Thursday, 26 May 2022

Government performance

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (10:36): I want to draw the chamber’s attention to comments made by the Premier of WA, Mr McGowan—an erratic set of comments is what I would describe them as. I would nonetheless say on some things I agree and on others I do not. I firmly agree with the Commonwealth Games coming here, and the Liberals and Nationals do too; we think that Mr McGowan has lost the plot in criticising the Commonwealth Games. We also do not agree with his view on the GST. It is true that Victoria has done poorly under governments of all colours for a very long time, not only with the GST but with funding from a whole range of federal sources. That is a fact, and Victorians have every reason to be angry about that. Indeed I often agree with the Treasurer on these points—that Victoria has done poorly and we should have funding approximating our population share. That is the target, and I think that we should focus heavily on that.

But I do agree with Premier McGowan in his attack on the Andrews Labor government’s budgetary processes, its waste, its mismanagement, its incompetence in managing the budget. The truth is our debt is growing massively. By 2025–26 our debt will be very close to that of New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia combined. That is the legacy. And on failures in health, Mark McGowan was quite correct in identifying the failures of the Andrews Labor government in health. It has been a disaster, a flop under Andrews.