Tuesday, 2 May 2023

 Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (17:17): Victorians have come through a difficult time. The last term of Parliament was dominated by the COVID pandemic and the impact and strain it put on our community. Now, as we begin this latest term of Parliament, there are more economic, social and environmental challenges looming large.

With the budget just a few weeks away, we have seen the government trying to soften the ground for a difficult budget, a budget that will slash public services and jobs. It comes at a time when we are in the midst of the worst housing crisis in generations. There are over 120,000 people on the ever-growing public housing waiting list. The rental crisis is out of control. Families are living in tents, people are living in their cars and share house tenants are living in crumbling, mouldy houses, too afraid to ask for repairs.

It comes at a time when the cost of living is rising and workers are experiencing significant real wage cuts, when Victorians are waiting over 16 months on the public dental waiting list for treatment and when young people experiencing mental ill health are facing wait times of six to 12 months.

It comes at a time when our natural environment is facing perilous threats, with Victoria in the midst of an extinction crisis. Last term’s parliamentary inquiry into ecosystem decline revealed that nearly 2000 species of plant and animal life are threatened with extinction. Climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, weak laws and inadequate monitoring and implementation of environmental laws are wreaking havoc on the health of our environment, the very environment we depend on for survival.

It comes at a time when First Nations children are being over-policed and removed from their families because there just is not enough investment in services to support their wellbeing. How often do we hear in this place that we cannot get on with the reform because the services are just not in place yet. Well, governments have a responsibility to make sure they put those services in place and fund them, not defer to their absence as a reason to continue to allow the harm to occur to some of the state’s most vulnerable of citizens.

It has become a cliché to say budgets are about choices, but it is a reality. The government has a clear choice in this budget: either tax the big profiteering corporations or push people even further to the margins and make the extinction crisis worse.

Right now the big banks and corporations are reaping in massive profits, significantly pushing up the cost of living and driving inflation. Reports today suggest the big four banks will make over $16 billion in profits in only six months – $16 billion in profits. That is obscene when people are living in tents. The government dropped its social and affordable housing levy when the property industry said no, showing who really runs this town. But the government can make a choice, a different choice. It can make property developers pay their fair share for public and affordable housing. The gambling industry continues to rip the soul out of our community. The least we can do is adequately tax their immoral profits for investing back into our community. A 20 per cent tax on online gambling and stopping the revenue merry-go-round back to the racing industry would ensure billions more to fund services the community needs. Let us not forget this is a government that has committed over $20 billion to two toll roads while committing less than a quarter of that amount to community housing and a small fraction to renew public housing.

We have the biggest police force in the nation and a billion-dollar prison sitting empty. The government has made bad decisions in the past. It is time to make different ones. Yet instead in the upcoming budget the Victorian Labor government is reportedly set to cut funding to essential services and axe thousands of public sector jobs. It would be unconscionable for the government to deliver an austerity budget while people and the planet suffer and the big banks, property developers, the gambling industry and corporations profiteer off the cost-of-living crisis. A different choice would be to pick up some of the revenue and savings measures the Greens are putting forward. We have identified $30 billion to $40 billion of revenue and savings that could be used to fund the things people need. For the Greens the choice is clear.

Motion agreed to.

 Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:22): I move:

That the address be presented to the Governor by the President accompanied by such members of the Council who may wish to attend.

Motion agreed to.