Tuesday, 30 May 2023

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (13:49): Last week’s state budget is an absolute shocker. It is brutal. It is going to be hurting many, many Victorians for years and years to come with debt of $171 billion – an extraordinary amount of money that Victorian taxpayers are going to have to pay back. And what does this government do? It hikes taxes everywhere you look. Look at what is happening with school fees going up. Rents are going up. There is just a huge amount of cost that this government are not accounting for, and they are just wasting so much money. There are increases in land tax and, as I said, in rentals and in school fees. Right across the board people in Victoria are going to be hit by the decisions that the Andrews Labor government have made – very bad decisions that are going to impact us for years to come.

One billion dollars has been cut out of health at a time when the government spruik that they are investing in health. Well, we see what they do – they put in faux accounts of $320 million to fund six hospitals, yet that is over four years, and it is less than 8 per cent of funding. It is so disingenuous what this government continues to tell Victorians. They are conning Victorians. But worse than that, they are putting a huge bill onto every Victorian for years and years to come. We have seen the project blowouts extend the waste and the mismanagement. It is just extraordinary, and this budget will go down as one that Victorians will remember for a very long time.