Thursday, 9 June 2022

Bills

Appropriation (2022–2023) Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr RICH-PHILLIPS (South Eastern Metropolitan) (12:48): The 2022–23 budget is like all the other budgets this government has introduced over the past eight years: it is essentially a document of fantasy. I say it is a document of fantasy because we have consistently seen the budgets produced by this government fail to deliver in reality. We see projections over four years which are never met. We see commitments made by this government which are never met, year on year on year. The Treasurer has made commitments around the direction of the budget and made commitments around constraints on spending, and he consistently fails to achieve them. In this year’s budget we see probably the most outlandish commitment around spending, because the government is proposing in the budget year to cut expenditure by roughly 10 per cent. In previous years they have claimed they would cut spending by 1 per cent or 2 per cent, and they have never achieved it. Yet we are to believe that in an election year this government is going to cut spending by 10 per cent to try and rein in what have been a series of massive deficits. There is no reason to believe that is going to be achieved. We have seen year after year after year the government unable to hit its own targets, and the suggestion that this year it will achieve a 10 per cent cut in spending is simply laughable.

As a consequence, the size of government in Victoria has grown and grown and grown. When the government came to office in 2014 government spending as a share of the economy was around 14.4 per cent. In the year we are about to finish, the 2021–22 year, it has grown to 19 per cent of gross state product—a massive increase in the size of government in this state. Of course the biggest area we have seen growth in has been the public sector payroll. Just three years ago, in 2018–19, leading up to the election in the pre-election budget update Treasury forecast the size of the public sector payroll at $24.9 billion. In the budget for 2021–22 that is now $33 billion. In three years there has been a 33 per cent increase in the public sector payroll, which is absolutely unsustainable. We have seen the size of the public service grow enormously in headcount. Central government, the government departments, grew from 37 900 people in 2015 to 58 000 people by June 2021. In the broader public sector outside the core departments the growth has been from 277 000 people to 345 000 people, and more than 23 000 people were added last year alone—23 000 additional public sector workers in Victoria in just 12 months. So for the government to now suggest it is going to cut spending by 10 per cent in this year, an election year, is simply unbelievable—absolutely farcical.

Of course because we have been seeing such enormous and sustained growth in spending we have seen a massive blowout in the state’s debt profile, in general government net borrowings, which are now forecast to hit $167 billion by the 2025–26 financial year. Now, the government likes to say this is funding our infrastructure program, that we are borrowing to fund infrastructure, but in reality when you look more closely at the government’s forecasts you will see that in fact the government has pared back its own spending on infrastructure while continuing to borrow. The best example of this is to compare this year’s budget papers with last year’s, for the 2021–22 year, where the Treasurer said infrastructure spending was going to be $24 billion and as a consequence net debt was going to increase to $102 billion. This year the figures have been revised and the infrastructure spend has in fact been cut. Rather than spend the $24 billion on infrastructure that the Treasurer said he would spend, only $18.9 billion is being spent on infrastructure, yet debt is still going to hit $102 billion. So debt continues to rise even though the spending on infrastructure has been pared back, and of course that is so the debt can fund the ever-growing deficits that we are seeing year on year on year.

The government likes to say it is fine that we are having these additional borrowings, that we can afford the repayments within the operating statement and that we can afford to service that debt over the forward estimates, but of course as the debt has ramped up from I think $44 billion in the year before last to $167 billion in the out years, that debt servicing cost has increased enormously. In 2019–‍20 we were only spending about 3.5 per cent of total expenditure on servicing debt. In 2025–26 that is going to hit nearly 7 per cent of total spending, and that assumes we do not have increases in borrowing costs, that we do not have increases in interest rates. So we are going from 3.5 per cent of total spend just to pay the interest bill to 7 per cent just to pay the interest bill in six short years, without allowing for interest rate rises. In fact that assumes an interest rate or borrowing cost of around 4 per cent consistently as the debt profile rises, and we have seen already this week a very substantial increase in the cash rate as a consequence of the decision of the Reserve Bank on Tuesday which raised the cash rate to 0.85 per cent. We have gone from 0.1 per cent to 0.85 per cent in just on a month, with other rises expected, and that is going to flow through to government bonds.

So it is highly questionable whether the government can constrain its borrowing costs at the same level over the forward estimates period when other borrowing costs in Australia and around the world are rising. If that is not the case, if we see those borrowing costs rise, then the forecast 7 per cent of total spending to service our debt is going to increase rapidly, and that either means we will have bigger deficits in the future or government is going to have to pare back its spending, something it has consistently failed to do despite its claims that it would.

We talk about the budget and we talk about what the government is spending, but we cannot look at that in isolation. We need to also look at what this budget means and what the government’s economic settings mean for the broader Victorian economy. What are the policy settings, what are the economic objectives the government has put in place to drive the Victorian economy? We have seen the economy in Victoria has been in long-term decline. Over the last 20 years, and I point out that a Labor government has been in office for 19 of the last 23 years, we have seen Victoria’s share of national output decline. Back in 1999 Victoria accounted for a bit over 25 per cent of total national output in this country. Last year, 2021, that had declined to just under 23 per cent. So while we are still about 25 per cent of the national population, we no longer produce 25 per cent of national output—we are only producing about 23 per cent of national output.

We have seen over that period of time productivity growth in this state stagnate, and the reality is that productivity is the only game in town if we want to improve the living standards of the Victorian population. Over the last decade productivity growth in Australia has been poor. It has only been about 7 per cent in total over the last decade, and much of that has been driven by resources in Western Australia. We have seen population growth in Australia and we have seen population growth in Victoria, which has driven economic growth, but it has masked the fact that we have had no real productivity growth and therefore no real improvement in standard of living. Over the last decade New South Wales has managed to generate productivity growth of a bit under 7 per cent. In Victoria it has been just 0.5 per cent, so effectively no real improvement in productivity and no real improvement in standard of living, and that is simply not sustainable. If we want to improve the lives of Victorian citizens, we need to get productivity growth moving in this state.

Of course one of the big drivers of that is going to be investment, getting the private sector to invest in this state, and we have seen in recent years Victoria fall further and further behind New South Wales as we have an environment which is less friendly to investment and an environment which is more complex to invest in. The regulatory burden is greater. The tax burden is greater. It is a disincentive for investment. Consequently last year when I spoke about this point I referred to the fact that private sector investment in Victoria was $12 billion lower than in New South Wales. This year the latest set of data from the ABS shows that gap has blown out from $12 billion to now more than $16.5 billion. In the year to June 2021 New South Wales was able to attract more than $16.5 billion more in private sector investment than Victoria did. In Victoria’s case we attracted a bit under $48 billion of private sector investment and New South Wales nearly $65 billion.

That differential is going to mean the differential in living standards between Victoria and New South Wales is going to continue to grow. Last year it was around $8000 per person—New South Wales generated $8000 more in output per person than Victoria—and that reflects the standard of living. If we continue to fall behind New South Wales in attracting investment, that differential is going to grow between our two states. Victoria will fall further and further behind, and we will see the best and brightest leave Victoria. We have already seen that in the last two years. We have seen our population growth plummet. We were growing at around 1.8 per cent per annum in population year on year prior to COVID. That has dropped away. We have had population shrink, and it is continuing to shrink. The best and brightest are leaving Victoria, and that is going to have long-term consequences. Unless we get the policy settings right and unless we get the budget settings right and create an environment which attracts investment and attracts talent, we are going to see Victoria fall further and further behind.

The last two years have demonstrated that Australia has been caught napping—not just Victoria but Australia as a whole. We have seen fractured supply chains. We have seen shortages in imports. We have seen our export markets challenged, particularly where we have had high concentrations in some destinations. And now we are seeing that situation become worse. What was bubbling along as the early stages of inflation a year ago, with some shortages in some areas, has now turned into major shortages in all sorts of areas across the economy and of course massive price rises—and that situation is only going to become worse.

We are seeing our fuel situation becoming very difficult. Last year the federal government decided to back in the two fuel refineries which remain in Australia, down from seven previously, to provide some element of fuel security, but of course that is limited and short term. Earlier this year, in February, we actually saw a shortage of avgas on the east coast of Australia, with a maintenance-related shutdown of the refinery at Geelong. We saw bowsers across eastern Australia start to run out of avgas, and that was within only 24 hours of happening when the plant reopened after an extended—it was about 14 days—shutdown. But bowsers were running dry, and it was only at the last minute that the fuel supply was restored. That highlights the challenge we have with fuel in Australia and the challenge we will continue to have with fuel in Australia.

Likewise with energy, we are seeing now the consequences of energy policy in this state. I have talked previously about how the government’s energy policies are going to ensure in summer we have a shortage of power and in winter we have a shortage of gas, and we have been seeing that in the last couple of weeks as we have had a particularly cold period of weather. Now, it is fine for the government to have a policy of shifting to renewable energy. It is not fine to have no transition plan, and that is what we have seen—a policy platform which has discouraged investment and continuing maintenance in existing infrastructure, be it coal power generation in Latrobe Valley or be it gas reserves or gas supply in a transition phase. Consequently we are now in a situation of critical energy shortages where we should not have them. In a nation which has so many energy resources, we should not be in a situation where we are struggling to get gas supply and in summer we are struggling for electricity supply.

This budget does not contain the vision and the direction to meet the challenges that Victoria faces. It is a budget with some very dubious numbers, and consistently year on year the government has not been able to meet its numbers in the past. We have no confidence that the budget will deliver the 10 per cent cut in spending that the government claimed it will deliver in an election year, but most importantly it does not have the vision and it does not have the direction to meet the challenges Victoria faces in this century.

Sitting suspended 1.03 pm until 2.08 pm.

Dr KIEU (South Eastern Metropolitan) (14:08): I rise not only with great pleasure but also with great pride and excitement to contribute to the Appropriation (2022–2023) Bill 2022. This is a great bill, and it goes a long way to contributing to our state. In the Victorian budget 2022–23 the Andrews Labor government has invested billions of dollars in our electorates, schools, healthcare facilities, suburban development, energy, environment and climate change, community sport, public transport, roads, multicultural affairs—and the list goes on. It would take me a few hours to go through what the budget has covered, but I will not be allowed to do that, I know, so let me highlight some of the general features that are applicable to all across Victoria, and then I will go into some of the contributions of the budget to my region of South Eastern Metropolitan.

First and foremost, the budget gives a much-needed boost to our health system—in fact more than $12 billion—including delivering record levels of surgical capacity; more nurses, doctors, paramedics and health services; and new and improved health infrastructure so all Victorians can have access to high-quality health care closer to home. In particular there is some funding to train and hire up to 7000 new healthcare workers, including 5000 nurses. For the healthcare workers who were at the front line of the pandemic for the last two years, we have strong support. Our health workers have borne the brunt of the pandemic, and Victorians are so proud of their contribution and their sacrifice. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank them again.

For Ambulance Victoria we will recruit 90 more paramedics, with a budget contribution of $124 million of investment to put more ambos on the road. We are also investing $333 million to add nearly 400 new staff to increase call-taking and dispatch capacity during the coming months for 000 services, including ambulances, and training more operators to allocate calls across our state. We will also build and upgrade Victoria’s hospitals. This budget invests $2.9 billion in health infrastructure, including building a new hospital and upgrading existing ones. We are investing more than $900 million in a new tertiary hospital for Melbourne’s west.

Apart from physical health, the government is also supporting mental health for the community. As we all know, the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System has informed us that when it comes to accessing mental health care the Victorian community often struggle to access the mental health support they need until it is too late. Previously, in 2020–21, in the budget last year we invested $869 million to lay down the foundations for a new mental health and wellbeing system, and we provided extra funding for mental health services throughout the pandemic. With this year’s budget we are building on these investments with a further $1.3 billion to take the next steps in this process, including $218 million to operationalise 82 new beds in Victoria’s mental health system and other priority initiatives.

With that said, the budget also strongly invests in jobs and job creation. Since November 2014, when the government came into power, our economy has generated 560 000 new jobs, including more than 80 000 in regional Victoria. When the pandemic hit our shores we responded with record investment to protect Victorian lives and livelihoods. We had planned to create 400 000 jobs by 2025—and do you know what? Today Victoria has already far exceeded that goal, with employment rising by 280 000 jobs since September 2020. We are well on track to reach our target of 400 000 jobs by 2025 as planned.

Also I have to mention the assistance in helping Victorians to meet the cost of living. In particular I want to highlight the assistance for households with energy bills. There are three phases. In the first one Victorians who came to the Victorian Energy Compare website were entitled to $50. Then the second one was for concession card holders and people on JobSeeker or JobKeeper, and they were entitled to $250. And now from 1 July, in a few weeks time, all Victorians who come to the website to compare their energy bills, with the potential to switch and save more, will also be entitled to assistance from the state government to the tune of $250. So altogether potentially $550 could go to a household.

Next, education is something we as a state are very proud of. This budget brings our total investment in improving and building new schools to more than $12.8 billion over the past eight years. To help better meet the needs of local families this budget now contributes a further $1.8 billion to build new schools and upgrade existing ones. We are also making a big investment in upgrading special schools in this budget. This means that since we took office eight years ago every single special school in Victoria has received funding for major upgrades, because students with disability deserve the same opportunities as every other student in Victoria. Those are some of the general highlights I would like to mention.

Now I want to mention and highlight some of the particular investments by the government in South Eastern Metropolitan in education: Banyan Fields Primary School received $2.1 million to upgrade and modernise the school, including the multipurpose hall and prep building; Kingston Heath Primary School, $5.99 million—nearly $6 million—to upgrade and modernise the school; Mordialloc Beach Primary School, $2.88 million; Kambrya College, $18.95 million, at least, to upgrade and modernise the school, including to add an additional 400 spaces in permanent facilities; Dandenong Valley Special Developmental School, $14.78 million; and the list goes on. That was education.

Now to health, ambulance and emergency services and mental health: the Monash mobile stroke unit will receive $12 million, and that particular one—this is the second mobile stroke unit—will be based at Monash hospital. Casey Hospital’s emergency department and Monash Health’s emergency department mental health and alcohol and other drugs hub also received funding from the budget.

Now on to the next category—energy, environment and climate change—yesterday we had a debate on a motion put up by a member across the aisle talking about the shortage in energy and gas in particular. But that is not a unique problem that we are facing only in this state; it is across the nation and in fact across the world. In fact the gas that is being produced in this state is 70 per cent more than what we need, but because we have to pay in line with international price parity and with the crisis and the shortage elsewhere in the world, there have been some more expenses for households. The government is helping with that, as I just outlined. But also we are working as a nation towards resolving some of the difficulties there.

We will not forget about community sport. I could list here, for South Eastern Metropolitan, the Jells Park sports field upgrade, $4 million; the Ballam Park athletic upgrade, $750 000; and so on.

The last thing I would like to mention is multicultural affairs. The Afghan community centre at Dandenong—I had the privilege to attend the launch—has now received $200 000 towards its facility. The Cambodian community, for the Wat Buddharangsi Buddhist temple playground equipment, has received $250 000. There is also the south-east multicultural community services hub.

This government has a proven record of financial management. This budget delivers for industries that have the greatest potential to grow, industries that will leverage Victoria’s strength to create the jobs of the future. Our continuing investment in our caring workforce and the Big Build are creating quality jobs. Victoria’s economy is strong and the employment rate is 2 per cent lower than when we came to government. Demand for workers is high and business conditions and confidence are elevated. Victoria is on track for strong economic growth.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Treasurer and all the hardworking Labor government MPs for putting together this great budget.

Dr RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (14:22): I rise to speak on the 2022–23 Victorian state budget. We are coming to the end of a parliamentary term that has seen Victorians, the government and this Parliament face extraordinary challenges. The COVID pandemic tested all of us and is still a feature of our lives. The shadow of the last two years continues to impact all of us, and now we are facing more uncertain economic times. In the midst of a global pandemic the Victorian government acted on public health advice to protect the Victorian community and sought to ameliorate the devastating impacts of the pandemic on the community through various additional support payments and services. My Greens colleagues and I supported the government’s public health response and advocated for the increased spending on payments and services for those who needed them. Rapid responses were needed to expand our healthcare workforce, administer tests and vaccines and assist those who fell ill with COVID, as well as support individuals and businesses with the impacts of the massive disruptions caused by the pandemic.

So here we are with a budget in deficit. The government spent what it needed to support Victorians through a very difficult time. In fact the argument is really about if more could have been spent, not less. I know of businesses that could have done with more support. Many artists and others involved in the arts sector, devastated by COVID, really struggled, and renters faced a difficult time once the ban on evictions and rent increases was lifted prior to the last lockdown. You will hear no critique from us that the budget is in deficit in this context. Good governments spend to protect and support communities when they need to. Indeed with the health system still under so much pressure after years of underinvestment, massively increasing spending has become unavoidable. The additional billions of funding going into the health system in this budget, including into mental health, are necessary, and I commend the government on this important investment.

What this budget does show, however, is that the structural issue at the heart of the budget is not spending but revenue. Obviously, being an election year, it may have been too much to hope the government would bite the bullet on new revenue measures. Instead we continue with a budget propped up by relying on housing becoming more and more expensive and unaffordable and Victorians continuing to lose billions to the gambling industry. This is despite the fact that the government had a great idea that it unfortunately backed away from: its social housing levy. A levy on developments to raise money to build more housing was an idea worth fighting for, but the property developers said no and the government backed down. It certainly gives Victorians an insight into who really runs things in this state.

But it is also a lost opportunity. With the public housing waiting list growing by 55 per cent in the last four years, with now almost 120 000 people waiting for public housing, the government has no plans for more housing to reduce the waiting list apart from the 9000 primarily community housing dwellings committed to in the last budget. It is just simply not enough. Victoria needs a 10-year housing plan to build at least 100 000 new public housing homes. With such an investment we can end homelessness and make housing affordable. It is a cliché to say budgets are about choices, but it is also true. And in this budget the government is spending seven times more money on building two unnecessary and polluting toll roads than it is on building homes for Victorians in the midst of a housing crisis. How many quality homes could be built for $20 billion? Tens of thousands. In fact less than 1.8 per cent of the accumulated debt over the forward estimates will have been spent on building homes to address the housing affordability crisis in Victoria. But the property developers said no, so now there is no 10-year housing plan and hundreds of thousands of Victorians will continue to struggle in the private rental market knowing owning their own home is increasingly becoming an even more distant dream.

Unaffordable housing, including rentals, is a major factor in cost-of-living pressures facing Victorians, but there is nothing in this budget to address this crisis. Not only did the government drop its housing levy idea, but it also had plans to cut the very successful program helping people experiencing homelessness into housing. The response to COVID showed us that governments with the right priorities can find the resources to help people out of homelessness, but even that program was to be cut. Indeed it was only after an outcry that the government found some extra money to keep this program going, although only for one more year. This piecemeal approach to homelessness is quite frankly unacceptable. Indeed the response to this year’s budget from across the community sector was less than enthusiastic. Victorian Council of Social Service CEO Emma King summed it up well: ‘Lean, lean, lean’.

The government also ignored the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service requests for additional funding but found an extra $300 million for more police and PSOs. As VALS said at the time, this choice will mean:

… more of our children will be removed from their families, more of our people will be incarcerated, and more of our people will die in custody.

As I said, budgets are about choices. Another area I was hoping to see more attention in this budget for was family violence services, particularly for multicultural communities. While Victoria has made great strides in both its recognition of the scourge of family violence and its response post the landmark Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, there are gaps emerging in the types of support reaching communities experiencing family violence. Victoria’s multicultural communities, as the royal commission found, experience high levels of family violence, yet culturally specific family violence response services report that they are not getting the funding they need to meet the demand for their services. Victoria still does not even have one culturally specific women’s refuge, a model that has been incredibly effective in New Zealand and has begun in both New South Wales and Queensland. Culturally specific services are more than just having an interpreter available; they are about having bicultural staff, understanding the issues specific to communities and having tailored, specialised support available and so much more. I am urging the government to rethink its approach to culturally specific services in Victoria, and this goes for both family violence and mental health services, which communities report they need much more support with. It begins by listening to communities and directly funding grassroots organisations, including culturally specific family violence refuges.

It is clear that our community sector needs much more investment, not less. But without additional revenue, not only are necessary investments in the community not being made but we are seeing significant budget cuts. Public sector workers are taking the heat. The government has persisted with its 1.5 per cent wage cap on public sector workers. With inflation going up, this translates as a wage cut for many workers. More than that, state wage caps are acting as a brake on wages growth across the economy. In the current environment of rising inflation, increasing interest rates and stagnating wages, Victorians are in difficult economic times. In a recent report for Unions NSW, Professor David Peetz found that under the New South Wales wages cap—which is 2.5 per cent; a whole 1 per cent higher than Victoria’s current policy—public sector workers look set to lose thousands in wages. He goes on to say in the report that:

The most important factor shaping wage norms that state governments can influence is public sector pay policy.

This is a position also held by the Reserve Bank governor. We have a wages problem in Australia, and state governments, Liberal and Labor, are making it worse with these wage caps. The Treasurer is on the record as saying the cap on the public sector wages may be reviewed. I sincerely hope this is the case.

Another disastrous budget cut is the almost $1 billion being slashed from the environment department. That is right—a billion dollars being gutted from the state’s environmental programs at a time when Victoria’s ecosystems are facing their biggest extinction threats. This is particularly disappointing given the biggest parliamentary inquiry ever held into our precious ecosystems made clear recommendations recently about how we need to invest more to better protect and restore our natural environment that gives us life. There are now 2000 species threatened with extinction in Victoria. This is a huge increase from 2014 when the number was just under 700. This is after we have already lost forever 81 different plants, mammals, birds and reptiles. We know that ecosystems are beginning to collapse, including Victoria’s forests and rivers, which provide the essentials for our health and wellbeing, including freshwater and clean air. We also know that there is a path out. We can save our ecosystems and restore the natural environment. The parliamentary inquiry the Greens initiated found that a big funding boost can reverse the damage to our environment and restore it to health for all of us and future generations, but apparently not this budget. Hopefully we see some further commitments in the lead-up to the election. I sincerely hope so.

Finally, this is one more budget passing us without a plan to transition Victoria away from coal and gas. In fact we have the government opening up new gas projects and helping to keep our unreliable and expensive coal-fired power stations open longer than they otherwise would. The Latrobe Valley Authority continues to be funded on a year-on-year basis with no funding certainty—hardly a vote of confidence in the future of the region and the need for a comprehensive, community-driven transition plan. As the Environment and Planning Committee’s recent report into renewable energy demonstrates, Victoria can be going much further and faster towards 100 per cent renewable energy. The current gas price hike impacting many Victorians is another reason we need to increase our collective efforts to move away from fossil fuels. We need big grant programs to electrify homes and get them off gas. The government has taken some good actions to support low-income households to get off gas, but unfortunately yesterday we learned that Labor has shelved its gas substitution road map—a plan to get our state off gas—until after the election. This is a disappointing step from Labor and shows again why we need more Greens in Parliament to push the government further and faster on climate action.

Another important climate measure is protecting the carbon in our forests instead of logging them. Yet not only has the government pushed through laws to make illegal logging legal, thus allowing even more precious ecosystems to be destroyed, it is now proposing to crack down on the forest defenders who are putting their bodies on the line to protect these precious forests. The intent with which this government is logging our remaining forests puts their commitment to climate action in question.

In conclusion, the COVID pandemic continues to pose for our state significant challenges. It has exposed the fault lines in our society and the places and people who have not had the support they needed for years. But it has also given us an opportunity—an opportunity to rethink how we govern and how we can govern differently. We have seen what happens in a time of crisis: governments can and did find the resources to keep people safe and housed. Let that not only be a solution for a time of health crisis but a solution that the government continues to invest in in order to end homelessness in Victoria. We have seen Victorians reassess how they want to work, but the solutions that we found during the pandemic need not stop there. We can have greater flexibility at work that not only increases productivity but means that people are healthier and well.

We have seen Victorians re-evaluate the importance of a public health system to keep us safe and well, so let us keep investing in our healthcare workers and system. Let us move away from scarcity becoming the norm and let us fund our health system properly so that there are enough staff at all times to treat people when they get sick instead of them waiting months and months for treatment, because this will also mean that we have the surge capacity of enough trained health professionals to call on in a future health emergency.

We have seen people demand much stronger action to address the climate crisis and save our ecosystems from destruction. Victorians have relied on and appreciated our open spaces and natural environment like they have never before over the last two years, so let us keep investing in our environment because our survival depends on it. We have seen throughout this difficult time that bold and brave solutions are possible and have the potential to solve the big challenges we face. Let us continue with courage.

Mr ATKINSON (Eastern Metropolitan) (14:36): It occurs to me that a budget is simply a tool to implement policy. A budget by itself is not much good. It really needs to interpret the policy directions and decisions that a government is taking in terms of the services that it provides to Victorians. This budget has been formulated in a period of significant volatility—volatility globally, volatility nationally—brought on or affected particularly by COVID and the circumstances surrounding COVID but also by other issues such as conflict zones around the world that affect energy prices and so forth. We have had a period where I think governments have been timid in looking to the future and making the sorts of decisions and recasting some of their principles and particularly some of their policies to create a better future, and I put that on the federal government that has just changed as much as on the state government.

When I say timid I reflect particularly on tax reform. One of the crucial issues confronting Victoria and the other states is the issue of tax reform, because the reality is that the debt that the states have built up—and Victoria’s is by far the worst; in fact Victoria’s debt situation is the equivalent of Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia put together—on our current basket of taxes we cannot possibly pay back. We cannot eliminate that debt. We could fix the balance sheet by revaluing some of our assets, but some of those assets have been sold off the balance sheet anyway, the ones that perhaps have the most value. We have got some real concerns in terms of how we approach the future with such indebtedness. Certainly the current budget and the ones following it in the next two years predict that there will continue to be deficits added to even our operating budgets. With interest rates rising, the surplus that the Treasurer in this budget has estimated might occur in 2025–26, which was a highly optimistic forecast, is now in doubt on any measure. That $167 billion-plus debt that we face in Victoria interests me in the context that the Cain and Kirner governments’ debt was around $33 billion, as I recall, and saw a change of government—$33 billion and we were all concerned about that level of indebtedness.

Well, now we have five times that level of indebtedness, and the opportunity to actually address that is very problematic—particularly problematic if the federal government is not prepared to consider tax reform and if Victoria is not prepared to look at that tax reform also. It is no good tinkering. We have heard the debate in the last couple of days about taxes that have been reduced, or thresholds that have been reduced on taxes. We have also heard obviously my party’s claims about the number of new taxes or expanded taxes. Most of that is tinkering, and it is not going to go to the nub of the problem of how we continue to provide good-quality services for Victorians into the future and certainly how we meet those debt commitments that have now been amassed.

The New South Wales government has certainly been prepared to debate and to take some leadership in terms of tax reform. I can only hope that the other states, and particularly our own state of Victoria, now join with the New South Wales government to look at those opportunities for tax reform with the new federal government. The interest rate situation that we face now is going to create significant problems, certainly for all Victorians in terms of their daily lives but also for this government. As I said, it is going to have ramifications in terms of future budgets and predicted surpluses that the Treasurer has laid out in this budget.

I personally am a great critic of the Reserve Bank of Australia. I think that the Reserve Bank of Australia, for at least 12 months and maybe longer, has been making political decisions on interest rates rather than economic decisions. The fact is that now it is playing catch-up to try and address the inflation that was clearly going to be created by the amount of government money that was pushed into the economy. You did not have to be anyone other than Blind Freddy to realise that pushing all of that money into the economy was going to create inflationary pressures. That is quite apart from what we see now in terms of the energy issues internationally and quite apart from even the impacts of things like the COVID ramifications. We should have been measuring and tapering some of that spending all the way along the line, but all of the government agencies, all at once—state and federal—were there throwing out money. And now we have got problems, because now we have a level of debt federally and we have a level of debt at this state level that are going to cause a lot of pain going forward. It cannot simply be that we keep kicking the can down the road—we have actually got to start to do something about this.

One of the disappointments of this particular budget is that whilst there are forecasts about a surplus in 2025–26—which, as I said, now is most unlikely given interest rate rises and at best, prior to those rises, was certainly optimistic—the fact is that we are not going to get there with the sort of service provision that Victorians are expecting, the quality of services. We are not going to get there because this budget, apart from anything else, has no actual plan to reduce that debt. It expects simply that economic growth will somehow—magically—erase a historic level of debt in this state, and it will not happen.

In fact we have already got a problem. We talk about housing affordability and we talk about homelessness, and there are real issues that we have to address in those areas, but what is happening is that governments are exacerbating the problems of housing affordability and homelessness by their interventions in the economy and in those very markets. Around 42 per cent of a house cost is taxation, and the fact is that the government in Victoria at a state level is too reliant on property taxes. One of the solutions proposed to increase social housing was to lumber more taxes on the property sector. We simply cannot do that. It is an intervention that simply adds to costs in the property market.

I was talking to a real estate agent some weeks ago at Park Orchards, and he told me about the time that the state government reduced stamp duty by 25 per cent as an incentive to try and allow more buyers into the marketplace. He had a property on the market for $720 000 in Croydon. People were sort of procrastinating about whether or not to put in their offer, and the state government came out that week and said, ‘We’re going to give you 25 per cent off stamp duty if you are first home buyers’. A couple rang up straightaway the real estate agent and said, ‘Listen, we want to buy that property now’, and he said, ‘That’s terrific, except that the property is now $770 000’.

That is the dynamics of the market. Every time there is an intervention, there are problems. I was not a supporter of the coalition government’s housing policies going into that last federal election, nor the Labor Party’s, because they both represented interventions that were going to add to the problem for first home buyers. The problem of people not being able to get into houses because of the affordability crisis has real social implications, as I have discussed before, which include putting off having children. The fertility rate of the country is reduced because people are simply reliant on having two salaries to be able to pay for a mortgage. It is getting worse and worse and worse, and of course these interest rates are going to affect it dramatically.

We have got to recognise that this budget has a lot of good things in it. It would be churlish to say that it does not, because of course it does. There have been some good things that have been delivered in my own electorate in the north-east region, and I am particularly mindful of some of the areas that I think have been underdone for so many years, including the special schools. I congratulate the government on the investment there. The government has done quite a lot in terms of some of these other projects and so forth in the state.

But one of the key problems, and Dr Ratnam talked about it, is the wage cap. The wage cap is 1.5 per cent, but that is a fantasy as well because every one of the claims that have been put in by public sector unions is for more than 1.5 per cent and the government is agreeing to more than 1.5 per cent. I do not know who is stuck on 1.5 per cent. They are obviously not very good negotiators, because everybody else is getting a lot more. We have got an expanded public service. We have got an expanded executive level in the public service. I mean, Fire Rescue Victoria has got to be the classic, with the most executives per capita of their employees of any organisation.

I notice that some people say productivity has improved. I do not know who they are asking about productivity improvements. They are clearly not asking Victorians who are trying to access government services, because you ring up, you play Tattslotto on the phone and you cannot get to speak to anybody. The last thing you hear on the phone is, ‘Look, we’re extremely busy at the moment. Can you call back at another time?’, and you fill in a form on a website, an inquiry form that goes to the department. Well, it does not; it goes into outer space, because nobody ever comes back to you. Where is the productivity improvement? Where are the services for Victorians? Yes, there are some good things in this budget, but there is also a lot of neglect. There is a fall in productivity in my view, a significant fall, and I think that there is a correlation in that in terms of many of the other economic indicators that we have.

We have talked about how great our unemployment rate is, but the fact is that it looks terrific because visas have virtually stopped. The federal government has strangled visas. We talk about the importance of international students for Victoria. There is no point us talking about them if the federal government does not issue visas to these students. We have got some work to do in terms of restoring our economy, and I am not hearing where that work is being done. We hear about more money being thrown at mental health, hospitals and so forth, and yes, more investment is needed in some areas. But at the same time there is no point throwing money at beds in hospitals, for instance, if we do not have the nurses and the doctors and the other paramedics to actually support them. So where is the training path? How much work are we actually doing on that training path?

We talk about all the money we are putting into TAFE, and it is terrific. One of the concerns I have about TAFE, though, is that it is always reactive. It is always retro technology that is being taught. In industry we have people dealing with new machines and new technology, and TAFE is not catching up with that. We need to be looking more at the sorts of excellence measures that we use in TAFE. It is not just a factory to push students through. We have got to equip them better. Now, the government has done a lot of work in that TAFE area, and I acknowledge that, but I still think that some of the rethinking of how we do business, how we do achieve better productivity and how we do make a difference going forward needs to be part of the thinking that goes into the budget, the policies and the decisions that are then implemented through a budget.

Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (14:51): I would like to embark upon this budget discussion today with gratitude—incredible gratitude—in particular for our healthcare workforce, who have really borne the brunt of the pandemic. I mean, it has been felt on many, many fronts of course, but they have literally been putting in many, many hours over and above and beyond for the welfare of all Victorians. I am incredibly proud of all that they continue to do, because, as we know, COVID-19 is not over. The pandemic is not over, so it has made very good sense and it follows that we do have a pandemic repair plan. To address some issues that have been raised in the chamber, this will mean more staff, better hospitals and first-class care.

This budget gives a much-needed boost to our health system, including delivering record levels of surgical capacity across the state to give Victorians the specialist care they need before they end up in the emergency department; more than $12 billion for health, including for more nurses, doctors, paramedics, health services and new and improved health infrastructure so all Victorians have access to high-quality health care closer to home; and training and hiring up to 7000 new healthcare workers, including 5000 nurses. I should also note that Ambulance Victoria will recruit 90 more paramedics with a $124 million investment to put more ambos on the road. While we are unclogging emergency departments to prevent ramping and other consequences we are also investing $333 million to add nearly 400 new staff to increase 000 call-taking and dispatch capacity for 000 services, including ambulances, and training more operators to allocate calls across the state.

I have to say, there is something incredibly personal, I think, for all of us, because we have all in some way or another been touched by the pandemic, whether people have had COVID-19 or maybe are healthcare workers themselves or otherwise. I recently had the privilege of going on a visit to Sandringham Hospital to announce a $4.8 million boost to refurbish and upgrade the outpatient unit, which will have many positive benefits for both staff and patients—because the principle we have is about putting patients first, but of course who looks after the patients? Our wonderful healthcare workers do, and we have therefore very much a holistic approach to making sure that we support the whole cycle of health. I was incredibly humbled, actually, to talk to nurses and doctors who have been through it and continue to protect us all, not only looking after the more customary elements of health care, if you can call them that, but also still dealing with the impact of COVID-19. They were so incredibly gracious in spite of all that they are having to do. From one minute to the next, still the priority is, ‘How can we best look after people coming into our hospital and putting their trust in us?’. So I just want to again express incredible gratitude for the work that they are doing, and I look forward to seeing the benefits of those upgrades in my Southern Metropolitan Region.

I did want to pick up on a couple of other points. I find it a little bit concerning and a little bit disturbing to see some non-government members seeking to trivialise our overall investment in social housing. We have a $5.3 billion investment. Now, true to form, it did precede this budget, but the investment nevertheless is there and it is unfolding. So this will mean 12 000 new homes across Victoria, more than 9300 new social housing dwellings and, within that, 2900 affordable and market homes for first home buyers and renters. Two thousand more Victorians with mental health issues will have a home; 25 per cent of investment will be in rural and regional Victoria; all new homes will meet 7-star national housing and energy rating scheme efficiency standards; and 10 per cent of all new social dwellings will support Aboriginal housing needs.

I should say, as an added element—and this is what Labor governments do—not only are we investing in social and affordable housing but it is also the jobs that are created, because we know that, just as in our health system we are looking after patients, obviously the infrastructure but also the healthcare workers that take care of our patients, we are also making sure that there are the jobs, because in order for people to pay for services et cetera and drive the economy they need jobs as well. We know that through our $5.3 billion investment in social housing this has created 22 000 jobs already, and we can expect more than 40 000 to be created throughout the four years of the program. So those trying to equivocate or to trivialise this investment—I do find that bizarre, particularly from those who will in effect deliver no houses. It is very easy to talk about these things and to complain, but when you actually have to deliver you can see that we are very much committed. These very important projects are well underway, and they are supporting Victorians not only in the infrastructure but in the jobs they create as well.

There are many more elements to the budget, but the other one that I wish to speak about is one to do with cost-of-living pressures and how we are helping to alleviate those. It is nothing new of course that putting downward pressure on power bills is incredibly important, and this is why we have the $250 payment for all Victorian households that use the Victorian Energy Compare website—this is actually the Victorian government’s independent price comparator website—to search for the cheapest electricity deal. This is just one component helping to alleviate the pressure on our power bills. Of course we have many energy efficiency measures that are well underway. We also have our Solar Homes program, which is for eligible households, including for renters, and that also includes the elements of installing battery storage systems and solar panels on their homes. So there are many, many measures that are being implemented to help offset the cost-of-living pressures, but of course there is an acute awareness right now that we are in winter with regard to keeping houses warm and keeping Victorians safe and healthy through the winter season as well.

On that note I am going to commend the budget to the house but, again, say a thankyou for all that our healthcare workers are doing: know that we fully acknowledge all that you contribute to our great state.

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (15:00): I rise today to speak to the budget 2022–23, which is obviously called the Appropriation (2022–2023) Bill 2022. Where do I start? You would have to be absolutely crazy to vote for this government at the November election after you have looked at this budget and seen that Victoria’s debt is set to hit $167 billion, which is that of New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland combined. You would have to be crazy. I watched people vote for this government when they were going to rip up the east–west link, knowing that they were going to be tearing up a billion-dollar contract. They voted them in. A billion dollars would have been able to be spent on multiple hospitals at that time. But no, we got the Daniel Andrews government, and here we have what happens when a pandemic hits.

This budget shows the community what happens when a government mismanages a pandemic. It is quite clear the cost of six lockdowns when you have mismanagement of the health system and mismanagement of a pandemic and the government have an open chequebook within their grasp. Clearly the community was more than happy at the very start of this pandemic, in 2020, and the first lockdown, with the promise that this government was locking us down to fix the hospital system and make sure that we were ready for a pandemic. But what did occur? They cancelled elective surgeries for two years or thereabouts. They obviously did not get the hospitals fit for purpose, because we are currently seeing what happens when you mismanage and do not spend the money where you are meant to spend it.

I would have loved to, at the very start of this pandemic, have been working with the government to make sure that the money was spent where it should have been spent: straight into our hospital system and straight into our ambulance services. I would have sent the money straight into local government and made sure that we had local community health responses through community facilities in local areas that were open and fit for purpose to deal with the pandemic. That money, had it been spent in those community services and community areas, would have been lasting rather than this takeaway, pop-up response that we received, with tents put up at Highpoint and people wandering through, which was not a long-lasting pandemic response. Respectfully, the community deserves a health system that is fit for purpose, a community health system that will go for years to come.

Then we come to mandates. This government decided that lockdowns were not enough to make sure that we were in a huge amount of debt, and they added mandates which were never needed. This budget shows what happens when you put mandates in. Why do I say this? How many people fled the state for work or due to fear of more lockdowns and mandates? They went interstate to be able to work. I have a sneaking suspicion that this government wanted the community to fail. They wanted them to lose their homes, and they wanted them to sell their homes. They wanted them to flee the state, the reason being that they get stamp duty. Every time a house is sold, they get stamp duty—$30 000 or $50 000.

I know that history will show you that. After Keating, the recession that we had to have, John Cain wrote in his book about the absolutely bumper amount of money that he received at the time when people had to actually sell their houses. Mr Cain at that time was disgusted. But I have no doubt that that is Mr Andrews’s playbook this time, making sure that he is just watching people fail and fail and fail and go interstate, fleeing this state, and that he gets the state duties and taxes.

So for me, I have watched what the costs of lockdowns have increased in this budget. There is the mental health cost for our children—now we have one in 10 being diagnosed with either depression or anxiety; the amount of loss of small businesses; the amount of homelessness, with people living in their cars. In my area people are queueing up for food and food hampers. The cost of living has gone up. We were known as the food bowl, and then we had such a distinct lack of people being able to have jobs, with the loss of jobs due to the mandates and other things. The cost of living has gone up. Our farmers have not been able to have the staff. Our food and beverage industry has not been able to have the staff. Small business everywhere has a lack of staff. That is how we are living. So obviously if you read this budget, you can see that this is another election budget. There are lots of promises that this government have not delivered on in the last four years, and there are lots of things sitting in this budget.

The government have not fixed our ambulances, when they knew that there was a problem. Like I have said in this chamber, they knew in 2014 and they did not fix the problem. They have not built our hospitals in a timely way or with a sense of urgency. With our schools, yes, there are plenty of schools in this budget to be built, but have they done this in a timely way? No, they have not. Have they fixed our roads? Everyone can attest that in the last two years they have been in traffic, even with lockdowns. Did they fix them in a timely way? No, they did not. They are splashing cash around at the moment, and that is our cash—the money hardworking Victorians have paid. It is their taxes. There is nothing for free—it is our taxes.

This budget the government has called ‘Putting patients first’, and the Premier and the Treasurer have told us that they are making record investments in our health system. To use their spin—and I have heard it out of our Premier’s mouth—there is a massive $12 billion boost to our healthcare system. That is far from the truth. He should be honest about the billions that have been spent so far, because the vast majority of that was federal government money. When I look at this budget—and you can look at budget paper 4 to be exact, which gives the capital program for our health—it shows that there is $2.813 billion for new and existing projects in 2022–23, yet the estimated expenditure for the current financial year is over $3.5 billion. Now, that looks to me to be a decrease.

Back in October 2018 the Premier announced that the government would build a new hospital in Footscray, and I was glad. It was something that I had pushed for for 20 years in my community, and I was so pleased to see that occur. You would think that once the pandemic hit they would have absolutely made that a number one priority. The Premier said:

… if their loved one is sick, they’ll be able to get the world class, affordable public health care they need, right around the corner.

Later that same month in 2018, he announced that planning would begin for the new hospital in Melton and that only Labor would make sure that Melton families get the very best affordable health care close to home—2018. Again I will quote the Premier:

Melton is one of the fastest growing regions in Australia and locals deserve a 24-hour public hospital for the very best care, close to home. With this investment, we’ll make sure they get one.

In another announcement in October 2018 the Premier announced that this government would invest $675 million to build and upgrade 10 community hospitals across the state, including one in Point Cook and one in Sunbury—in 2018. In his words:

Nothing is more important than having the peace of mind that when a loved one gets sick, care is just around the corner.

Only a once-in-a-generation boost to deliver new community hospitals will give patients the best care—and only Labor will get it done.

Well, thankfully the construction of Footscray Hospital is underway and there is funding for the coming year, but the project has blown out to half a billion dollars—half a billion dollars, but it has not made it any quicker. But what about Melton hospital? It is supposed to be completed in 2027. This was an announcement made in 2018, mind you. Despite the announcements and the press call-outs on the site there is not one single cent in this budget, just a bunch of promises. All there is is a line saying ‘To be confirmed’. Now, on the community hospitals, not one has been delivered, and there is only $20 million in this year’s budget—$20 million for a $675 million project. That is going to get some planning, and that is about it, kids. So much for the Premier saying that the government would provide the very best affordable public health care close to home. $167 billion they spent in this pandemic. Where—for some pop-up tents? The hardworking people in my electorate certainly are not getting it, despite all of the promises.

Let us have a look at another of the budget papers, budget paper 3, ‘Service Delivery’. It shows that the funding for the output initiatives is $2.62 billion, yet it was $3.56 billion for the current year. Even more disturbing is that there does not appear to be additional funding for dental services. Now, I have brought this up in this place. It does not refer to dental services for children, and there is no measure to address the time that people are waiting for dental services. People in the west are having to wait years—not just weeks or months but years—to see a dentist under the public system. Of the 34 000 patients across the state that have to wait more than three years the vast majority come from my region in the west—over 20 000 of them. I could go on—and I have done before—about the actual amounts and times in each of my areas, from Melton to Hume to Brimbank to Hobsons Bay, but I will not. Yet there is no money in this budget to fix that, not just dental care but denture care, and everybody knows that fixing your teeth means that you can get a job.

Thankfully there is funding for ambulances—hallelujah, praise the Lord—but in 2014 the Premier said that he would actually save the minutes that save lives. In 2016 the Minister for Emergency Services was warned about the serious staff shortages at the state’s 000 call agency, but can we really trust the government to get it right? I certainly do not think so, and I do not think that anyone in the west really thinks that this budget is what it claims to be, which is ‘Putting patients first’.

I might just go off track on two little emails that I received last night. These are just like the many, many, many that I have received, but I will touch on two from just last night. Let us just go to last night. One is from Johanna Tomlin. She said:

I am a 52 year old grandmother who resides in Sunshine North.

Last year, after experiencing bad headaches, she had a scan and found out that she had polyps. She was referred to the eye and ear hospital. She has been waiting several months for the hospital to contact her. She said a couple of weeks ago she was told:

… the waiting time is 1100 days. This is not good enough … I still have headaches, jaw pain, phlegm built up in my throat and forever sounding like I have a cold.

Why are they virtually saying that she will be on the waiting list for four years to remove some polyps from her nose? That is the eye and ear hospital.

This one is from last night also:

Dear Catherine,

… my 11-year-old son has been on a public hospital waitlist—

to get his tonsils out. In 2017 he started on the list. She was calling up before the pandemic and was told that there were 2000 kids on the waiting list. She went back to the GP and got more referrals and was calling throughout the pandemic. She said her daughter got her tonsils out after four years of waiting on the public waiting list. But she also said that during the last two years she continued to call the hospital, which is the Sunshine Hospital, about the waiting list and she has been told that the waiting list is now 3000. From 2000 it has gone up to 3000, and her son has already been on the waiting list for five years.

I do not know about others here in the chamber, but when I was a child and throughout my teens and the like children were a priority and getting their tonsils out was just something that happened. To think that you can be on a five-year waiting list to get your tonsils out is quite insane. Not only that, I could touch on all the people, the elderly and others, that are wanting to work and that are in chronic pain. But because of the lockdowns the government stopped elective surgery and made doctors and surgeons sit at home when these people would have been looked after.

I will move off health and into another area. Let us look at education. In November 2018 the Premier said:

Victoria is growing and we need to plan ahead to make sure that every child has access to a great local school.

He announced that during the next term, if he was re-elected, another 45 new schools would open up, with planning for another 55 to get underway. These included seven schools in Wyndham, six schools in Hume, five schools in Melton and more schools in Maribyrnong. He did say it can take more than two years to undertake the planning, buy the land and build a new school—3½ years later have all of these schools been built? No. This budget clearly shows that not all have been delivered. There are a number from 2019 yet to be completed, and the minister has advised me that some will open in 2023 or maybe 2024, which is just not good enough. The western suburbs of Melbourne are some of the fastest growing areas in this state. Every child should have access to a great local school, but apparently that is not the case if you live in the west.

Now there are roads and transport; let us touch on that. There is funding for the Calder Highway—something that for years we have been crying out for—but it is only for planning and there is no completion date. Thank goodness the $50 million comes from the feds, otherwise this probably would not even have been included in this budget. There is funding for the rail overpass at Werribee, but there is no completion date.

Then there is the West Gate Tunnel Project—the project that the west did not even ask for—which is running over time and over budget. Everyone just wanted WestLink—a simple project—straight from Footscray Road, under Footscray, jumping up in Brooklyn and connecting to the Western Ring Road. Now we have this octopus of problems—of contaminated soil and going through some of the filthiest areas, around Coode Island and under the Mobil terminal. It is just unbelievable that they would even have gone down this route. It is nearly $4 billion over budget. That amount could have built Melton hospital and the Point Cook and Sunbury community hospitals, duplicated the Calder Freeway and fixed all the roads in Melton. Do not get me wrong. I am very grateful for every bit of funding that we actually get in the west, but I also know that the funding that we get in the west is half the amount, if not a tenth of the amount, that marginal seats get.

Is the funding giving the community what it needs where it needs it? I really appreciate every cent that has been given to fund a number of the projects that I have raised in this chamber, but the local councils know their communities and they know the priorities. They have engaged with the communities to check their priorities to find out what is really important to their local communities. Local councils met with the Treasurer and let him know what their priorities were, but unfortunately so many of these priorities were ignored. I will give just some examples. In Brimbank funding for the Sunshine and Albion precincts, the energy park and the localised mental health programs was ignored. In Wyndham only $2.8 million was provided for activating East Werribee, an employment cluster that could have created 60 000 jobs. There was no funding for a new sports centre in Wyndham or for a new library in the fastest growing areas that desperately need community infrastructure. Like I said at the start of this, if this government actually put the money into creating long-lasting infrastructure, that could have been used. They could have flipped the funding on buildings into things that could have been used in the pandemic—to be able to have testing, to be able to have a local health response—but no, they put up pop-up tents. There was no funding, Wyndham have said, for the cycling and walking paths that they wanted, which are very important in an area with young families that has poor public transport.

In Hume the Bulla bypass is desperately needed. This government has promised it for years, and again—no funding. Councils requested funding to prevent family violence—virtually nearly every single council in my area has requested this—to support victims, and they all have been ignored. These are small grabs of cash with which they could actually deliver services to their local areas, and they know how on the ground they could help quickly. The government likes to splash cash around on big projects. They like their West Gate Tunnels, they like their Suburban Rail Loops and they like their level crossings. But apparently when it comes to infrastructure that the community actually want—that they have put under the nose of this government and they have put under the nose of the Treasurer—they always get ignored. They only want to spend it on their priorities—the things in the local areas that the community knows and needs.

For me, I have said before that people were more than happy feeling that this government was going to spend money on our hospital system, but it seems it has just come up again—not there. What do they expect us to believe—that they are actually going to get this budget back in surplus in 2026? They must be kidding me. It would be a miracle if this government could get any budget back to a surplus. The way that they have spent their money over the last two years is quite incredible, and to think that they have outspent New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland—I mean, we were all going through the pandemic—it shows you what happens when you have the kind of response that we have had here in Victoria, with the most lockdowns.

This budget is exactly what lockdowns cost the community, what mandates cost the community. Do not be fooled that this is not what it is. The amount of money that has been spent and wasted over the last two years, only an inquiry or a royal commission will tell us. Other countries around the world have done the work on what lockdowns cost them. Canada, the UK and other places have drilled down on what the cost has been for them. This government continues to be arrogant around holding on to mandates for workers when we have a worker shortage and crisis. Why? There is no science involved in this, no medical science, but this is what cost us in the way of the budget. This is what is going to cost us in the future—compounding costs and compounding problems. Bring on November, because all we are going to get are more blowout budgets, spending like there is no tomorrow and a disappearing of Victorians interstate.

Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (15:26): I rise to speak on the state budget 2022–23, or the Appropriation (2022–2023) Bill 2022 as it is actually called. This is what I would class as a typical Labor budget. It is a big-spending budget, but it also drives our state into big debt. As many people have said, this forecasts $167 billion worth of debt for the state of Victoria.

Like previous Labor governments, this government have adopted a city-centric approach to their infrastructure funding, which is denying regional Victorians their fair share of state government funding. Regional Victoria has continuously missed out under Daniel Andrews and Labor, with less than 13 per cent of the capital spending in the 2022–23 state budget estimated to be directly allocated to regional Victoria, and just 11.4 per cent allocated in the 2021–22 state budget for major state asset investment, being projects worth $100 million or more. This year the Andrews Labor government will invest only 13 per cent of its infrastructure spend in regional Victoria while it squanders billions on mismanaged projects in the city and ignores major projects in Northern Victoria, including the Shepparton bypass, the Mildura hospital and the Bendigo Art Gallery redevelopment.

Labor’s big bill is one of the areas where they will squander money. Not only do they invest all of their money in metropolitan infrastructure, but they invest in their cost blowouts on metropolitan infrastructure. We have seen the cost blowout on their West Gate Tunnel Project climb to $4.7 billion; their North East Link Project, $10.4 billion; the Melbourne Metro Tunnel, $3.36 billion; and the Suburban Rail Loop will be up to $100 billion. That is in blowouts alone. Then there is the additional cost of the blowout to the public service and the increased wages and the sweetheart deals that they do with the unions to increase wages beyond the 1.5 per cent provided for salary increases in the budget.

The CFA is another regional organisation that continuously misses out under this government. What we see in this budget is just $49.6 million allocated to the CFA for their fire stations. They have 1200 fire stations to upgrade, replace or refurbish, yet FRV, with only 80 stations, receives $120.6 million. Four of the stations that I have been advocating for recently have been Rochester, Yarrawonga, Strathbogie and Chiltern. All of these are very, very cramped stations that have the pegs where the volunteers hang their turnout gear right beside the trucks. People are changing beside trucks as trucks are rolling out of the station, and these stations have no female change facilities either. Yet the CFA are given a minuscule amount to try and upgrade their 1200 stations to cater for their volunteers, to cater for the safety of volunteers and particularly to cater for the growing number of female volunteers. This is just completely inadequate.

The Weekly Times recently compared the Rochester station and its inadequate and dangerous facilities to those of the new FRV station in Derrimut, but you do not actually have to go that far. You do not need to go to Derrimut to compare it to what FRV are getting at their stations. The new station in Shepparton, which was actually funded and built by the CFA, was supposed to be for the CFA, but of course the legislation changed that and it had to be handed over to FRV. It was completed and then handed over prior to it being occupied. I am told that the FRV facilities in Shepparton are quite amazing, with a massive gym, a TV room that has an enormous screen and a theatre-style setup with recliner chairs in it, an outdoor barbecue area and a commercial-style kitchen. They also have extremely good change facilities for the FRV firefighters, but I am told that the change facilities for the volunteers are extremely cramped. It is just typical that once again the FRV are being looked after but not the CFA.

In Shepparton we received funding for a few projects. There was the Graham Street intersection, which I have long advocated for. We also received $24 million for the Verney Road special school, and I am delighted to see Verney Road, who do an excellent job in our community, getting an upgrade. There was some money for some trains, but of course those trains are a little bit on the never-never. They will not be delivered until quarter 4 of 2026–27. That is June 2027 that those trains will come in, so that is actually beyond the four-year forward estimates of this budget.

There was also some money for mental health in the budget for Shepparton, but it is still a little bit unclear what that will bring to Shepparton. It is listed as a package for regional Victoria, with beds that go to Ballarat and to Wangaratta as well. There are more beds going to Ballarat and Wangaratta than there are coming to Shepparton, but there is a component of the money that will go to replacing facilities in Shepparton. But again we are in the midst of a mental health crisis in Shepparton. The mental health unit is completely overwhelmed, yet the completion date for this is not until quarter 2, 2026–27. That is 4½ years away and, again, beyond the forward estimates of this budget.

I would like to congratulate those in our community who actually brought forward this issue and put it on the agenda. Many of them presented to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, and this has been a desperate need in our community for a long time. But it does not go far enough, and it will not be delivered quickly enough. We know that unfortunately in the last couple of months of last year and the first few months of this year we had at least six youth suicides in Shepparton, yet it is unclear whether this money will deliver any more for child and adolescent mental health services in Shepparton. Particularly what we need are some acute inpatient beds for child and adolescent mental health located in Shepparton at Goulburn Valley Health. Currently young people have to travel if they need an inpatient bed to Box Hill Hospital, which only has 12 beds to cater for the whole of north-east Melbourne and the whole of north-east Victoria. That is just completely inadequate, and I would encourage the government to make sure that there are some dedicated child and adolescent mental health beds in that redevelopment.

It is inexcusable that the government has not funded the full redevelopment of Goulburn Valley Health. There was bit of money for the early parenting centre in Shepparton, which is again something that the community have long advocated for, and they have been supported by both Suzanna Sheed and me in advocating for that facility. It is fantastic that we are getting it, but there is more to the completion of Goulburn Valley Health than just mental health and the early parenting centre. The government trumpeted their investment in stage 1, but now we are not even talking stage 2 when we are talking mental health and the early parenting centre. The government have forgotten all about staging and there is no talk of completing our hospital. That is a great shame because there is a vast amount of other areas, like outpatients et cetera, that are inadequate and need to be upgraded. Our hospital must be completed.

There are a number of projects that the government missed out funding in the budget this year for Greater Shepparton, particularly the bypass, which has been on the agenda for over 20 years. We know what this government has done to frustrate the development of the business case there and to put this project off and off and off. It is time it came onto the agenda; it is time for it to be funded. The Shepparton sports and events centre is also something that the community were disappointed not to see funding for. This was something that would have helped us to attract events for the Commonwealth Games, but obviously this government are ignoring Shepparton when it comes to the Commonwealth Games even though the idea came out of Shepparton. Funding for the new Shepparton FoodShare premises is something else that was desperately needed. The federal government have contributed $600 000. FoodShare must move. They are a vital service in our community. They saved our community during the two-week lockdown that we experienced, and this government must come to the table with funding for them as well. Other things are the construction of a new technical school in Greater Shepparton, something that is desperately needed; the construction of an autism centre; and the establishment of residential drug and alcohol centre in Shepparton—again nothing for that. There was nothing to upgrade the dangerous Kialla West Primary School crossing and nothing for a clinical health school in Shepparton.

We know now that there are severe shortages in our health workforce in Shepparton. In fact it was reported in the paper only last week that there is a shortage of 80 full-time equivalent doctors in Shepparton. These are vacancies that are not filled now. These are registrars, interns and house medical officers—80 full-time equivalent vacancies. There are 110 full-time equivalent nursing positions vacant right now—not illnesses, vacancies—and an additional 230 full-time equivalent clinical positions will be created by the completion of stage 1 of the hospital. La Trobe University have put forward a plan for a clinical health school, but this government did not support that, so I do not know where these health professionals are going to come from. Our community is suffering because of this.

Pioneers Memorial Lodge in Numurkah is another facility that did not get any money. They were expecting to be funded. They have 34 residents, and they have two respite beds and two transitional care beds. Their full redevelopment would have been worth $20 million, but again that was missed out in this particular budget.

I am running out of time, so I am going to go through these really quickly. The big thing for Mildura that the government did not fund is their new hospital. This government knows that community needs a new hospital. Matthew Guy has been up there and committed $750 million to a new hospital, but this government is totally ignoring that need in this community. They also failed to put any funding in this budget to complete the Murray Basin rail project or for an upgrade of the Mildura Airport. There is nothing for the establishment of an early parenting centre in Mildura and nothing to fund an increase in kindergarten capacity. Funding for stage 1 of the motorsports and community precinct was missed out, and funding for the construction of additional social housing that is definitely needed in Mildura was overlooked.

In Bendigo they overlooked the full redevelopment of the art gallery. It was an $18 million ask of the state government, but they overlooked that. They overlooked the need for investment in the iconic Golden Dragon Museum. The Central Deborah Gold Mine was only asking for $150 000 to redefine its business case, and yet it did not even get that.

The proposed Bendigo regional employment precinct was also overlooked, despite the council advocating strongly for it. Construction of the new regional resource centre in Bendigo was also overlooked, despite council advocating for it. The construction of a shade structure at the Bendigo Livestock Exchange is another thing that should have been funded. And the City of Greater Bendigo have plans for a number of cycling tracks that also went unaddressed in this particular budget. I do not have time to go through all of the projects or the things that were unfunded in my electorate or all of the 11 lower house districts that are in my electorate.

But there were a couple of other ones that I would like to mention that did get funding. I was delighted to see funding for 72 beds at the Mansfield District Hospital for aged care. I actually went there with the federal minister for aged care, Richard Colbeck, in December and we looked at that project and advocated for that project to be funded. There is also some money for planning upgrades at Bright hospital. It is only $1.52 million. This should have been a full investment in the redevelopment at Bright. Bright hospital have completed their feasibility, their master planning and their business case. They need $63 million in capital funding, and yet this government ignored that need in that ageing community. The government should be ashamed of themselves. To give them $1.52 million just to now have their plans reviewed and agree on a concept for detailed design, with no time line for completion, is an insult to that community.

Mr TARLAMIS (South Eastern Metropolitan)

Incorporated pursuant to order of Council of 7 September 2021:

It’s a pleasure to make a contribution on the Appropriation (2022–23) Bill 2022.

Being in government is rarely ever straightforward.

In fact, the last few years have been very challenging as we’ve navigated our way through a global pandemic and all the complexities that came with it and we led our state and communities through this unprecedented period.

We navigated our way through this period as a collective, taking the complexities into our stride so that we could continue to deliver for Victorians—doing everything we could to stop the spread of this highly infectious virus, while keeping everyone safe.

But when it came time for this budget—where we had to decide how we will support Victorians across the next year with our spending—it could not have been clearer and it could not have been simpler that we needed to deliver to our communities across Victoria.

We knew this budget needed to invest in:

• health care

• education

• mental health

• cost of living

• jobs

• and much more.

We recognised, plain and simple, that this was what Victorians wanted.

This was what Victoria needed.

So, in our fourth budget as a Labor government this term, we have gotten to work so that we can deliver for our communities.

We acknowledge the circumstances in which we are presenting this budget.

Though the brunt of the pandemic has passed us, by no means do we claim it’s over; in fact, the period we are in now will constitute one of the most difficult times for our state yet.

We always knew the height of the pandemic would have long-lasting, residual effects on the community; these effects are coming to light now.

So now it comes time for us as a government to support Victorians through recovering.

That’s why we’re investing where the community needs it the most, to foster people growing and continuing forward in the face of this pandemic.

Our pandemic repair plan is a prime example of how we will deliver this.

The plan will provide newer and better hospitals, more staff and first-class care, easing the current pressure on our hospitals and healthcare workers that arose during the pandemic.

We’re investing more than $12 billion towards health.

In addition to the pandemic repair plan, we have also established the Victorian Future Fund.

We provided the necessary funding to support Victorians throughout the brunt of the pandemic; however, we recognise that the debt burden encountered during this period should not translate across to our future generations.

The Victorian Future Fund addresses this issue; drawing on proceeds from the VicRoads modernisation joint venture, it will be used to repay COVID borrowings.

We will continue to supplement the fund by investment returns, land sales and a proportion of future surpluses once our net debt stabilises.

Looking now to other areas of our budget that will benefit Victorians, education is certainly at the forefront.

Our spending on education builds upon the many investments we have made in previous budgets to support the sector.

Across the last eight years, we have invested $12.8 billion into improving our existing schools—we’ve also built new schools to accommodate for population growth across the state.

In this budget we have invested a further $1.8 billion toward instigating even more meaningful change within our schools.

What we will see because of this spending is more access to good-quality schools, no matter where that student lives or comes from.

We will see better facilities, more extensive resources, and an overall improved quality of education for schools and students.

Our investments will see that every single special school in Victoria has received funding for a major upgrade—because every single student with special needs or a disability deserves the same opportunities as every other student.

Another area we have focused on in this budget is mental health reform.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and exacerbated the issue of mental health within our community, so we made addressing it a top priority within this year’s budget.

The royal commission into our mental health system in 2021 identified that Victorians were experiencing extreme difficulty when trying to access mental health care in times of urgent need.

Our response to this issue has been cumulative; in the 2020–21 budget, we invested $869 million into laying the foundations for a new mental health and wellbeing system.

We also provided extra funding for mental health services throughout the pandemic, where many Victorians struggled with their personal wellbeing.

Then, last year, we invested a record $3.8 billion to continue to support these reforms.

Now, in this year’s budget, we’re continuing to build on these investments by providing $1.3 billion to take the next steps toward reforming our mental health care system for good.

This funding includes $218.4 million toward supporting the operation of five emergency department mental health, alcohol and drug hubs across the state.

We acknowledge that our work supporting the mental health of Victorians is far from over; however, we are prioritising addressing the systemic issues found and supporting Victorians to the best of our ability.

Looking away from the entirety of Victoria and at my electorate, I can say with great confidence and great pride that this budget delivers for the South Eastern Metropolitan Region.

The South Eastern Metropolitan Region covers a large area and comprises many diverse communities, and whilst there are many common issues and needs, there are also some differing needs associated with some parts of the electorate.

This budget does a good job of addressing the needs locals are concerned about and have identified.

This budget will see record spending on education for the region, with a spend of almost $63 million on upgrading our schools.

We are supporting education in areas of the south-east where there are high volumes of young families and young people—our $18.95 million investment into upgrading Kambrya College, Berwick, is a prime example of this.

This funding will see the school be modernised and upgraded, including an additional 400 spaces in permanent facilities to meet growing demand from the community.

We will also investigate options for a performing arts centre in later stages of the upgrades, an addition which would add great value to the school’s co-curricular activities.

A further eight schools within the South East Metro are also receiving funding—supporting even more upgrades.

We are making sure every student has equal opportunity to a world-class education, with investments made toward upgrading three specialist schools in the South East Metro:

• Dandenong Valley Special Developmental School will receive $14.78 million

• Naranga Special School will receive $7.61 million

• Springvale Park Special Developmental School will receive $8.89 million.

This funding will allow for works such as new classrooms, replacement of relocatable buildings with permanent facilities and administration facilities, upgrades to toilets and more across the three schools.

Moving on from education, this budget will deliver significantly for health care within the south-east.

We will support the expansion of the Monash Health Casey Hospital in Berwick.

Casey Hospital’s emergency department expansion will include a dedicated paediatric space for children and their families and support an additional 52 000 presentations annually.

This will see the emergency department’s capacity doubled, allowing more people to be treated when they need critical, often life-saving care.

It will also mean patients can leave the emergency department sooner, improving the hospital’s overall efficiency.

We are catering for the growing needs of our community in Frankston also, by investing $29 million into converting the Frankston Private Hospital surgery into a public facility—this is a landmark project, significantly expanding our ability to treat patients in the area.

We have delivered $12 million for a second mobile stroke unit, to be based at Monash hospital, Clayton.

This is significant to the community here in the south-east. In the event of a stroke, sometimes a matter of seconds can make a critical difference to the patient’s survival and recovery.

With more capacity to treat stroke patients, this funding will ensure we are doing the most we can to protect Victorians during an extremely vulnerable time.

Monash Health’s emergency department will also receive funding as part of the five emergency department mental health and alcohol and other drug hubs that are funded in this budget.

We’re also investing significantly in sport and recreation in the south-east through this budget.

We have invested $4 million for the establishment of new sports fields, new facilities and other upgrades at Jells Park so that residents can access and enjoy higher quality facilities in their day-to-day activities.

There is $5.5 million to upgrade the Dandenong police paddocks, including improving infrastructure picnic facilities and signage, addressing environmental degradation and improving connections with the Dandenong Creek Trail, Melbourne Water wetlands, Tirhatuan wetlands and Churchill National Park.

We’ll develop a new masterplan for the police paddocks, ensuring that the site remains accessible and welcoming for future generations and that visitors can learn about and reflect upon the colonial history of the site, helping them to fully appreciate the role the paddocks, as the initial headquarters of the Native Police Corps, played in the dispossession of our First Nations peoples.

We’ve allocated $3 million for the Patterson River National Water Sports Centre to improve pathways, create dedicated viewing areas, plant new vegetation, design a new multipurpose building and to perform a feasibility study for a pedestrian bridge.

The upgrades will make the National Water Sports Centre more accessible and safer for the wide variety of its users.

We’re upgrading and improving existing recreation facilities and making them more accessible, with funding being allocated towards:

• Seaford Life Saving Club to support the purchase of all-abilities infrastructure for the whole community to utilise

• the redevelopment of the pavilion and replacement of the athletics track at Ballam Park

• the delivery of improved change room facilities, including female-friendly facilities, at Mordialloc Braeside Junior Football Club

• the delivery of turf and synthetic cricket nets and other reserve upgrades at Mulgrave Reserve

• a covered green at Frankston Bowling Club

• the construction of two full-size netball courts at the Botanic Ridge netball facility

• completing and upgrading the track and facilities at Frankston BMX park.

We understand the pressures being faced by households and we’re continuing our work to drive down the cost of living for Victorians.

Current measures to support household budgets include:

• $250 power saving bonus for eligible concession card holders (extending to all Victorians from 1 July)

• $191 million to expand the Solar Homes program, including 42 000 additional solar rebates

• Victorian default offer—providing annual bills around $440 lower for a typical residential customer compared with 2019

• short-term vehicle registration

• capping council rates

• funded kinder—saving families $2000 per child

• free TAFE to give Victorians more training and new careers

• free RATs to eligible recipients through health services, schools and community organisations

• public transport fares were frozen in 2021 to support economic recovery from COVID-19; in 2022, metropolitan fares increased by an average of 2.3 per cent, and regional fares by an average of 1.1 per cent (both below the most recent annual CPI growth figure).

We have also invested significantly in further major road upgrades and projects—too many to list in the limited time I have today—building on the extensive list of projects already completed or underway.

We’re also continuing to provide funding to support our multicultural communities in my electorate and across the state.

And there is so much more for the south-east in this budget.

And I’m thrilled that we will be delivering such a vast array of upgrades and improvements for my community.

This budget is what the people of Victoria deserve after a lacklustre budget delivered by the previous federal government earlier in the year.

It was a budget of bandaid solutions.

It was a budget that neglected the needs of our communities.

It was a budget that short-changed Victorians, robbing us of our fair share.

We’ve made it our priority to right these wrongs in the 2022–23 budget and to simply DELIVER for the people of Victoria.

I’m confident that this budget delivers not only on what matters to my electorate, but what matters to ALL Victorians.

We’ve set up long-term economic growth for our state.

We’ve invested in critical areas of concern, such as health care, cost of living, education and mental health.

We’ve shown that we understand the community and that we will take care of Victorians when they need it the most.

I’m proud to support this year’s budget, our fourth budget this term—a budget that proves that we are a state government that listens to, cares for and supports all Victorians.

I commend the Appropriation (2022–23) Bill 2022 to the house and wish it a speedy passage.

Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business, Minister for Resources) (15:41): I thank all members. Most members in the upper house have made a contribution to this debate over Tuesday and Thursday of this week, and I thank them all for doing so. The budget is an annual occasion on which the government of the day can express their values but also respond to the significant needs and the really divergent and competing needs of communities across Victoria. Through the course of the debate members have reflected on things that have been in the budget and things that might perhaps be in future budgets, and of course there are many thousands of decisions that are made in preparation for a budget. Whilst the upper house has a different role in terms of the passage and provision of supply to our colleagues in the other place, it is a really important moment in each parliamentary year when we get to express our views on the budget.

For me, just briefly, because I do know Mr Davis is interested in taking this to committee and we will get to discuss some of these things in a bit more detail, I am very, very proud to be part of a government that is managing the significant challenges and the significant pressures that have been brought to bear on the Victorian community over the last two and a bit years now as we have weathered the most significant health and economic crisis to face this community in more than 100 years. These have been unprecedented challenges, and we have worked every day with people across the Victorian community to respond in the very best way that we can.

The budget papers that were presented to the Parliament last month by the Treasurer bring to account some of that past expenditure, but of course they also outline our ambitions and plans for this year. As members here will be well aware, our government is one that delivers on the promises that we make to the Victorian community, and you can see that through the budget as well, perhaps most notably in some of the funding and support for implementation of recommendations from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.

From the get-go our government has been making sure that young people in our school system and slightly older young people in our vocational training system have every opportunity to achieve their full potential, and again there is some really exciting news for a whole lot of communities around school projects and school upgrades. They have been many of the things that we have heard about through the course of this debate.

This budget does two things perhaps above all other things. Firstly, it responds to the significant pressures that our health system and our hospitals are facing, and I take this opportunity to thank all of the people that are working across our health system in what must be extraordinarily challenging daily experiences. We are still experiencing this pandemic, we are still experiencing very significant cases of COVID and we are experiencing some delayed presentations to our health system as people have deferred treatment and check-ups and the like. For those people for whom this is their daily experience, this budget seeks to ease some of the significant burden that they carry for all of us.

The other thing that I think is really important that is a hallmark of this budget is that it takes us those next couple of steps along the journey of budget repair. The 2020–21 budget that was brought down six months out of cycle, in November 2020, and also the May 2021 budget were really very significant both in their ambitions around economic stimulus and economic transition but also in providing support to the most vulnerable people in our community and making sure that in both the economic and the social and community recovery people were not left behind. That task continues. This budget makes investments in areas where those needs are most acute but does so in a way that is fiscally responsible. We will be seeing a return to a cash surplus and, over the forward estimates, to that operating surplus—not simple things to achieve when we still have really, really significant cost demands on a whole lot of those services that are important for the daily wellbeing of people across the Victorian community.

I congratulate the Treasurer and his team and thank all of the people in all of the organisations across the state who come across our doorsteps or come across our Zoom or Teams meetings to advocate for the things that matter to them in their communities or in their sectors. In fact I think my favourite thing about being a member of Parliament is when people come and talk about the thing that they are motivated by, the thing that is really important to them, and they have thoughtfully put together their case. Of course there are always more demands for budget funds than there are budget funds. But to every person in the Victorian community who has contributed to this budget and to all the people in our Department of Treasury and Finance, who probably did not get a lot of sleep for a whole lot of months, I thank them as well.

I look forward to some discussion on some of the issues that have been canvassed in the debate during the committee stage. Just before I wrap up and we move into committee, I indicate for the record that the opposition and indeed the Shadow Treasurer, Mr Davis, have sought answers to a number of questions about the budget but also around particular policy and portfolio issues, and I thank Mr Davis for doing that.

Mr Davis: To expedite.

Ms PULFORD: Yes. Mr Davis and I are jointly interested in expediting discussion on these matters, as I am sure all people are, so I thank Mr Davis for that. I just indicate for the record that we have provided answers to those questions as fulsomely as we could in the time that was available. There are a number that we have not been able to provide a full answer to or an answer to in the time frame that we have had available as I speak to you now, but I am happy to indicate that we will continue to work on those and provide those answers by the next sitting week. I thank Mr Davis for the cooperative approach he has taken to that because, having previously at one time taken such a bill into committee, there are limitations to what people advising in the box or any one minister at the table can know in terms of the full breadth and depth of everything that is in the budget. So we will work through these things as best we can. I commend the bill to the house, and I look forward to the committee stage.

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Committed.

Committee

Clause 1 (15:51)

Mr DAVIS: I want in the first instance to thank the Leader of the Government in particular for the approach that we have adopted this year and last year where, in an attempt to expedite the process, we have provided a list of questions ahead of time, enabling the departments and so forth to provide answers. I accept the government’s assurances, and any slowness by us in providing those questions we apologise for. But we thank the government for indicating that they will provide some now and some over the period ahead before the next sitting week.

I should just begin by seeking to incorporate a few tables into Hansard. I have spoken to Hansard; they are comfortable with that. They make one indication, though: these are in colour, but they will not appear in colour in Hansard. I should just make sure that the minister has got a copy there, and there are other copies available if people want one.

Ms PULFORD: These are all from the budget papers, yes?

Mr DAVIS: Yes, they are all from the budget papers. And the ones where there is an interstate comparison are from the relevant state budget papers elsewhere.

I just want to make a couple of points about this at an early point. We indicate that indeed if you look at the period from 2013–14 there is a significant increase in overall state taxation of around 80 per cent, from $16.9 billion in 2013–14 to $30.5 billion in 2022–23. Land tax is up from $1.7 billion to $4.8 billion—that is up 192 per cent over the period to the 2022–23 estimated number. Land transfer duty has increased from $4.2 billion to $8.2 billion over that period, a 97.4 per cent increase. But I note that for this year, the 2021–22 year that we are still in, the actual figure is $10.194 billion, noting the government expects revenue collections from land transfer duty to fall from what is a high—and I think we all understand the reasons for that. Payroll tax is up from $4.95 billion to $6.8 billion.

I make the point that there are a number of assumptions in the budget, and I will ask about a couple of those in a moment, but if you look at gross state product, it is up about 24 per cent to this financial year that we are in now. We are not particularly enamoured with the government’s estimates going forward. We think that they are heroic because they have got population assumptions and other points in them, but I am happy if the minister wants to make some comment on that.

I just want that put in the context that we face a particularly challenging position with Victorian debt. People will have seen the increase in interest rates that has been flagged, and I guess that my first point to the minister is whether the government would be prepared to provide some details, further details than are in the budget papers. I know what is in budget paper 2. I have read it very closely in terms of the assumptions in terms of interest rates and other outlook points, and I am conscious of the sensitivity analysis in the appendix in budget paper 2, which fundamentally shows that a 1 per cent increase in interest rates over and above the government’s projection is likely to result over four years in a $2.55 billion increase in interest charges.

That is a long way of getting to the point, which is simply to ask a question about whether the government will release further details about its presumptions at the time of the budget about interest rate increases. We knew what the interest rate was; indeed there was a movement on budget day. Obviously that could not have been precisely factored into the budget, but the government would have had a schedule or a document that allowed projections forward in terms of interest rates. It is important to measure those points, so the simple question is: Minister, is there a document or a schedule that estimates the presumed—

A member interjected.

Mr DAVIS: No, it is one question. I am just putting it in context. Is there a document that lays out the government’s assumptions on interest rate increases?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Mr Davis, while the minister is getting advice, there is a process for incorporation of material into Hansard. It is standing order 12.17. I would just invite you to have a look at that and check that you have met the criteria for that.

Ms PULFORD: In terms of Mr Davis’s question around the movement in interest rates, the budget assumptions and estimates are based on the Treasury Corporation of Victoria’s analysis of the market and bond rates, not an estimation of what the Reserve Bank is going to do, so they are based on our own assessment of market conditions.

If I could just make a couple of additional comments about this, interest expense as a share of total revenue is expected to remain modest, averaging 6 per cent over the budget and forward estimates, well below levels seen historically—for instance, during the 1990s—but the government’s borrowing strategy does take into account the risk of potential near-term interest rate rises. Our budget forecasts are based on market expectations for interest rates. We are confident that interest rates will remain manageable and modest. I hope that assists.

Mr DAVIS: I thank the minister. I am aware of the claim in budget paper 2 that it is based on market expectations, and that is what I would expect, but is that documented somewhere? The government must have a document or a schedule or a paper that lays it out. And I get that there are lumpy payments and borrowing processes involved, and they are partly in the sensitivity analysis of course. But is there such a document?

Ms PULFORD: Some of this will be publicly available through the Treasury Corporation of Victoria, but perhaps I can take on notice whether or not there is anything else we can provide.

Mr DAVIS: What steps the government has in place to lift productivity in the Victorian economy.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Minister, do you want to answer that now, or do you want to come back after the cleaning break?

Ms PULFORD: There are various things in my portfolio, off the top of my head, but that is a good idea. If we are a minute away from a cleaning break, then I will come back to Mr Davis in 15 minutes.

Sitting suspended 4.00 pm until 4.16 pm.

Ms PULFORD: For those that have just joined us during the cleaning break, Mr Davis asked if I could give some examples of some productivity measures in the budget and what the government is doing to improve productivity. This is not an exclusive list, but I will provide you with some. All of the Big Build infrastructure, in addition to creating jobs now, enables productivity growth in the long term. There is the $120 million Victorian Industry Fund, which includes supporting local businesses with investment attraction, and an equity investment pilot fund for advanced manufacturing. We are investing in medtech through the breakthrough fund. There is the Business Acceleration Fund, which is about cutting red tape and helping businesses both to start and also to grow and reducing those input costs that impact businesses. That has got a number of different subsets or components to it that we will develop in partnership with industry, and that also will focus on areas of greatest imposition as well, so we will work backwards from an assessment of what is of greatest impact.

The mental health investments that the government is making will boost productivity. From the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, as all members would recall from discussions on that reform in this place, we know that the burden of mental ill health in the community is profound, and these reforms will certainly seek to address that and will be beginning to address that.

Ms Tierney, who has joined us, knows as much as anyone about training reforms. There has been a very big reform to VCE since its inception, making sure that our young people leaving the school system are ready for full and productive employment in a labour market that cannot wait for them to turn up, and also of course there have been the TAFE reforms and expansion of TAFE courses and programs, as well as the reforms around new courses to respond to our fairly rapidly changing economy.

This next one will take a little while to pay dividends, but it has the evidence base, and the Deputy President will be well familiar with the evidence on early years education and three-year-old kinder. Yes, it will be a while until those people are entering the workforce and participating fully in the economy, but three-year-old kinder is a massive investment in the future productivity of all of those little people.

There is an early intervention investment framework across multiple portfolios as well, which helps people address problems early that pose challenges to their participation in the economy and boosts employment outcomes.

Across my portfolios we have very significant investments in telecommunications infrastructure both in regional Victoria and throughout Melbourne suburbs, with a real focus on outer suburban areas where people are needing that ability to get their work done, for those that are still working from home or partially working from home or just trying to get things done at home, so that all of those workplaces in all of those communities are operating with better and more appropriate for the times telecommunications infrastructure. Our employment portfolio program is very much about enabling fuller participation in the economy by people, including many who are not currently participating in the labour market and in the workforce.

Across the resources portfolio we have a number of regulatory reforms underway to improve approval processes for that industry. In minerals we are genuinely experiencing a second goldmining boom. In extractive resources we are working closely with industry and have been for some time, but we will continue to have some funding in the budget to improve the productivity of that industry and have quicker and better approvals.

We have a number of programs in the small business portfolio to help businesses become more digitally adept. Some of them are for businesses that are small now but have had identified or have self-identified their potential for very, very significant and rapid growth, so that is super exciting. But also at the more micro-enterprise end and small and family business end of the vast and diverse community that is our small business community we have sort of an entry-level trial program, the digital adaptation program, which is lovely. It is a huge program in digital skills.

Probably most of the ministers could do this across their own portfolios at a moment’s notice, but Mr Davis as a former health minister would well understand some of the improvements to reduce the burden of disease that our medical research community work on as well.

Those are just some highlights, but it is certainly something that the government is incredibly conscious of—our need to continually improve and work on it. The productivity challenges associated with a pandemic and a really significant burden of illness through the community through this winter are not insignificant, and we need to continue to work to make it easier for people to do business, to reduce the costs of doing business, to make sure that people have as full a participation in the economy and in the labour market as they can and also that they can get around as efficiently and effectively as possible, because those input costs can be very, very significant for people no matter what industry or line of work they are in. I hope that helps.

Mr DAVIS: Productivity is incredibly important, and I will ask a couple of simple questions. The first is: does the government have a target for productivity improvement, and if so, what is it?

Ms PULFORD: For the private sector?

Mr DAVIS: For the whole economy.

Ms PULFORD: The government does not limit its ambitions here with a target. I would add to that that there are things within the government’s control and things within the commonwealth government’s control, and we work closely with local government around the things that they can do to support improvements to productivity across the economy and the actions of individuals and individual enterprises as they reduce their input costs and increase their outputs.

Mr DAVIS: And how will productivity improvements, if they occur—noting that the last eight years have not been a great time for productivity in Victoria, with it basically static—be measured?

Ms PULFORD: The Australian Bureau of Statistics, I understand, will continue to measure that in the way that they do and have done.

Mr DAVIS: I only have a very small number of further questions. I want to take the minister to the bill, schedule 1 on page 5. As I understand it, this is what has been appropriated by the actual budget process, and you will see the amounts per portfolio area. I have a couple of questions. Why has the budget for courts been cut from $667 070 000 in 2021–22 to $641 479 000—a cut, I make it, of $25 591 000? Why has that been cut?

Ms PULFORD: The advice I have here is that the provision of outputs has increased by $45.2 million, primarily relating to the new 2022–23 budget decisions, including continuing therapeutic court programs, helping courts respond to the impacts of the pandemic, operationalising the Bendigo law courts and improving access to justice for children and their families—they are individual initiatives, the four of them; prebudget policy decisions, including placing accommodation for Court Services Victoria and the Dandenong specialist Children’s Court; and some administrative adjustments, including rephasing. Additions to the net asset base decreased by $70.7 million, primarily driven by a reduction in the courts capital program due to projects nearing completion. This is partially offset by new budget decisions, including new federal jurisdiction matters in the Magistrates Court, decisions including the Dandenong specialist Children’s Court and administrative adjustments such as rephases. You may wish to follow that up.

Mr DAVIS: I might ask a similar question about the Department of Treasury and Finance. And I should add, Minister, that the charts are slightly expanded if you go further forward. For example, for Treasury and Finance, you might want to look at page 15. It falls from $20 752 234 000 to $18 410 009 000, a $2 342 225 000 reduction.

Ms PULFORD: The change in appropriation here, I am advised, is due to the following. Provision of outputs has decreased by $23.4 million, primarily related to the funding profile of programs funded in previous budgets. This decrease is partially offset by new 2022–23 budget decisions, including the supporting Victorian manufacturing initiative, the Business Acceleration Fund initiative, and the supporting better customer protections in essential services initiative. Additions to the net asset base have increased by $25.3 million, primarily driven by the rephasing of funding associated with the acquisition of the Bendigo GovHub and new budget decisions such as supporting better customer protections in essential services. Payments made on behalf of the state have decreased by $349.4 million in 2022–23, primarily reflecting the expenditure profile of the Victorian Transport Fund and the forecast budget sector debt portfolio increased expense.

One of the significant changes you will note on that table, Mr Davis, is the ‘Advance to Treasurer’, which has decreased by $2 billion, primarily reflecting a decrease in decisions made where funding has not been allocated to departments. You would appreciate that the year that is coming to an end at the moment has been really unusual, and so spending profiles across some departments, across some programs, are concluding as they were emergency responses or as they were stimulus responses, which is why we have across the budget fluctuations that you would not have seen, say, comparing 2017 to 2018 or 2018 to 2019 in the same way. We have had some very, very significant increases; we have also got a number of things that are at the end of their time because they were only ever conceived to be shorter term interventions.

Mr DAVIS: Essentially the allocation here is $14 billion for Treasury advances. In that table on page 15, at item 4, the 2022–23 estimate is a $14 billion Treasurer’s advance pool. Is that funding that is in any way as yet allocated, or is it entirely unallocated?

Ms PULFORD: The government regularly holds funding in contingency. This is substantially for significant capital projects, so projects that have already been announced, like North East Link and Melbourne Airport, among others. Funding is released progressively in line with government approvals processes—so milestone payments on progress. Funding is also held in contingency to provide for estimated future demand for significant items, like school enrolment and hospital demand, and that is released in budget updates with the passage of time, where those things are able to be accounted for. The budget process provides for quarterly reports on actuals as well as a midyear forecast, and of course because this year is an election year there is also a pre-election budget update as well.

Mr DAVIS: Is a breakdown of that $14-odd billion available? I understand you will not have that here now, but it would be helpful to have a breakdown of that figure to see which part of it is contingency for significant capital projects, which is approved projects and which is contingency for significant events and so forth—demand.

Ms PULFORD: These are reported on as they are settled through that quarterly reporting process in the midyear and pre-budget update process. So because the year has not begun, it is too early to account for things that have not happened yet, and the accounting of the $16 billion for 2021–22 will happen in the normal way.

Mr DAVIS: It is clearly not too early to break down the $14 billion at least into categories. The government has actually come up with this figure to put in the budget and sought an appropriation of that amount, so the government must have some basis for that. I would seek a breakdown. I understand you could not possibly do that now, but that would be helpful.

Ms PULFORD: Well, let me see what additional information I am able to provide to you on that.

Mr DAVIS: Just heading back to the front of the schedule on page 5, this is obviously an estimates summary. There is a budget figure for 2021–22, and there is an estimate for what will be spent and what is sought to be appropriated for 2022–23. But I would argue there is a third figure that I would seek for each of those categories, and that is the revised budget figure.

Ms PULFORD: The actual.

Mr DAVIS: Yes, the actual—as far as is possible. Obviously the end of the financial year is not here yet, but budget figures will have been produced to produce a revised budget figure, which would sit in the middle of these two here. So in some areas there will be variance from the budget in the normal way. It would be helpful to understand what the revised budget figure is for each of those categories. Again, I know you cannot possibly have that now. Maybe take it on notice.

Ms PULFORD: Let me see what I can find for you. I thank Mr Davis for his further question. It is in September that the actuals are all finished and reported on. If I am able to provide you with some further information, I am happy to do so. We have obviously just been through our public accounts and estimates process where the parliamentary committee has had ministers and senior departmental people speaking to such matters on item-by-item bases. We have still got a few weeks to run in this financial year, and then those final numbers are accounted for in the usual way. But if there is anything in particular that you are looking for, I am happy—

Mr DAVIS: That list of revised figures, which I think would be available.

Ms PULFORD: Yes.

Ms CROZIER: Minister, thank you. Could I take you to page 54, which talks about a number of output initiatives. I am particularly interested in the immunisation of Victorians against COVID-19. I am referencing particularly five to 11-year-olds on page 61. I know that the government had a number of programs and projects to assist with that cause. You will have to take this on notice, and I am sorry I did not provide it previously to get the answers. Basically what I am asking is for the following vaccination hubs: the Melbourne Zoo, Healesville Sanctuary, Werribee Open Range Zoo, Sea Life aquarium, Melbourne Museum, Immigration Museum, Scienceworks, State Library Victoria and Legoland. Could you please provide each hub’s cost and how many vaccinations took place in each of those hubs? It might be a question you need to take on notice.

Ms PULFORD: It is a question I will definitely have to take on notice because I do not think I even knew we had a hub at Legoland. I am feeling like that is something of a missed opportunity as a massive Lego nerd, but how lovely. Let us take that on notice.

Ms CROZIER: I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Minister. If I could just also go to a number of other issues in the output initiatives around equitable cancer care and prevention. There is funding in the budget provided to BreastScreen Victoria. Unfortunately I did not get to the biggest morning tea, the Cancer Council morning tea, this morning.

Ms PULFORD: Oh, it was this week, wasn’t it?

Ms CROZIER: Yes, it was this morning.

Ms PULFORD: I did not get to it either.

Ms CROZIER: No, you might have been in here too. I did not get to that, but I understand that there were a number of screenings that had been missed. I am just wondering what the government’s anticipated number is or what they have according to the Cancer Council. I know that Todd Harper has been out recently saying there were 500 bowel cancer screenings missed. I am just wondering what the total number the government thinks that will be is and how that will impact on those admitted services.

Ms PULFORD: Okay. That is obviously a level of inquiry that goes well beyond the knowledge of the lovely people assisting me today, who know lots of things about the budget but not every breast screening place across the system. I too missed the breakfast, but it is a—

Ms CROZIER: Morning tea.

Ms PULFORD: Sorry, the morning tea. I missed the morning tea today as well, but hopefully we have not had a single person more than necessary miss their appointments. I know from my personal interactions with my local breast screen folks in Ballarat that they are working hard to catch up with some people who have let their appointments fall behind. There has been plenty of public messaging to make sure that people have known that those things have been open and available throughout and that they are very good and important things that people need to continue to do. Let me take that on notice and see if we can get you that sort of information.

Ms CROZIER: Thank you, Minister, for that undertaking. Minister, I know there has been significant discussion around the future of our health workforce. There are shortages across the system. We understand that COVID has put enormous pressure on so many of those frontline healthcare workers and all those that work in our health services. Again I say that they have been faced with some extraordinary challenges over the last two years and have done an extraordinary job on behalf of us all. I do understand that there are many issues with senior clinicians who have been speaking out. Regarding the standing with our health workforce and the funding that is provided particularly around supporting newly graduated enrolled nurses et cetera—there is clinical placement activity and consolidation of transitioning from registered nurses into various programs—what I am keen to understand out of this is where the numbers are, because I cannot get any visibility about just how many have left and how many this will actually put into the system to assist with the workforce shortage that we have got now. I am wondering if the advisers have any further information on that.

Ms PULFORD: I suspect that the advisers with me today probably do not have that level of information. Staffing numbers are typically included in the annual reports of our health services, and they will be published as the year comes to a conclusion and the reporting period September-October comes around. But if we are able to provide you with some further information on that, I will seek for us to do so.

Ms CROZIER: I appreciate that, Minister, because I do think it is important that we understand the extent of that funding and if there are any further gaps. That is why I asked that question.

Ms PULFORD: I just take the opportunity to also express my profound support and admiration for people who are turning up and working in this environment each and every day. We all take our hats off to these people, and they are an inspiration. But it has been unbelievably challenging, and for some people it has prompted them to think about what else they might do. But just given that you have raised this very particular topic, the Premier announced earlier today a bonus to support staff retention and to support our health workforce, particularly over these challenging winter months, and we are certainly hoping that that will be an effective initiative and also some recognition of the additional burden and the additional costs that people are incurring by working in such a challenging environment.

Ms CROZIER: Thank you, Minister. I just want to move to the schedule that Mr Davis was also referring to on page 10 on the Department of Health. In the budget papers, page 220, the revised budget for 2021–22 was $27 billion, down to the 2022–23 budget of $25 billion. There is a decrease there, so I am just wondering in relation to the schedule, page 10, what is the revised figure for this schedule?

Ms PULFORD: Sorry. Page 10, schedule 1, Department of Health, the revised figure, as in—

Ms CROZIER: Is there a revised figure?

Ms PULFORD: I already answered that for Mr Davis a moment ago. He asked across all departments a question that captures your question, and I said that at the end of the financial year, as all things are brought to account, the quarterly update in September will provide this information. But I did undertake to provide further updates if we are in a position to do so.

Ms CROZIER: Apologies. I missed that. Thank you. Could I just go—I have not got too many more questions—to again the output initiatives for the Department of Health, ‘Investing in a thriving North Richmond’, and there is funding to provide improved access to health and social support services. I am wondering if the government could provide an update about what is happening with the Yooralla building. I know that it was purchased for $44 million. There was some speculation that that was going to be used for a second injecting room. I know the government has not released the Lay report as yet, and we have not got any visibility about what that is. But is there anywhere in the budget funding that is going to be utilised in that building, or is it just going to be sitting there, lying dormant?

Ms PULFORD: I will take that one on notice if that is all right.

Ms CROZIER: I have just got one more, thank you. It was a question I provided. I do not think I made myself very clear in the question. I am just wondering if I could rephrase that. I think we spoke about this in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee in terms of taxis being used for transport. I have not read through the transcript in its entirety, so please forgive me if it has been answered previously, but is there a total cost for taxi transfers for patients?

Ms PULFORD: I will take that on notice as well. If you have finished all your questions, then I do not think we have any others, in which case there is just one other thing I want to say before the Deputy President wraps us up and moves us on to the next item of business for the day. I understand that there were some crossbenchers who provided questions ahead of this committee stage, as the opposition did, and that we have not been able to provide complete responses to all of those questions. I just wanted to place on the record, as we did for Mr Davis and the opposition, that I am happy to commit on behalf of the government that we will endeavour to provide further or remaining responses, for people who submitted them ahead of this committee stage, by the next sitting week.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Mr Davis indicated to the committee earlier that he wanted to incorporate some documents into Hansard and that Hansard had agreed. Mr Davis sought leave of the President, and the President has agreed. Mr Davis now needs to seek leave of the house.

Mr DAVIS: I seek leave of the house to incorporate them, noting they will not be colourful.

Leave granted and material incorporated at pages 2135–8.

No question put pursuant to standing order 14.15(2).

Clauses 2 to 9—no question put pursuant to standing order 14.15(2).

Schedules 1 and 2—no question put pursuant to standing order 14.15(2).

Reported to house without amendment.

Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business, Minister for Resources) (16:54): I move:

That the report be now adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Third reading

Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Employment, Minister for Innovation, Medical Research and the Digital Economy, Minister for Small Business, Minister for Resources) (16:54): I move:

That the bill be now read a third time.

Motion agreed to.

Read third time.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Pursuant to standing order 14.27, the bill will be returned to the Assembly with a message informing them that the Council have agreed to the bill without amendment.