live in, Ballarat. The member for Kew believes that:

Rightsizing back-office public service roles is a difficult, but necessary measure … to … repair Victoria’s finances …

and protect essential services. My question to the member for Kew is: what is an essential service in my community? Is it the family violence support at the Orange Door? Is it our 20-minute peak train services from Ballarat to Melbourne? Is it our creative industries, local schools, the Ballarat Base Hospital, sports and rec? Is it police and PSOs? I agree with the Attorney-General and the comments she made in her contribution that you cannot cut your way to community safety – and when you are cutting more than 31,000 jobs, you will be impacting on community safety. Is it essential to have bus routes in Ballarat that allow people to move around my community, or our innovative Drug Court? And what about our TAFE, that is transforming lives? Should we have less essential services when it comes to consumer affairs and the amazing consumer affairs workforce based at our GovHub? What about Aboriginal health, or the State Revenue Office that plays such an important role supporting the finances of our state? Or should we just cut housing services and support for renters because they are not essential? What about child protection, is that essential? What about our support for ag – with the bird flu at the moment, should we have less ag workers? Should we have no Regional Development Victoria? What about justice, shall we cut our justice department? Or what about our CFAs?

I know that ripping the guts out of our public service has serious and long-term impacts for communities like mine. Many people know, and as a former history teacher before I came to this place, that history does matter. The member for Essendon reminded us about Augustus in ancient Rome earlier – and gee, I will miss those contributions from the member for Essendon – but I am not going back that far. I am going back to 1992 to do a bit of a compare and contrast, because the Kennett government cuts to Ballarat and the Grampians region had the most drastic and deep impacts on my community. The Kennett Liberal–National government cuts reshaped regional Victoria, reducing services and cutting jobs and investment across my community in Ballarat as well as across the Grampians region, with many impacts still felt today. Their slash and burn had little respect for regional communities, and it may be a long time ago but I remember it well. It was the first election I voted in – I voted at Alfredton Primary School, and I start every election day at Alfredton Primary School, around the corner from where I grew up. It was also the same election that Kim Wells got elected, so I really want to give a shout-out to Kim, who is finishing up today after a very long time. But I want to say, little did I know on that day in 1992 when I was 18 years old, doing year 12, voting in my first election, that my community would go on to be referred to by Premier Kennett as the toenails of Victoria. What a disgraceful thing to say about Ballarat and my community. I did not see the Nationals standing up for the regions, and I cannot see it happening again.

So what did it mean when we had a slash-and-burn approach to regional Victoria, when we cut jobs? It meant reduced local services and government presence. It meant loss of public sector jobs. It meant reduced access to training and education opportunities, long-term impacts on regional transport connectivity and the privatisation of essential public assets and services. Thousands of public sector positions were removed during the Kennett era from across Victoria through government downsizing and agency restructuring. The Victorian public sector lost approximately 75,000 jobs during the Kennett era. Regional centres such as Ballarat, which relied heavily on government employment, were affected by reductions in public service jobs and government offices.

The Liberals cut; it is in their DNA. We, however, invest in communities and in regional Victoria. And what have we done, what is our record, since I was elected to this place as the member for Wendouree? We have established the Ballarat GovHub, a Victorian government office hub based in the heart of Ballarat, in our CBD. It opened in April 2021 as a part of the Victorian Labor government’s strategy to create more public sector jobs in regional Victoria and strengthens Ballarat’s CBD. We invested $47.8 million to build our magnificent GovHub. It was opened by the former Minister for Regional Development, the member for Macedon, in April 2021, and it has the capacity to employ up to 1000 Victorian government employees. All of those 1000 jobs are now at risk if we see the election of a Liberal–One Nation government. We have relocated approximately 600 public sector jobs from metropolitan Melbourne to Ballarat. Speaking to the workers who have relocated – they have moved; they have picked up their lives in Melbourne to follow the job, to come to Ballarat – I want to say thank you for being a part of our community, and I hope you get to stay a part of our community and that your jobs are not cut and your families do not have to relocate again. But very sadly, that is what is at risk, with 31,700 public service jobs on the cutting block. The construction of our GovHub created 500 jobs. By talking to Kane Nicholson, who did that job, we knew that nearly everybody who worked on that project lived within 80 kilometres of Ballarat. We sourced local materials, and it was a huge boost to the local economy – up to $100 million.

But it is not only our jobs at GovHub that are at risk. It is our health services – our amazing $655 million redeveloped, expanded base hospital, making it the largest health infrastructure spend in the history of Ballarat; our new ED, our new perinatal hub, our expanded ICU, our state-of-the-art theatres, our new helipad and 100 additional beds. This is going to make a huge difference to our growing community. We will have 18,000 additional emergency presentations annually, 14,500 additional inpatient episodes and 4000 more surgeries a year. This is going to make a huge change for my community. It will cut waiting lists, and it will mean people will get more and better care close to home. I could not be happier. We have also supported 14 construction jobs.

But what did the Kennett government do? The Kennett government substantially reduced public sector spending, including to hospitals across regional Victoria. Many regional communities experienced service reductions, hospital restructuring and fewer locally available services as a part of the broader health reforms. I call it not a reform but an absolute devastation of regional health services. These changes reduced healthcare access in regional areas and also increased pressures on Ballarat. What would the Ballarat Base Hospital look like under a Wilson–Pickering One Nation coalition? Cuts, closures and job losses. I think I have seen this film before, and I did not like the ending. I had to get Taylor Swift in before the end of this Parliament.

In education under the Kennett government – and I am going to run out of time – 350 schools were closed and 7000 teaching jobs cut. That is what happens. We have rebuilt Mount Rowan Secondary College, we have rebuilt Woodmans Hill and we have turned North Tech into the most beautiful senior campus for our specialist schools. We invest in education; we do not close schools like they did over there.

A shout-out to Mr McGowan, who said he loved growing up in Ballarat opposite Queen Street primary school and how disappointed he was that Queen Street primary school was closed down. Well, guess what, Jeff Kennett closed down Queen Street primary school on 31 December 1993, and it had been open since 1 January 1878. Do not come to my community and say how bad it is that schools get closed under your government.

 Paul MERCURIO (Hastings) (17:24): I am happy to rise to speak on this motion. I stand here and I feel like I have to admit that I am not a very good politician. In fact I have not really studied politics. I have not really followed it, whereas many people have. Sometimes I am not really sure about politics at all. When people say to me, ‘Why did you want to be a politician?’, I say, ‘Well, I don’t. I just want to be a bloke that helps people.’ The very first thing I did when I was preselected was to have a meeting at a skate park to promote the funding. A member for Eastern Metropolitan, the Honourable Shaun Leane, who gave a great speech last night, was in attendance. I said to him that I was feeling a bit out of place and I really was not sure about politics and things, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Paul. Just tell people Labor build stuff.’ I would like to leave that there, because I am hoping, if I remember, that I will come back to the fact that Labor builds stuff.

In my inaugural speech I made the statement that I stand here because hope lives rent-free in my heart. I am reflecting on the $40 billion of cuts, which is almost half the budget, and I think hope will not live rent-free in my heart if $40 billion of cuts come about. I will have to actually start charging. In fact if we end up with a Liberal–One Nation coalition, I think hope will probably flee in panic and despair at the possibility of that. Anyone thinking that that is a great idea, I do not understand why you do not reflect quite deeply and with great consideration about what is going on with the market movements and the state. If you think that a Liberal–One Nation coalition is going to be positive or beneficial in any way to Victoria, I would ask you to really think about it more deeply.

There have been a lot of great debates and a lot of amazing things said in this chamber about what the 30,000 worker cuts could do. The member for Preston actually spoke at length about what cuts would do to ongoing medical research. That is absolutely vitally important. But I want to take it a little step further. It does have something to do with something I have been working on for the last few years. I want to tell a story about little Zara, who has cerebral palsy. A couple of years ago her mother came to our office. When Michelle was pregnant with Zara she made sure that she had her umbilical cord blood stem cells saved, because she felt there was a risk of her having diabetes. It actually turned out that Zara was born with cerebral palsy. There is a process where you can take the blood stem cells and do all sorts of amazing things to them and then inject them back into the child. When it is the child’s own blood, it is called an autologous blood transfusion.

People can go to America to get this done and spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. But Michelle wanted to get that treatment here, and we worked very hard with Monash Health and with other organisations. The then Minister for Health, the member for Macedon, worked really well with us, and we were able to get Zara to have this treatment as a special one-off, experimental treatment. Quite simply, it worked. Over the year after, she has had a 35 per cent increase in her ability to do things. I know it seems a little bit crass, but her mum said to me one day, ‘She can wipe her bum.’ She can put her school bag on. She can get dressed and get ready for school. These are things that she could not do prior to this treatment.

It is brilliant that that has happened. But I have been trying to get $1.5 million to set up a platform so that the other five kids in Australia that have their autologous blood stem cells saved can undergo this treatment. If we have cuts, it is not just cuts to experimental treatments and things that are ongoing at the moment. There is a whole range of things that we need to make happen so that we can help people with their lives, so we can give them the opportunity for a better quality of life. We need that to happen, but it will not happen if we have cuts. I just want people to think about that for a moment, because it is shocking to think, okay, 30,000 public servants are going to go. We have five kids at the moment whose lives we can make better. It is just a perspective I wanted to give people today in the chamber.

It will come as no surprise if I talk about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and connective tissue disorders – that is the same. I have been working tirelessly, I would say this whole term, to bring attention to the plight of what we believe is at least over 14,000 people in our communities in Victoria that suffer terribly from this disease, and we do not understand enough about it. There is no research being done on it. There are no papers being written. I am working to change that. But again, that relies on funding. If, God help us, the Liberal–One Nation coalition get in and they produce these cuts, those 14,500 ‍people that are suffering in silence right now will continue to suffer in silence. As I said, hope lives rent-free in my heart. Well, it flees at the thought of that. So there is a lot more to it than just what happens in our communities. There is a lot of forward thinking, and I wanted to make that point.

When I think of $40 billion in cuts or 30,000 people losing their jobs, I think it is hard for people to understand what that means, because it might mean they know a few people at some place that lose their job. Today I was reflecting on the idea that I have 45,000 people in my community. Imagine if 30,000 of them lost their job. I would like people to think of it in that way, because if there were 30,000 ‍people that lost their job in my electorate, everyone would feel the consequences of that. There would be 30,000 people that would not be working in the electorate; they would not have an income or they might be on JobSeeker, which is $400 a week, which is absolutely disgusting. They would not be spending money, and therefore the other 15,000 people that live in the community who might have shops, businesses or whatever would not have any customers. They would be going broke. The amount of mental stress and anxiety that would be going on would be enormous in the community.

If people could really understand and look at it in that way, they could understand the consequences. We might be talking about 30,000 or 32,000 people around Victoria, but the consequences are the same. There are people that will lose their jobs. There are people that will stop spending in the community. There are people that will go broke because they are not being supported in the community. There will be people with health issues. I spoke about free dental yesterday. That will not happen, and people that desperately need checks of their teeth and oral care will continue to go to hospital and be sick. We will not have things like breakfast clubs and we will not have vouchers for sports and things like that with $40 billion in cuts, which is almost half the budget. I would ask people to seriously consider what it means and not push it off and go ‘Well, it’s not going to happen to me’ or ‘I don’t know anyone that is going to be affected’, because we all will be. It will be, in a lot of ways, a tsunami in Victoria for the workers.

I want to go back quickly in the last minute that I have and talk about the member in the other place who talked about building stuff. We build a lot of stuff. We on this side are people who build a lot of stuff. On that side, they will not; they will cut. They will destroy. I commend the motion to the house.

 Belinda WILSON (Narre Warren North) (17:33): I move:

That debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.