Thursday, 22 June 2023

Budget papers 2023–24

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ingrid Stitt:

That the bill be now read a second time.

And Jaclyn Symes’s motion:

That the Council take note of the budget papers 2023–24.

Matthew BACH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:07): It is good to be able to make a brief contribution on the Appropriation (2023–2024) Bill 2023. On this side of the house we do not oppose this bill. There are a range of issues with the budget that I will speak to just briefly, because we desire of course to ensure that this is passed today. That is so important because we want to make sure that our ambos are paid, our teachers are paid, that there is funding for school building – who knows, maybe even in some coalition-held seats – and that so many important matters that all governments must undertake can be funded. That is notwithstanding some of our deep concerns with the state of this budget. Those concerns have been noted elsewhere so there is not really a need for me to recapitulate them in great detail here today. Nonetheless, we have our deep concerns about the treatment of payroll and land taxes in this budget.

We have our deep concern about the removal of payroll tax exemptions for approximately 110 independent schools. That is what the budget says, but interestingly that has unravelled recently. It is not what the Premier says anymore, so there is an error there. The Premier now says that the payroll tax exemption will only hit, well, fewer schools than that. The Premier says ‘less’ schools than that; he means fewer schools than that when he says that. We do not know exactly how many. This particular element is going to have a particularly egregious impact in sections of my electorate. For example, in the lower house seat of Warrandyte more than 50 per cent of parents currently choose to send their children to an independent school. There are several fabulous independent schools in that electorate. I have received so many letters from parents in Warrandyte and right across the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region who know what the government denies, and that is that when you slug independent, non-government, not-for-profit schools with $500 million of additional taxes under this budget alone, of course that will mean some schools are forced to shut down. It will also mean –

Members interjecting.

Matthew BACH: The Attorney-General interjects and says ‘That’s false’ and Ms Shing says ‘Name them’.

Members interjecting.

The PRESIDENT: Order! It is getting a bit messy. Dr Bach, without any assistance.

Matthew BACH: If those opposite had engaged with schools, as I have – the Minister for Education has not engaged with one; she said so at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. Numerous schools –

Harriet Shing interjected.

Matthew BACH: You really want me to name the schools? There are multiple schools whose principals have spoken to me and said that the impact of this tax is that their schools will close down. I am happy to say it again.

Harriet Shing interjected.

Matthew BACH: All right, I will give you my list. I will show you mine when you show me yours. You give me the schools hit list, Harriet, and then I will tell you mine, despite the fact that I would be breaking confidences to do so. Numerous principals have told me that the impact of this tax, as it is envisaged in these budget papers, with a $500 million hit to independent, non-government, not-for-profit schools, will not only lead to schools closing down but it will lead to fee increases in the magnitude not only of hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year but thousands of dollars. This is denied by those opposite, but this is the impact on schools when you actually talk to schools, as I do every day. The Minister for Education has not spoken to one independent school since she smashed them in this budget with $500 million of additional taxes.

The budget papers say that the removal of the payroll tax exemption will raise $422 million over the period of this budget, a strangely specific figure given that at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee neither the Treasurer nor the education minister could point to any modelling whatsoever. But let us leave that major matter to one side for now. In addition, because the payroll tax exemption is being removed and because so many Victorian independent, non-government, not-for-profit schools have a payroll of over $10 million, they will be slugged with additional taxes. It will be a triple whammy – not only payroll tax but also the COVID levy and the mental health levy. Now, when the budget was handed down the government did not realise that was the case, because the government did not realise that even one independent, non-government, not-for-profit school had a payroll over $10 million. The education minister stated so in the other place with confidence. Anybody who knows anything about independent schools knows that so many have a payroll over $10 million. Some have a payroll of over $100 million. School budgets are overwhelmingly made up of their payroll, to the tune of about 70 per cent in my significant experience. Nonetheless the government, without knowing the full impact, has hit so many independent schools with a triple whammy.

Despite the fact that the State Taxation Acts Amendment Bill 2023 passed in this place the other day, there is still time for the education minister to work with the Treasurer – that is the process, apparently, to determine the hit list – to scrap the tax entirely. Thousands and thousands of Victorians have signed a petition to that effect that was organised actually by a lady from Mr Mulholland’s electorate, a lady who sends her children to Aitken College. This is one of these evil high-fee schools. I think the fees for Aitken College are about $7500. The budget papers – and we are debating the budget papers today ‍– say that approximately 110 schools will be hit. That means that schools with fees as low as $7500 will be hit.

We have heard in this house over the period of this week that these tax changes have been carefully calibrated only to hit people who deserve to be hit, because they did really well through the period of the pandemic. That is what Ms Ermacora said yesterday: carefully targeted, calibrated taxes to hit only those who can afford it and deserve to be smashed with additional taxes, like the good people of Greenvale, many of whom choose to send their kids to, well, schools that any reasonable person would say are low-fee schools, like Aitken College.

Unlike the education minister, I have met with the principal of Aitken College recently. She has not met with anybody, but I have met personally and had numerous other conversations with the principal of Aitken College, and she says that the impact of these taxes is going to be devastating for her school. You can understand that, when you are hitting schools like Aitken College. It is not Xavier; it is Aitken College out in Greenvale. So many good people in that part of the world choose, for reasons that are their own, quite frankly, to send their kids to independent schools. My daughter is going to the local state primary school next year, and we are really excited about that. Others choose to send their children to independent schools, and that is fine in my view.

So we have a big problem, obviously, with the schools tax. We oppose it. We opposed it the other day. We will continue to do so all the way through to the next election, and if we are fortunate enough to gain the trust of the Victorian people, then we will repeal it.

In addition of course we have got big problems with the increase in net debt. I think I am right in saying that as of today Victorians are paying about $10 million every single day just to service Labor’s debt. It is not COVID debt. It is Labor’s debt, largely a result of economic incompetence, in particular enormous waste on major projects. Those opposite will say in this debate, as they said on Tuesday in the debate on the state tax bill, that we have got to come up with alternatives. If we are going to oppose these taxes, well it is our job to come up with alternatives. Mr Mulholland is in the chamber. He came up with some very good alternatives just the other day, and I would endorse them.

Mr McGowan is also in the chamber. He was banging on about fishing rods the other day. I would endorse his alternative proposal. But it would be remiss of me not to say that before the election, just last November, the Labor Party said to Victorians that you can have it all. You can have massive spending on infrastructure projects and you can have a massive increase in health spending with no new or increased taxes. Something has changed since then. It is not the fact that of course there was significant additional spending through the period of the pandemic, the bulk of which we on this side of the house wholeheartedly supported. That had happened before the last election. Of course the Labor Party told Victorians that you can have it all and ran – as normal – a highly effective scare campaign against the Liberal Party and the National Party on the basis that there would be cuts and closures.

Indeed in my electorate we have seen numerous projects halted and pushed back. I am thinking about projects like the North East Link. The time line for the so-called Suburban Rail Loop has been pushed back to the never-never, with the Labor Party basically adopting the policy that we took to the last election, which was much derided. In fact I think there was a debate in the other house just the other day about some of my – in all humility – excellent comments about the Suburban Rail Loop during the election. But that has been pushed back to the never-never in direct contravention of what the government said it would do before the last election. So it is a bit rich – if you will spare the expression ‍– for the Labor Party to come in here and say that it is our job to come up with solutions to its budget woes, because before the election it said you can continue to have it all. It was not true then, and it remains untrue now.

There are significant issues in the agriculture portfolio, and I will largely leave it for colleagues of mine to discuss that. I understand that Mrs McArthur may make some comments in this debate about sheep, for example, albeit I am going to advise Mrs McArthur that she needs to be incredibly careful when she talks about sheep, based on a ruling from the Chair yesterday. I take this opportunity, given that I am talking about the agriculture budget, to raise my concerns about a ruling from the Chair yesterday. President, it is good that you are in the chair as I do it. Yesterday a point of order was raised when Mr McGowan used an expression. He said that when it comes to the schools tax, there had been a ‘cock-up’, and Ms Shing was offended by that, unsurprisingly. She raised a point of order on the basis that this was unparliamentary language. I jumped to my feet at that time and explained the etymology of that term. ‘Cock’ is a proper term for a male chicken. A cock is a cockerel – it is a male chicken – and ‘cock-up’ refers to that, as Ms Shing would understand. You can say what you like about Ms Shing; you cannot say she is unintelligent. I explained to the house at the time that ‘cock-up’ is a term that refers to a cock’s feather in an arrow. If that feather has been placed poorly into the arrow, the arrow will not go straight – a mistake, a cock-up.

The PRESIDENT: Can I do something quite peculiar and call a point of order myself. Sorry to interrupt your contribution. I will be very short, Dr Bach, because I know you have got a time limit. I actually reviewed this discussion this morning, and I want to say two things. If I was in the chair and I was Mr Berger, I would have done exactly the same thing. To defend Mr Berger, it is a really hard job being Acting President in these sorts of real-time situations. He did ask the member to rephrase. I probably would have done the same thing. But it is all a learning experience. Dr Bach, we bow to some people’s understanding of history, which is better than others’. I am happy to rule that I am okay with that phrase into the future.

Matthew BACH: I am immensely gratified by that, President. Thank you very, very much. My concern was, especially in this debate, as we discuss agriculture, that we may now be banned from discussing a whole series of other animals. You see, almost every farm animal has a name that is an appropriate name for that animal but also has a separate meaning that is derogatory. I was concerned for Ms Shing actually, because she oftentimes speaks about her little donkeys. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a donkey is a stupid and obstinate person, so I would hate for her references to donkeys to be ruled out. Mrs McArthur talks about sheep oftentimes in this place.

Now, a sheep, according to numerous dictionaries, is not only a lovely woolly mammal but also a mindless follower, and so my concern is that if we are now going to embrace wokeism in this place to such an extent that we are cancelling farm animals, then we will not have much to talk about, especially when it comes to the agricultural budget. However, as normal, President, you have acted –

Nicholas McGowan: What about a pig?

Matthew BACH: A pig, a dingo. We heard a question the other day from Ms Purcell about dingoes, and it was a shame Mrs McArthur was not here, because I think she might have interjected regarding sheep. But a dingo is, according to numerous dictionaries, a traitor – if you refer to somebody as a ‘dingo’. So there are real concerns about a whole load of animals, hence I very much appreciate your clarification today, President. Obviously this discussion is directly relevant to the bill given that we are talking about the agriculture budget.

In my electorate there have been a number of important projects I advocated for before the election that I was disappointed to see not funded in this budget. I have spoken about them on other occasions, so I do not need to go into detail. I did, however, want to reference in this discussion the quite appalling pork barrelling of the education budget. An analysis has been done that demonstrates that 93 per cent of capital funding for schools is going into Labor electorates. The education minister, at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearing, walked straight into this by saying that – in a rather smug way, if I might say – the government won a significant majority at the election. Absolutely; thus you would expect a slight imbalance from coalition-held electorates to Labor-held electorates or Greens-held electorates when it comes to the education budget. However, the figure is 93 per cent. I think the government holds 60 per cent of seats in the other place; 93 per cent of funding going to Labor-held seats is a clear rort. I have spoken on numerous occasions about any number of schools in my electorate, fabulous state schools, that desperately need capital funding. It was good to hear Mr Galea earlier talking about one school that has received some funding in a coalition-held seat. That must be the exception that proves the rule.

My broad view of this budget is that the Victorian people should not be punished for the financial incompetence of the Andrews Labor government. They should not be hit with a whole series of new taxes – a schools tax, a land tax, a rent tax, a debt tax – that will have, despite the protestations of those opposite, a significant negative impact on so many Victorians. I do not accept, nor does anybody else, to the best of my knowledge, the government’s logic that its tax changes – its significant tax increases ‍– are carefully calibrated only to hit the top end of town. That is not the case. It is not the case for the thousands of Victorians who have signed the ‘axe the tax’ petition to ditch Labor’s schools tax. It is not the case for so many renters, and we have spoken about renters a great deal in this house this week. That is right and proper given the nature of the crisis that is underway right now. I spoke more about Victorians trying to get into the rental market and struggling with sky-high rents just on Tuesday. I do not doubt many of my colleagues around the chamber will want to talk more about some of the impacts of budget measures, including tax increases, upon those seeking to rent.

Of course we will not stand in the way of this bill. There are several elements of this bill that I support, and I have spoken about them previously. But on the whole, in the main, the impact of this budget will be seriously negative on the Victorian people. We get it – we do get it – that under Labor Victoria is broke, but the Victorian people should not be punished for that.

The PRESIDENT: Before I call Mr Galea, a few people might have been looking towards me to talk about relevance in Dr Bach’s contribution, but the budget covers nearly every aspect of life, so that is why it is wideranging. It is something that I took advantage of myself in previous years, as Dr Bach probably remembers.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:24): It is with delight that I rise to talk about this very comprehensive, very impressive budget, the 2023–24 Victorian state budget. I would like to thank Dr Bach as well for that wonderful etymological adventure through some of the parliamentary and non-parliamentary phrases in this place. It is always informative in this place, and you never know quite what you are going to learn one day to the next. I appreciate that very enlightening discussion.

This is a budget that delivers for Victorians. I have spoken in a number of contributions in this house both in the last sitting week and this sitting week about the many, many things that this budget delivers for my community in the south-eastern suburbs. In fact, as Dr Bach noted, I was speaking just this morning about the two new primary schools already being built, on top of which are three new schools for the Clyde North area which are being built as part of this budget. I also had the delight of visiting Carrington Primary School in the Rowville electorate, which is in Knoxfield, to announce planning funding for their $13 million redevelopment – another election commitment being fulfilled in this budget – as well as $2 million of funding for St Jude the Apostle School in Scoresby. It was terrific to see that we are continuing to support public and non-public low-fee private schools as well.

There are a number of other initiatives that I could talk at great length about, including the mental health and wellbeing locals, one of which is going to be built in Narre Warren, which is going to be a huge boon for my community in the south-east. I spoke yesterday in the house about the importance of having access to quality health care close to home, and that is just as important for mental health as it is for other forms of health – it removes those barriers – so that is a really important initiative too. I am also excited for the further planning works that this budget has funded for even more mental health and wellbeing locals, be they in Officer or Cranbourne or other places across the south-east. There are a number of things to celebrate locally.

This is a challenging budget scenario that we do find ourselves in. Much as those opposite might like to say it is all the government’s fault, you do have to acknowledge that we have been through quite a considerable period of adversity not just in Victoria, not just in Australia but across the world with the COVID-19 pandemic. As I said yesterday too, this government rose to the challenge, as many other governments did, and did what was necessary to put Victorians first, to keep them out of ICU beds and to keep them in jobs. We do not make apologies for doing that. We also want to make sure that we are not passing the burden of that COVID-related debt on to the next generation, so there is a bunch of measures that have been outlined by other speakers on this bill that we will be putting through to repay the COVID debt that was incurred over the past few years.

It would be very easy for me to spend the next few minutes going through all the things that affect my electorate, but I would like to give a bit of a broadbrush approach to some various different topics that this budget covers across a range of statewide areas, because there really are quite a lot of them. I did have the opportunity in the last two weeks as part of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) to partake in detailed discussions with ministers and officials, along with two other colleagues from the chamber, and it was very good to hear from them firsthand about their priorities and what this budget will seek to deliver.

For example, in the department of Aboriginal affairs there are a number of initiatives, including Closing the Gap funding, transforming the system to enable families and children to get better support ‍– $20.9 million in this coming financial year and $26.7 million in the next financial year as well. If we look again at the Department of Education and Training, we will be providing Victorian students with the essentials to support their engagement in learning – again, $21 million this year and $26.7 million in the next financial year. For the new schools planning fund – we have spoken quite a lot about that – there is $26 million in this coming financial year. There are quite some recurring figures here – it is quite a good number, 26.

We also have a number of asset initiatives. The Department of Families, Fairness and Housing – $26.9 million in asset initiatives in the coming financial years. For the Department of Health, we have rare diseases and cancer, a very important field of research – that funding is ramping up, as it should. This coming financial year it will be $24.9 million, rising to $26.1 million and $26.8 million in coming financial years. Health-based responses to public intoxication – also $26.9 million in the 2024–25 financial year. Right through to other sectors, such as and including asset initiatives – more PET scanners for Victorian hospitals. This is going to be a huge benefit across the state, including for the people of Frankston, with the Frankston Hospital benefiting from these upgrades too. That is $26 million in the 2025–26 financial year, which will be a significant benefit for that community. All the way through to the Building Better TAFEs Fund – this is the government that rescued TAFE, coming back from the disastrous former coalition government that gutted TAFE. They even forced the closure of the Swinburne TAFE campus in Lilydale, which was shameful – a TAFE that was reopened by this government, one of the first steps by the wonderful previous member for Monbulk, which was great to see.

We are investing in TAFE too with the better TAFE fund, $26.1 million, another significant boon before that figure increases again the following financial year too. If we look at emergency services upgrades, we are delivering the emergency services upgrades that our state needs, increasing funding with a total estimated expenditure of $26.6 million over the forward estimates.

Revenue is an important part of this as well, and there are measures that will be in place to support our small business as well. As with many of the tax changes discussed, one of the things that has been overlooked is the increase to the payroll tax threshold. This is going to be a significant benefit to a number of Victorian businesses, ramping up those threshold levels so that they can continue to invest in and support their staff. Six-thousand businesses will be affected initially, and then when the threshold rises to $1 million that will benefit up to 26,000 small businesses. So there are a number of initiatives across a number of sectors that will be supporting Victorian workers, Victorian employers and Victorian jobs as a part of this budget.

In the space of transport and planning there are a number of benefits, many of which we were able to explore at PAEC last week as well. Bus routes are an important and vital transport link for many Melburnians and Victorians. I spoke about that in length in my maiden speech as well; it is a topic that is close to my heart. We were greatly benefited to see the zero-emissions bus out the front of the steps of this building on Tuesday morning, and it was terrific to see what the future looks like. As I mentioned in a previous contribution, that bus is actually from the Heatherton depot in my electorate. I had the chance to visit that depot several months ago with my colleague in the lower house Mr Meng Heang Tak, the member for Clarinda, and we got to see firsthand just the sorts of investments that are taking place in our buses and our depots to refit the network to support the rollout of zero-emissions buses. The mileage on these buses is quite remarkable as well.

You might be a bus user on the 426 Caroline Springs to Sunshine; in the west in Mr Mulholland’s electorate you might be on the 526, the Coburg to Reservoir bus; you might be in the Southern Metro electorate and taking the Middle Brighton to Chadstone bus, route 626; or of course, best of all, you might be in the south-east of Melbourne taking the Fountain Gate to Pakenham bus, route 926, a fantastic, important connector bus as well. This government is investing in our bus network with some particular reforms which will benefit people, including the extension of the route 433 bus in Maddingley with service extensions as well, with a new route in serving Eynesbury, in Melton. Also there is the continuation of bus services in my electorate in the Clyde area of Casey, with the route 888 and 889 buses being locked in. These extensions were developed as part of a pilot program last year in consultation with local developers. It is a new method of approach, ensuring that our bus routes in growing areas are extending in line with the population growth and that people are moving in with services at their door, at the end of their street and around the corner. So that is an important initiative; it has been very successful in the Clyde North estates. Locals have told me about how valuable they find the services and having them ready to go by the time that they move in. So that trial has now ended, but this budget has locked in that funding to ensure that those extensions to those two routes, the 888 and the 889, are locked in for the benefit of my constituents. It is the same deal on the other side of the city too, in Wyndham, where routes 152 and 182 are being continued under similar circumstances.

We also have the fantastic new cross-peninsula bus that has been announced as well, and I would like to give a bit of a shout-out to the new member for Hastings, who has lobbied very actively for this. It is just amazing to see what having a good, active local Labor member can achieve in an electorate. I know the Minister for Public Transport has taken a keen interest in this project too. I spent a lot of time ‍–

Matthew Bach: He hates buses.

Michael GALEA: He loves buses, Dr Bach. I spent a lot of time in a previous career working across Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula and commuting by bus across the peninsula as well, so I can speak firsthand to the absolute value this would have. If you are in Hastings and needing to access something in Mornington or Rosebud, it is a huge trip.

You have got to go into Frankston, whether you take one of the buses or you take the Stony Point line, before you then get on the 788 down to the peninsula, adding completely unnecessary time to your journey. This new bus service is a vital new connection for that community of the peninsula. It has been called for for years. It has taken a Labor member to actually speak up for his community and get this delivered. I know he lobbied actively the Minister for Public Transport on this project. In fact it was one of his first projects, so I do want to give a big shout-out to him there.

It is also great that we have a public transport minister that understands the role of what strong bus networks can actually deliver for our communities. In the PAEC estimates in fact I was delightfully surprised to hear Mr Carroll refer to the very, very wonderful book Transport for Suburbia by Paul Mees. Paul Mees, may he rest in peace, is a since-deceased Melbourne University academic who was at the forefront of transport planning thinking. He saw earlier than most of us did that we do not have to be a car-dependent city and we do not have to be a car-dependent state. Cities such as Melbourne and regional cities across Victoria as well do not have to be dependent on cars, and you can make public transport work even in what are commonly referred to as lower density areas. There is the right thinking in this government about that approach now too.

It is great to see the Victorian bus plan. We have already got bus reviews having recently taken place in Mildura, in the northern suburbs and in the north-east as well, and I, along with many other of my colleagues, look forward to those bus reviews continuing to take place across Melbourne too. It is important to get it right, so it is important that we do it properly, because we know that the majority of Melburnians, for instance, do not live within walking distance of a tramline or a train station. As much as my colleague who I am delighted to have back with us today in the chamber complains about tram tracks in the city, my electorate does not have any tram tracks either. We rely on train services, we rely on buses and we rely on roads.

Buses are a really critical part of our broader transport network that we are continuing to invest in, and these improvements in the budget are a fantastic part of that as well. I know, Acting President Terpstra, you would be delighted too about those bus reviews going on in your electorate at the moment and, as I said, that new zero-emissions bus and those buses rolling out across the state. We already know that public transport, whatever the mode, is far more environmentally conscious than a private motor vehicle. Like for like, 40 people on a bus compared to 40 people in their cars, even with an old-technology diesel bus it is still more environmentally friendly. The trains are even better too, and in fact our trams are even more environmentally friendly because they are now fully solar powered, which is fantastic to see as well.

Matthew Bach: Trains?

Michael GALEA: Trams. Trains are also very efficient because obviously you have got a large number of people using them. Even with older fossil fuels powering them it is still a more efficient, more environmentally sustainable way to travel. But with these new technologies, with these new zero-emissions buses, that is ramping up even more so and it is really fantastic to see. As I said, I do not have time to go through all the wonderful initiatives across all the different portfolios in this budget.

Nicholas McGowan: You can move an extension.

Michael GALEA: I am not going to move an extension, much as I appreciate the kind offer, Mr McGowan. Whether it is public transport, whether it is investing in our mental health – this is the first government that has really taken mental health seriously, and I would actually say the first government in Australia, to the same level that the Andrews Labor government has. It is absolutely unprecedented. No matter what good other governments may have done, this is the first government that has actually taken that bull by the nettle and done its absolute best to transform the mental health system in this state. I could talk about any number of projects, but I do commend this bill to the house and long may it pass.

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:39): I rise as part of this debate to speak to the Appropriation (2023–2024) Bill 2023 on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria. We acknowledge the difficult task of delivering a balanced budget post the COVID pandemic, and we are greatly supportive of the equitable approach adopted in this bill. As it is a supply bill, it is not something we would be minded to interfere with on principle.

Despite a notable tightening of the belt, I am particularly pleased to see that our calls to fund the $500,000 U-Turn program were heeded. The intersection between family violence and alcohol and other drugs, which this intervention program addresses, is important work to help change the attitudes and behaviours of men experiencing substance misuse issues who have used violence. We are also very pleased to see that this budget takes harm reduction seriously. It makes important Drug Court advancements and provides essential funding for drug and alcohol treatment programs. This includes a $500 million investment into drug treatment and rehabilitation services, 84 new alcohol and other drug trainees and a $10 million pharmacotherapy crisis package to expand specialist clinics.

As an issue close to my heart, or more accurately close to my uterus, it was great to see the budget include funding for 10,800 additional laparoscopies to help treat endometriosis. This often debilitating condition affects one in nine women and has been misunderstood and underdiagnosed for far too long. I have previously spoken in this chamber on the government’s announcement of $58 million for 20 new comprehensive women’s health clinics and a dedicated Aboriginal-led women’s clinic. Both announcements are incredibly worthwhile and important reforms to address the gendered inequalities of our health system and to improve the experiences of women and girls of all walks of life.

I acknowledge also the $6 million commitment to anti-vilification campaigns to counter discrimination and prejudice against Victoria’s Jewish and Islamic communities. This comes at a time when we have seen shocking scenes of neo-Nazi hate groups in Victoria and on the steps of our Parliament. Clearly this kind of support for anti-vilification is urgently needed, and I hope it extends to LGBTIQ+ directed hate speech. We acknowledge the further work the Victorian government is doing in the area with their commitment to extend anti-vilification laws to protect members of the LGBTIQ+ community. However, the 18-month time line for these laws foreshadowed by the Attorney-General is a very long wait in the face of escalating violence faced by our Victorian LGBTIQ+ community. I acknowledge the Attorney has got a big job ahead of her. Our community is being attacked by extremist hate groups, including in my own electorate, where council-endorsed family and community events have been targeted. This terrifying vilification continues to escalate further and further, and we need to stand up against it.

It would be remiss of me if I failed to take the opportunity to mention the role that industrial hemp could play in Victoria’s budget if we gave it the chance. In this budget we saw the government commit to accelerate the end of native logging and provide financial support to ensure workers in the industry are reskilled for future work opportunities. We commend them for this, but as my colleague David Ettershank rightly pointed out in the last sitting week, this industrial transition raises the question of how we now fulfil the demand for wood, fibre and paper products. This is where industrial hemp could be the answer. It is a sustainable alternative for the building materials and paper products we will continue to need, and it will provide numerous long-term jobs for workers affected by the end of the logging industry. We look forward to the work of the parliamentary inquiry into industrial hemp, and it is our hope that this will lead to industrial hemp being a major player in the state budget’s future.

The great missed opportunity, from my perspective – you might be shocked – relates to cannabis. Victoria spends millions of dollars every year criminalising cannabis. That is taxpayer money wasted on policing, in the criminal justice system and in punishment. It limits the opportunities of Victorians to contribute to our economy by burdening them with criminal records. When we criminalise cannabis, criminal organisations become best positioned to make millions of dollars in the cultivation and sale of cannabis in Victoria instead of funnelling those funds through a regulated market. Lawful cannabis could save Victorians hundreds of millions of dollars every year. It would create thousands of secure jobs and reduce unnecessary law-enforcement costs.

With those comments made, we acknowledge the context of this bill in addressing the needs of a post-COVID Victoria and confirm our support.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (10:45): I am very pleased to rise to speak on the Appropriation (2023–2024) Bill 2023. As Dr Bach said, we support the bill as it is an important bill to support supply, but we do have several problems with this brutal state Labor budget. I basically think that this budget is an admission of a few things. It is an admission that this Labor government has lost control of our state’s finances, it is an admission that they have mismanaged our major projects – over $30 billion worth of blowouts – and it is an admission that the state’s debt and deficit have blown out. It is an admission of a broken promise made to the electorate no less than eight months ago that there would be no new or increased taxes. They are punishing Victorians by hitting them with new taxes in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Under Labor Victorians are paying more and they are getting less.

You only have to look at my electorate, where they are taxing schools. They are taxing non-government schools, of which there are many around the state. There are some really important ones in my electorate. Dr Bach mentioned earlier Aitken College in Greenvale, who have been hit hard by this budget. I just want to point out, as Dr Bach said, that Aitken College is not Xavier. It is a growth area school. It used to be right on the end of the urban fringe and provided a lot of opportunities in the agriculture space for farmers from northern Victoria to come down and learn the skills to one day run their family farms. It is an important school. And I would note that Greenvale Secondary College does not yet go all the way to year 12 and has only just been established, so many parents had no other option for schooling in the area but to send their kids to a good independent school like Aitken College.

If you look further north, there are schools like Hume Anglican Grammar in Mickleham, a great school which runs three campuses across the north. But if you look at the closest public school, Mount Ridley College, it is bursting at the seams. It has 2750 students. When you are that over capacity and the area has such a massive underinvestment in public schooling, a lot of parents feel like they do not have any other option but to send their kids to a good independent school like Aitken College, like Hume Anglican Grammar or like Penleigh and Essendon Grammar. I know its principal has had some pretty harsh words to say, and I know the principal of Aitken College Josie Crisara has called this tax ‘bizarre’. She encouraged all of her local parents to contact all of the local members of Parliament, both lower house and upper house, so I know the emails the member for Greenvale has been receiving, and the letters, because I have been receiving the same ones, and I have got to tell you: parents are not happy. Parents in Greenvale are not happy with the representation they are receiving from their local Labor member. I have certainly been hearing from them. I was at a listening post last Saturday in Greenvale Shopping Centre and had countless parents come up to me absolutely furious about this schools tax. Even the petition that is on the parliamentary website is by an Aitken College parent also furious at this schools tax.

The government has not considered this. It has clearly been botched, let us put it that way. It has been absolutely botched. In the budget papers it says there are approximately 110 schools that will be affected by this tax and it will be decided by the Minister for Education and the Treasurer. We then saw the Treasurer say that it will be up to the education minister, in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, and then we saw the education minister say that it is for the Treasurer.

A member: It was a complete cock-up.

Evan MULHOLLAND: It was. And then we saw that the education minister could not name a single school. She could not say whether she had consulted; then she said she had consulted with schools. Asked where and when, she said she went to a dinner, the Independent Schools Victoria dinner. Asked who she consulted with, she could not name a single school.

I tend to agree with Dr Bach that this minister will not be in that portfolio for very long. We know what happens under this government when someone is underperforming. They tend to get booted out pretty quickly or shuffled around, and that is exactly the same thing that will likely happen to this Minister for Education. But I actually blame the Premier and the Treasurer, because they are the ones that have come up with this policy, and the Premier then comes in and says, ‘It won’t be 110 schools.’ The pattern of behaviour of this Premier and the Premier’s private office, who want to divert attention from the press gallery, is because they know they are under heat on this issue. He comes in and cleans up the mess that the Treasurer has had to put up with. That afternoon he says, ‘Oh, no. It won’t be 110 schools. Don’t worry about it.’

But we know this government has form on ratcheting up taxes, turning the volume up on taxes and lowering thresholds so more people are captured. There are still lots of schools that are completely uncertain. Apparently, the education minister will be consulting with schools. None of my schools have heard from her. Have anyone else’s schools heard from her? We heard from Mr Galea before. He is working with schools to make sure that they are not impacted. Well, if Mr Galea would like to join me out in the northern suburbs and come to Aitken College in Greenvale, that would be great, because he seems to have some sort of magical power that the Labor member for Greenvale does not. He seems to have some sort of magical power. I would like the education minister to join me in Greenvale, and perhaps other Labor members would like to come to Greenvale to see the failures of this government, particularly on Mickleham Road.

We saw no funding for stage 2 of Mickleham Road. They say they are duplicating Mickleham Road, right, but they are only duplicating 1.6 kilometres from Somerton Road to Dellamore Boulevard. How much is that costing? $222 million for 1.6 kilometres of road. To put this in context, Labor completed the Plenty Road duplication for $145 million for 6.6 kilometres of road, and the 6-kilometre duplication of Craigieburn Road is costing $300 million. So why in Greenvale is it costing so much for so little? 1.6 kilometres of road. When people see the signs up around the construction, people think it is going to Craigieburn Road until you tell them, ‘No, actually they are only doing a tiny bit of it.’ Why? Why are the northern suburbs being forgotten? Then we see front page after front page in the Australian Financial Review of CFMEU standover tactics on the Mickleham Road project pushing out different groups that do not have an enterprise bargaining agreement with the union.

Bev McArthur: Ghost shifts.

Evan MULHOLLAND: We see reports of ghost shifting, and then we also see $109 million was committed and budgeted by the former coalition government for the Mickleham Road project. Labor claims all of the $222 million – uh-uh. That was funded by the former coalition government. But in comes Catherine King, the federal member, with her infrastructure review of all previous projects and decides to chuck the Mickleham Road project into that review. So in this state budget the Mickleham Road project, which is under construction, is now ‘to be confirmed’. A Labor federal government sweeps out all the money, and so now it is to be confirmed. We have seen no local members, whether it be the member for Greenvale, whether it be the member for Kalkallo or whether it be the member for Calwell advocate for that money to be kept in Greenvale. It is an absolute failure of leadership to our community that we have not seen any Labor members hit back against the federal government and say, ‘Wait a second. What are you doing with this funding? That should be kept in our electorates because the community deserve no less.’ We have seen the same thing in Wallan with the Wallan diamond. Fifty million dollars was budgeted by the former coalition government and the project is put on ice –

Michael Galea: On a point of order, Acting President, as Mr Mulholland well knows, all projects which have already started are being completed, and I would ask him not to mislead the house.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Sonja Terpstra): I ask Mr Mulholland to continue.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Thank you, Acting President, very wise. I would point to Mr Galea and say: your own budget says the completion date is to be confirmed. Have a read of your own budget. Look at the line item for the Mickleham Road project, and you will see ‘To be confirmed’. Given that $220 million is there, everyone thought that it had to include an upgrade to Craigieburn Road – a duplication all the way to Craigieburn Road. No, it is still just the 1.6 kilometres, and we are now seeing the completion date for that is ‘To be confirmed’. They do not know when they can complete it because their federal Labor colleagues have pulled the rug from under them and have taken all the money that was previously committed by the former federal coalition government. That is absolutely not good enough. The people of Greenvale are getting a double whammy: if they send their kids to Aitken College they are going to be paying more in school fees, and if they are stuck in traffic they are going to be stuck in traffic longer because this government is not investing in the crucial infrastructure required to get them from Greenvale to Craigieburn or Craigieburn to Greenvale. When that money is pulled away, it is the Labor cone of silence. You never criticise a Labor mate, otherwise you would be kicked out of the party. You have got members not criticising people who have taken that money that was budgeted for their communities. It is an absolute outrage and a complete failure of leadership.

We saw Mr Batchelor and others the other day saying, ‘What would you cut?’ Well, we would manage infrastructure projects better. We have seen $30 billion of infrastructure blowouts by the incoming Premier – I know Mr Galea might prefer another candidate. We have seen $30 billion of infrastructure blowouts, so we have got to manage that better. I am astonished and disappointed to see union standover tactics on the North East Link and on the Mickleham Road project, which were covered in detail in the Australian Financial Review. These are contributing to costs, and these are contributing to the budget.

I mentioned last sitting week $3000 subsidies for electric cars, which on average cost about $70,000. The people of Greenvale, the people of Wallan, the people of Beveridge and the people of Broadmeadows – most of them cannot afford a new electric car. Labor wants to subsidise the people of Ashwood to purchase electric cars.

Michael Galea: It’s been phased out.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Well, they have now cut it, so that is one thing I congratulate the government on. They have perhaps taken my advice. I mentioned fishing rods as well. We saw that blow up in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee budget estimates thanks to the work of my colleague Mr McGowan. They also are spending on things like a Suburban Rail Loop manager of diversity and inclusion, costing $238,000. The successful applicant is:

… responsible for delivering expert advice and services to the organisation to ensure SRLA is an inclusive and diverse workplace …

It is a project that you yourselves have blown out. It is not getting to the northern suburbs until 2052. And in response to local advocacy asking when there will be a grade separation and upgrade at Broadmeadows station, do you know what the government said? ‘That’s all planned as part of the Suburban Rail Loop part 2, the Suburban Rail Loop North, and that is not due to be delivered until 2052.’ Seriously, this is the kind of advocacy we get from Labor in the northern suburbs of Melbourne: ‘Just wait until 2052’ – possibly, if it ever gets to the northern suburbs – ‘to have your train station upgraded.’ I invite any of you to come out and look at Broadmeadows station and ask whether that is okay. I know the member for Bayswater secured an upgrade to a train station. A similar request was made by Hume City Council but was rejected. Why is it good enough for Bayswater but not for Broadmeadows? This budget should be condemned.

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (11:00): I rise to speak on this year’s budget bills. It is important to understand budgets in context. We have emerged from some of the most disruptive years and decades after the global pandemic. We are resuming life while still coming to terms with the toll of what happened. Lives and livelihoods were disrupted, people separated and communities fractured. However, we also came to understand and grow our strength and resilience, learning new ways to communicate and cope with upheaval. Victorians did it tough over the last few years, but our Parliament supported the government to take some extraordinary action. We found homes for the homeless, we found ways to provide income support to millions, we innovated and we experimented with new and bold ideas.

This year’s budget is framed around managing the financial implications of the pandemic, with key measures to address the budgetary deficit and debt, including significant cuts to jobs and programs. But what is missing in this response is a recognition of the other major issues we faced as a society before and during the pandemic – issues that will plague future generations if we do not act now. This budget misses the ongoing social and environmental deficit we continue to face, and it is something that should worry us all.

Budgets also tell us about priorities. The Greens welcome the government’s commitment through this budget to ongoing investment in our health system, implementation of the findings of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and support for early years education through free kinder. It was good to see some extra support for programs like From Homelessness to a Home, more funding for community legal centres like the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and significant funding for child protection reform for First Nations children and young people.

We are in the midst of a climate and ecological crisis, the worst housing affordability situation in decades and cost-of-living pressures that are pushing thousands of Victorians to the brink, but you would not know it from this budget. There was nothing in the budget for renters despite the worst rental conditions in generations. There was no commitment to build more public housing. We are spending four times more on the racing industry than on people in housing stress or experiencing homelessness. Instead of investing in restoring nature, we have a $2 billion cut to the environment department. With this budget this government had the opportunity to invest in our future by expanding and funding public services and the public sector and continuing a range of programs that look after our communities, but this budget lacked the imagination to think bigger and go further.

We continue to be in a worsening climate and ecological crisis. Earlier this year the IPCC released the final synthesis report of its sixth assessment in what it called a final warning to humanity. There is still time to address irreversible climate change, the report found, but we need to act now. UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the report as a survival guide for humanity and called for all countries to massively fast-track climate efforts, saying:

We have never been better equipped to solve the climate challenge, but we must move into warp speed climate action now. We don’t have a moment to lose.

As stated in the IPCC report, acting on climate change requires deep, rapid and sustained cuts to emissions if we are to have any chance of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This means that here in Australia and in Victoria we need a plan to get out of dirty, polluting fossil fuels like coal and gas, starting with no new approvals of coal and gas projects, but there are over a dozen new gas projects on the books at various stages of development across Gippsland and the Otway Basin. Beach Energy is still looking to drill under the Port Campbell National Park and is just one approval away from connecting four new offshore gas wells to its Otway gas point. To add insult to injury, the Labor government is planning on keeping coal alive with its coal-to-hydrogen plant, which will turn brown coal into hydrogen for export to Japan. Not only does this project involve using carbon capture and storage technology to store carbon dioxide in disused offshore gas wells, a technology that has not been proven at this scale anywhere in the world, but it will lock us into years more of burning brown coal and creating millions more tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.

In this budget it is good to see the government allocate money for flood recovery projects after the devastating floods of October 2022, but there is little money for future climate and disaster mitigation and adaptation. We already know that we are going to see these kinds of once-in-a-lifetime climate disasters increase in frequency and severity. The coming decades will require significant investment in adaptation and mitigation, and the time to invest in this work is now, not decades down the track after increasingly frequent natural disasters have again threatened livelihoods and lives.

There was one beacon of hope in this budget, however, and that was the welcome move to bring forward the transition out of native forest logging to the end of this year – a massive win for our environmental activists who have been fighting to save our precious native forest for decades. It is a relief for our environment and the people and communities who care so deeply about protecting our planet for future generations, and I also acknowledge the advocates within government that have championed this move. But once again we have to understand this in context. There are still areas of forest under threat, and this budget includes a $2 billion cut to the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and its programs at the very same time. These cuts will leave our already fragile environment in an even more perilous state. There are 2000 species at risk of extinction in Victoria, up from around 700 just a few years ago. Our ecosystems are at risk of collapse. This government continues to ignore the findings and recommendations of the ecosystems inquiry, which found that the government has been chronically underfunding the environment and biodiversity by billions of dollars for years. It recommended increasing funding for habitat protection and threatened species conservation, but once again in this budget this government failed to take any meaningful action on biodiversity protection and instead did the opposite by slashing funding for the environment department by $2 billion.

Once again this budget has ignored the housing crisis. This Labor government likes to point to its Big Housing Build as proof that it has acted on housing and is doing something to address the crisis, but the Big Housing Build is barely scratching the surface of the demand for public and affordable housing in this state, and there was no further funding or a plan beyond the big build announced in this budget. There are over 120,000 people waiting for a public home. The 2021 census found that over 30,000 people are experiencing homelessness in Victoria – a jump of 24 per cent from the previous census in 2016 – and hundreds of thousands of households are in housing stress and spending most of their income on housing costs. The 12,000 new homes created through the Big Housing Build will barely make a dent in the massive need for more public and affordable housing.

Of course these homes are not public homes but rather housing managed by non-government housing associations known as community housing. Our community housing associations play an important role in our housing system. They provide specialist housing for vulnerable cohorts with specific needs; for example, co-op housing run by and for First Peoples or women’s housing for survivors of family violence. But the government has an important role to play in our housing system too. In fact it should be seen as a core responsibility of government, but you would not know it from the government rhetoric these days. Public housing is a public service, like schools and education, which governments have provided for years. We used to spend big on building lots of high-quality public homes for everyone, but now this Labor government is turning its back on our public housing system by refusing to invest in new public housing and outsourcing the provision of housing to the private sector. This Labor government has no plans to build any more public housing, and it is neglecting the public housing that we do have, letting homes fall into disrepair so they can be demolished and the land primed for private development.

Estates like Barak Beacon in Port Melbourne have been home to a close-knit community of neighbours and friends for years, but this community has been ripped apart by this government’s redevelopment plan, which will see residents relocated across the suburbs and their homes destroyed. Instead of destroying these homes, what if they could be repaired and renovated to a high standard? Yesterday a number of us were privileged to listen to Office, a not-for-profit architectural research firm, present the findings of their report that shows it is possible for Barak Beacon and other estates that are slated for redevelopment to be refurbished instead. But this government has doubled down, refusing to engage with Office’s proposal or even meet with tenants it is trying to evict.

Residents, including Margaret Kelly, marched down to Homes Victoria’s offices seeking a meeting with the Minister for Housing, but instead of the minister listening to their pleas, the police were called and the residents were removed from the building. The government has now begun eviction proceedings and is looking to remove Margaret from her home, and she is set to appear before VCAT this afternoon. This government is treating its public housing residents with contempt. I have heard a lot of rhetoric and retort from those in the government over the past few weeks when the Greens have raised the issue of Barak Beacon estate. But if you want an example of how your government is treating public housing residents with contempt, you have to look no further than your treatment of Margaret Kelly and her community at Barak Beacon estate. I hope you all know that today, at 2 o’clock, your government is taking a public housing resident to VCAT. You have started legal proceedings against a 68-year-old woman, a pensioner who relies on you for her home. You are taking her to court to get her out of public housing.

This government should be doing everything it can to provide safe and secure housing for everyone who needs it. But instead of engaging in an overdue conversation about this government’s role and responsibility in providing public housing for everyone, you are trying to tear communities apart well before any contract has been awarded for that estate or the other three estates bundled up with Barak Beacon for privatisation. In fact in response to the community campaign ramping up over the last few weeks, which we know your government is very, very sensitive about because you do not want to talk about the fact that you are privatising public housing – you claim to be a progressive government, but you are anything but when it comes to public housing – a campaign that is increasing its power and voicing, on behalf of thousands of people who need public housing, what your government is doing to privatise public housing, you are trying to move people away from that close-knit community.

This is like what happened with previous estates this government has attempted to privatise, like Walker estate in Northcote. At that point you once again attempted to split the community apart because it was coming together to fight your plans for privatisation. You said, ‘We have to move you as a matter of urgency. We have got plans to redevelop this site. You can all come back.’ Five years later that land has been cleared and not a single thing has been built upon it. There are 120,000 people waiting for public housing and 30,000 people experiencing homelessness tonight in Victoria. You had land cleared so that you did not have residents coming together to fight your plans for privatisation.

That is what you are doing at Barak Beacon estate. You are taking a 68-year-old woman to court today to get her out of public housing. They have asked her at VCAT to meet over the phone. They will not even give her a hearing in person or via Zoom. You want to kick someone out of housing over the phone. That is the contempt that you are treating Victorians with right now. You all bow your heads and you yell at us when we talk about public housing, but all of you should know in the government that this is what your government is doing. This is what your Minister for Housing is doing. This is what Homes Victoria is doing. This is what your Premier is sanctioning. And by staying silent you sanction it yourself. Not one of you can get up and say you defend public housing when you have plans to kick public housing residents, with no home to go to, out of homes that they have lived in for more then 25 years. But that is what you are doing today, on 22 June 2023. Let this day be a day that none of you ever forget: the day you abandoned public housing.

As we saw during the pandemic, this government has the capacity to find homes for the homeless. We found them during the pandemic, and we can do it again. In fact in this budget, thanks to advocacy from community organisations and residents like Margaret and beyond, you found money to extend funding for the Homelessness to a Home program – not enough, but you found some money – which began in the pandemic as a way to find long-term affordable housing for those living in temporary hotel accommodation. This program draws on the Housing First approach, something the Greens have been talking about – we brought in our bill to end homelessness last term. It is a proven model that says the best way to solve homelessness is to provide people with long-term secure housing and then connect them with wraparound services – something we can do in this state.

While this budget specifically mentions more funding for Housing First programs, including Homelessness to a Home, Housing First cannot work unless there are enough affordable homes to house everyone who needs them. There is no point setting up a front-end service when there is nowhere to send people. We have housing agencies who are telling people that they have to find a tent to live in. They are living on couches and they are living on the streets. Your government can find $25 billion for two toll roads, but you cannot find enough money to build enough homes to ensure that everyone can have access to a safe and secure home.

Without an ongoing commitment to thousands more public homes every year and an actual strategy or plan for continued investment to tackle our housing crisis, there will never be enough affordable homes to meet demand. That is why the Greens have already put on the table with the government that any planning reforms designed to increase housing supply, which the government is starting to talk about, must require developers to pay their fair share and that at a minimum 50 per cent of homes built under these new planning laws must be public and affordable homes. This is the scale of the build that we need to solve the housing affordability crisis, and we can do it. Governments have done it before, and we can do it again.

Of course there is nothing in this budget for Victoria’s renters. Renters have too often been treated like second-class citizens in this state, but as renting has become a major way of life in Victoria and more of us rent our homes for longer, renters are rightly demanding stronger protection and better rights. Right now we are in the middle of the worst rental crisis. Rents are at record highs. Vacancy rates are at record lows. Many renters are just one rent rise away from homelessness. Renters have received rent increases as high as a massive $300 extra a week, and there is currently no relief in sight, with rents tipped to rise another 11.5 per cent across Victoria over 2023. A good government would intervene to protect renters from unfair rent increases. In fact we have done this before, as recently as 2020, when we had a rent freeze and a ban on evictions to keep renters safe at home. Other jurisdictions have successfully implemented rent controls to limit how much rent can go up at any one time – for example, the ACT, where rents are capped at a percentage of CPI. The Greens welcome news this week that, thanks to advocacy and pressure from the Greens and others, the government is setting up a task force to look at reforms for renters, including rent controls, like a cap on rent increases, regulating short stays and strengthening Victoria’s vacancy tax. But renters need help now. I would urge the government to expedite the work of the task force and look at urgent action to help renters in the meantime, like introducing a rent freeze.

As covered so far, this state budget fails to address the urgent crisis facing Victorians, and without investing in our public sector, public services, public infrastructure and our environment, these crises are only going to get worse. Thousands of Victorians are doing it really tough right now, increasingly in need of food, material support and community services. But instead of investing in the public and community sectors, this budget is slashing thousands of public sector jobs. Workers are experiencing the biggest real wage cut on record. Our community sector continues to struggle with short-term funding and increased demand. Young people who are experiencing mental health issues are waiting six to 12 months to access the support they need, and people on the public dental waiting list are waiting 16 months for dental treatment. Instead of investing in public services, this government has spent $1.1 billion on a brand new prison that is currently sitting empty and continuing its exorbitant spend of $25 billion for two toll roads.

But it is possible to create the kind of Victoria that I know we all want to see. So many of the injustices and inequalities in our state are a result of policy choices by successive governments – decisions to invest in toll roads instead of public homes, prisons instead of mental health services and consultancies instead of the public sector. We can and should be investing in the services that help build a better society and a better life for all of us. We could be properly taxing harmful industries, like gambling, or making billionaires, like the big banks or property developers, pay their fair share of tax and taking that revenue and using it to help pay for things people need, like more affordable and public housing; higher wages for public sector workers, like nurses and teachers; cleaner, cheaper energy from renewables; and more free GPs, dentists and psychologists. But to do this governments are going to have to find some real courage and vision and they are going to have to start listening to all of us.

Finally, to conclude, I am going to speak briefly on the Appropriation (Parliament 2023–2024) Bill 2023 as well. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the hardworking staff that make our Parliament work. To the clerks and their staff, the committee staff, the ushers, the catering staff, gardeners and security staff – all of you – thank you. You make coming into this building a pleasure, and you humanise this place. I also want to extend my thanks to the staff at the Parliamentary Budget Office. You provide an invaluable service to MPs and the Victorian community. My Greens colleagues and I are very grateful for the service you provide and the way you engage with us. Similarly, it is incumbent on us to acknowledge integrity agencies that are vital to the functioning of our democracy. IBAC, the Ombudsman and the Auditor-General play a crucial role in holding the government to account and in ensuring public confidence in our democratic system.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:20): I am pleased to rise to speak concurrently on the Appropriation (Parliament 2023–2024) Bill 2023 and the Appropriation (2023–2024) Bill 2023, affectionately known as the budget bill. I will concur with Dr Ratnam in terms of the Parliament appropriation bill and acknowledge all the wonderful staff and the work that holds us up in this place and ensures that the parliamentary process runs smoothly, that democracy runs smoothly and that my coffee is lovely and hot every time I go into the cafe. I particularly would like to thank the Legislative Council tables office and all the committee secretariat, who do an awesome job and do it under huge pressure. Because of the volume of work that we see in the upper house, including when there are select committees thrust upon us, they are working around the clock. So my thanks to them – and to Hansard for unjumbling my sometimes interesting combination of words.

Moving on to the budget bill, we hear a lot about the fact that this is the COVID debt repayment position. That is okay; that is what the spin doctors in the Premier’s office have worked out is a good line to feed the people of Victoria. We do know that the budget in Victoria, the blowouts and the debt combined are more than New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania together. They also experienced COVID. They experienced it in exactly the same way, insofar as it came from overseas and devastated our country, but we ended up being the most locked down city in the world and the most locked down state and had the most pressurised regional areas in Victoria as well.

This budget looks to take away payroll tax exemptions for independent schools. We are not sure if it is 110 schools. We are not sure if it is 150. We are not sure, nor is the Premier sure, whether he is responsible. He has said he is not responsible; he has said the Minister for Education is responsible. She has said that she is not responsible, even though the Treasurer said that she was responsible for this list. It is also a budget that increases property tax on, overwhelmingly, mum-and-dad investors that provide a pool of homes for the rental market. That is not a good idea.

It is a budget that has massive debt. It is just eye-wateringly scary the amount of debt that is contained in this budget. All governments trade in debt. Debt is not bad per se if it can be managed and if it does not create the burden on society and future generations that we are going to see with this. Standard & Poor’s have noted that we have dropped our AAA rating to AA. That is going to have an impost and will incur extra tax and extra interest for us. It is just absolutely gobsmacking – up to $22 million a day in interest payments. That is frightening. We see a budget blowout by 2027 of $171 billion in the projected outcomes. That is just frightening for Victorians.

When I speak to people in my Eastern Victoria Region many of them just feel so abandoned by the Andrews government. They feel as though regional Victorians are second-class citizens. Now, I know the vast importance – the Nationals know, and the Liberals understand – of regional Victorians. We grow the food that we put on the table right across Victoria. We grow the fibre that we have on our floors, that is structurally sound in our buildings and that we wear on our backs. We create that economic wealth in our regions, and it is felt right across the state.

What is absolutely heartbreaking is the cuts that we see across the whole megadepartments, as they now are. We see that in DEECA, the new name, there is a cut of $344 million. The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action cutting public land management is a disaster for our environment. If you look to the experts on threatened species, you know that some of the major challenges to those species, the dangers to them and the threats to them, come from weeds and feral pests, yet we are cutting this department. We are cutting funding. The government is cutting funding in Victoria to regional boots on the ground – people on the ground. Only about 11 per cent of frontline workers are people with boots on the ground. The rest are in the CBD of Melbourne.

When you see public health cuts, one of the most devastating parts is the shockingly long waitlists for anyone who needs elective surgery, which is not really elective – it is just necessary surgery that does not need the ambulance at this stage. I have a constituent who was on the elective surgery waitlist over COVID and who went that far downhill and deteriorated to a state that their doctor said, ‘You are no longer elective surgery, you are actually life-threatening, and it must be done immediately.’ That poor person had lost weight and was in absolutely agony. These are the sorts of the things that we are seeing under the Andrews government, and these waitlists are still blowing out. But preventative health programs and community health services have been cut. These are the services that reach out in a very delicate and nuanced way into our small communities in my Eastern Victoria Region and provide that confidence and support for people who may not be able to negotiate or work their way into the system to have those conversations to access proper health. These are being cut under the Andrews government.

We are seeing justice and community safety being cut by $364 million. When you go and speak to people – again, in the regions – about the importance of feeling safe in our communities, it is about having Victoria Police being able to be there, and my admiration goes to all first responders, VicPol included. It is quite devastating that there has been an attrition rate I think post COVID of VicPol officers leaving the system. They have had enough. They do not feel like they are being supported by the Andrews government, and they are under significant pressure. We do see also a range of issues happening out in country Victoria where there are increased on-farm crimes happening that really people have been quite frustrated with.

We also see that transport and planning have been cut by $84 million, and one of the key things that has existed for a long time and been very supportive of regional infrastructure and regional projects, regional development, has also been cut. These are the things that put people in our communities on the front foot and enable co-contributions and investment by industry into great ideas that are good employers and innovation in our regions.

On the roads maintenance budget, the major topic that people come to my office, ring me up or speak to my staff about is the deplorable state of our roads. I could spend the last 6 minutes of my speech going through each and every part of my electorate and speaking about the roads. It defies logic. We see, unfortunately, that the rate of fatalities this year on regional roads is going up by comparison to previous years. We know that if you fix country roads you do save country lives and lives in general ‍– the importance of maintaining a proper surface that is not failing after only a few months. It is just appalling that we are seeing this loss of valuable funds into this, and we had a policy that really looked at, over 10 years, funding of $10 billion. The budget is actually going back; it is less than when we first took over in the previous government.

Wellbeing cuts – it is really heartbreaking to see some of the stories that we see where there had been services provided. The youth space in the Latrobe Valley is one of those that have lost their funding. During COVID there was such a desperate time when people were really on their knees, and young people in particular were being disconnected and were away from school and away from sport et cetera. Many of them were couch surfing and still are. Those people had a service that was working and supporting them, and to see it being removed is certainly such a shame.

The agricultural funding has been axed. It is down 34 per cent on last year, and the government continue to take very little cognisance of the value of our agricultural sector in Victoria. Certainly I have used my time in this place to highlight the native timber industry. There is budget funding for it, but what that will look like is so obscure, and industry is not being communicated with. There is no plan. The government had seven years to close the industry. We were always opposing that and would have rolled that and kept the native industry had we been there. The government said, ‘We’ve got seven years,’ and then on 23 May they cast that aside and gave people seven months. That is just not fair for the industry. There is no certainty in this, and what that budget allocation is for is still uncertain.

In my Eastern Victoria Region there are some wonderful projects that need to be funded. We know with the West Gippsland Hospital that the Liberals and Nationals had made an ongoing commitment for many years to fund that new hospital between Warragul and Drouin. There is a sliver of a budget allocation for it, but it is not clear how much of that is going to go to the West Gippsland Hospital, and they have got 3½ years, supposedly, to build six hospitals across the state. From the way they build infrastructure, with the blowouts, I am very concerned about this really important piece of infrastructure for the people of the Baw Baw shire and indeed the wider area of West Gippsland.

I could go on with roads, and I will just say there are so many important infrastructure programs that need to be dealt with. The Drouin–Warragul bypass – if you ever spend 10 minutes in that space you will see the danger it is for those large transports that come through the town. The Mirboo North-Trafalgar Road – I am just going to say it is the most beautiful little place on earth, but there is a slipway road that is continually dangerous. We talk about safety on roads; this one needs to be upgraded. There is the South Face Road in Baw Baw, and I could mention just about any road in East Gippsland and South Gippsland that needs an upgrade, including the terrible space of the Leongatha bypass, stage 2 – ‘kamikaze corner’.

The other things that are not in there include the Corinella Boating and Angling Club. They got $200,000. Okay – it is not going to build them an absolutely vital piece of infrastructure for that whole community. They are ready, and they have had some funding through the Bass Coast shire, but it is not going to build them the most modest and beautiful structure to support their community. They could have done with an extra $200,000. That could be a morning tea for the Premier’s staff; that would have built really good clubroom facilities for the Corinella Boating and Angling Club.

There is a lot of talk by the government about saving the environment and the importance of stopping erosion, yet there is a cape-to-cape resilience project with examples of how this can be supported through infrastructure – important infrastructure – and they are getting drip-fed bits and pieces. This will not save that important coastline from further erosion. The Tyers CFA have got a shed. It is not big enough to put their fire truck in it, so they actually have to park it down the road. Solar Victoria is overspending by about $40 million and underdelivering on its performance KPIs. This budget will go through, but country Victorians feel cheated and ripped off.

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:35): I rise to speak today on the bill before us relating to the state budget. As I was reading the budget papers I approached this as a young person, particularly considering my experiences before being in this place. At a time when Victoria is facing so many challenges with the ever-rising cost of living and the lack of genuinely affordable housing, this budget is a missed opportunity to take meaningful action to support everyday Victorians and particularly the most vulnerable in our community. We hear it said often in this place and other places that budgets are all about priorities and they are about taking action. Governments can choose where they allocate funds, who they prop up and who misses out.

Factoring in my experience as a young person and those I studied with and those I speak to regularly, the community expects to see funding allocated towards renters, who are over a third of our community; towards protecting our really important biodiversity; and towards building new public housing and addressing the threat of homelessness our community faces. Instead, as has been noted by my colleagues, we have seen large cuts to public sector workers and to environment funding. There is no funding for renters – nothing – in this budget and no new money for social and affordable housing. All the while this budget delivers $400 million to the racing industry. Who is calling for that? Where are the priorities of this government?

We furthermore see in capital works funding when it comes to education – and the broad discussion has been widely canvassed in this place – that of the new capital works, we have seen double allocated to independent schools rather than public schools. In my region alone there are public schools and primary schools that are in states of structural disrepair, which has been noted by members across this chamber. What is in this budget for them? Who is looking out for them in this Labor government?

In factoring in community attitudes, the attitudes of young people and future generations and what they expect to see from our Labor government, I must of course take a moment to say on their behalf thank you with regard to the decision to end native forest logging. It is a difficult decision, as has been widely canvassed in this place. There are people on the ground in those communities that need crucial support – they need leadership – to ensure that they can transition away from an industry that has been dying for a long time but propped up, while making losses, by this government. It is something that the community and the Greens have been advocating for – the end of native forest logging – for years.

Hearing the day is finally coming, I also acknowledge that, following pressure from the Greens, we now also have a commitment to investigate action to help renters. The task force that has now been established to investigate the housing crisis will consider a number of measures that we have been advocating for to make renting fairer, putting in genuine protections and making it more affordable. These include rent controls, such as a cap on rent increases; regulation of the short-stay industry, like Airbnbs; and strengthening Victoria’s vacancy tax, making it actually fit for purpose to push more empty homes onto the market, increasing supply.

I approach this budget thinking of my time at university prior to being in this place, and something I have spoken about many times in this chamber is the current reality that there are people in our community who are using drugs. This is a reality. For people – perhaps former colleagues of mine who at a party may have taken a substance – what currently is in this budget to protect them in that scenario from coming to harm? What services are there currently to check what those substances are? Are they what people think they are? It is all fair and well to receive a substance that from word of mouth is something that you believe it to be, but what services do we have in place to check its purity ‍– to check if it is laced with something or if it is something that is going to give the expected outcome – before taking the substance? I am saddened to see that this budget does not include funding for a drug-checking trial, such as pill testing, which I have canvassed previously.

Something that, frankly, sickened me with the discussion around this budget was the notion both in public media and in this place that we are somehow still talking of chasing surpluses. On behalf of young people, of those doing it tough, such as renters, and of future generations, it makes me sick, frankly, to think that we are talking about a surplus in a time when so many are doing it tough – in a time when so many need support. Do not talk to me about surpluses.

As I have noted and as has been noted by many others, this budget was an opportunity to take action to protect those most in need. The Labor government have missed this opportunity, but I note on behalf of my Greens colleagues that we will continue to hold this Labor government to account, to push them further and faster on the issues that matter and to make sure that an opportunity such as this one is not missed again.

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (11:41): I rise this morning to speak to the Appropriation (2023–2024) Bill 2023 and of course the budget measures that are in this bill. As we have seen, this budget was extremely concerning when it was handed down, and we have made many comments around the government’s various taxes. This government is very keen on taxing Victorians, so much so that it is a divisive budget. It actually has picked out people that are going to be paying the price for the government’s incompetence and mismanagement of Victorian taxpayers money.

That is the problem with the Andrews Labor government. They have got an inability to properly account for taxpayer funds and how they are spending. We have seen the waste and mismanagement over many years in infrastructure projects that have blown out – $30 billion in infrastructure project blowouts alone. That money could have been and should have been put into health. I look at the payroll tax that is coming in that will be hitting the private aged care sector – a punitive tax that is going to have a very real impact on a sector that needs to be supported by government so the most vulnerable can therefore be cared for and that gives Victorians choice when they are managing their elderly loved ones.

The schools tax my colleagues have covered off very thoroughly. I have many families in my region, the Southern Metropolitan Region, that work extremely hard. They want choice and they send their kids to independent schools. This is an issue right across the state because so many Victorians are going to pay the price of another punitive tax from this government – a tax that is for the first time being put on independent schools. And the government cannot even describe or highlight who those 110 schools are that they have got on their hit list. When asked in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee just a few weeks ago, the minister had no clue. It is extraordinary then that the Premier was walking back around the threshold of those independent schools where the fees are going to be hit. It is clear that the government have really misjudged this, and they know that it is going to hurt hardworking Victorians, who pay their taxes and who rightly expect, when they do pay their taxes, that services are provided, as you would expect under a state government responsibility – health, education and policing. It is very important that we have those services maintained.

But in health we have a budget which has shown where it is failing. In the admitted services, 15 of the 25 performance standards have not been met. I am going to read these out. They demonstrate the significant issues around where the government is failing. This is important in the overall scheme of the government’s budget. They are ‘NWAU-funded emergency separations – all hospitals’, ‘NWAU-funded separations – all hospitals except small rural health services’, ‘Number of patients admitted from the elective surgery waiting list’, ‘Palliative separations’, ‘Perinatal mortality rate per 1000 of babies of Aboriginal mothers, using rolling three-year average’, ‘Subacute care separations’, ‘Total separations – all hospitals’, ‘Eligible newborns screened for hearing deficit before one month of age’, ‘Intensive care unit central line associated bloodstream infections’, ‘Percentage of patients who reported positive experiences of their hospital stay’, Perinatal and child mortality reports received, reviewed and classified’, ‘Unplanned readmission after hip replacement surgery’, ‘Unplanned readmission after treatment for acute myocardial infarction’, ‘Non-urgent (category 3) elective surgery patients admitted within 365 days’, and ‘Semi-urgent (category 2) elective surgery patients admitted within 90 days’.

That is a really significant list of failures. That is in the budget papers. That is where our standards are falling, and that is going to have a real impact on the delivery of better health outcomes for all Victorians. In this budget of course we saw cuts in community health – a very important element of preventative health education and keeping people out of the acute system. I have just read out all those failings in our acute system, where there are so many issues that are occurring. With cuts to community health, that is only going to put that pressure on, and I would hope that those performance measures would improve in the next 12 months, because all Victorians would expect that to be the case.

Getting on to underfunding of hospitals, the government went to the election and promised over $4 billion of funding across a number of hospitals, but we know that was completely overcooked at the time in terms of their promises because less than 8 per cent of that funding has come through. For West Gippsland Hospital, there was an election commitment of $675 million; Queen Elizabeth II hospital, over $1 billion; the northern suburbs hospital plan, $1.155 billion; Monash Medical Centre, $560 million; Dandenong Hospital, $295 million; and Wonthaggi Hospital, $290 million. That comes to over $4 billion, but the budget has only allocated $320 million, or 7.95 per cent of that allocation.

This government is running out of money. We have got a massive debt: $171 billion and rising. Victorians are paying $10 million a day in interest alone. Interest rates are going up significantly for so many households, and this government has not understood the basics of fiscal responsibility. Now, as a result, we have that extraordinary interest that we are paying every day and the extraordinary and out-of-control debt that the Andrews Labor government has put Victorians into. It is not all because of COVID. That is absolute rubbish. This is because of the mismanagement of the budgets and the total overspending and rorting that has gone on in so many projects. We have seen reports about ghost shifts and the rorting in infrastructure projects. Where is the oversight? Where is the accountability by this government to ensure that that sort of behaviour is not occurring? It has been going on for years and yet nothing has been done, so as a consequence it is Victoria’s hardworking taxpayers who are paying the price for this massive budget overrun of $30 billion in infrastructure projects.

If we were to have any faith in this government, then the infrastructure needs of Victorians who are seeking services in their community would have been undertaken. But I think that Victorians have seen – even in the last few months as this budget has come out and as we have been warned about – the dire situation Victoria is in. It has stunned many, many Victorians. They had not fully realised how bad a position Victoria is in, with $171 billion worth of debt. That is more than Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania combined. We are paying $10 million a day in interest, and that is going to $22 million a day in just a couple of years time. These are very, very concerning and alarming figures that Victorians are now waking up to and seeing, just as they have seen their own household budgets come under pressure.

There are cost-of-living pressures that everybody is under and rising energy costs. Those rising energy costs are for households and they are for businesses. What this government is doing is slugging businesses with more tax, so we have seen more and more shut down and more and more people losing their jobs. Ford has announced today that hundreds of jobs will be gone in Geelong. There are banks moving hubs out of Melbourne into other states. ANZ is going from Melbourne with part of their hub into Queensland. This is an alarming situation that should have the Premier and the Treasurer very concerned, but I do not think they are. I do not think they care. I actually think the Premier has switched off. He is out of here. He knows that his legacy is going to be one that Victorians are going to have to pay a very heavy price for for many, many, many years to come.

It is extraordinary, this dire situation that we are in and the cost-of-living pressures that are hitting everyday Victorians, and yet the government’s answer is ‘Just tax them all.’ What we have seen since the election of the Andrews government are 49 new or increased taxes – 49 – after the Premier said, ‘I give you my promise that we will not increase taxes – no new taxes’, back in 2014. Now we have got 49. So this is what we are faced with. This is the situation that Victoria is in. It is very, very concerning that the situation that we do find ourselves in is not going to get any better under this government. It is only going to get worse, because all they do is spend and tax. I think all in this chamber are concerned about that situation – well, I hope they would be. Again, this budget has a range of issues in it where spending of course is required, but there are many, many problems with the budget, not least of all Victoria’s fiscal position. I think all Victorians are waking up to that reality and are looking at this government and hoping that the situation will improve markedly over the next 12 months.

Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (11:53): I rise today to speak about the Appropriation (2023–‍2024) Bill 2023 and also the motion concurrently. Many of my colleagues have spoken about some of the issues with this budget. It is certainly the worst budget in Australia’s history. As reported in the Age, the budget imposes billions of dollars in new taxes, delays major infrastructure and imposes cuts to the public service, but net debt will continue to grow. We are now paying over $10 million a day in interest, and that will rise to $22 million a day in just a few years. Under the Labor government our state debt has gone through the roof. We have the highest debt of any state – more than Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania combined. In 2014 our state debt was just $22 billion, and we are now fast approaching $171 billion by 2027.

This budget will certainly hit rural and regional Victorians on many fronts when they can least afford it. It will have a significant impact on regional Victoria. As my colleague Danny O’Brien pointed out in the lower house, the infrastructure Big Build has become well and truly a big bill – $30 billion of cost overruns on those projects that we know about and probably more to come. The debt this government has created will be a burden on future generations. Victorians pay more tax than any other state or territory. Instead of reducing wasteful spending, this government has introduced new taxes. Since Labor was elected nine years ago Victoria’s tax take is set to double. They have introduced nearly 50 new taxes. This budget will impact renters, families, businesses, schools and jobs. The government has tried to dress this up as a way to pay down COVID debt with these taxes. Clearly there are a range of factors that come into play, and the government’s overspending has certainly been one of them.

But it will have an impact on rural and regional Victoria. We know that our roads maintenance funding has been cut by 45 per cent since 2020, with $260 million slashed this year alone. The Kilmore and Shepparton bypass projects have missed out on funding. We have the roads blitz program and the getting families home sooner and safer scheme worth $694 million but not a cent going to rural and regional areas or non-Labor-held seats. The mode shift incentive scheme to get more freight off our roads and onto rail is an incentive program that provides financial support to rail freight companies to makes investment in the cost of transporting goods, but this program has also been reduced and there is financial uncertainty, so people are not investing in committing to rail transport. We need to get trucks off our roads because they are certainly deteriorating.

The budget has also announced a land tax at a time when Victoria is in a housing and rental crisis. If you would like to invest in the property market to make a house available to rent, you will have to pay an extra $1000 a year and continue to pay that $1000 every year for the next 10 years. This government will gain an extra $4.7 billion a year in additional revenue from land tax – the renters tax – but this will just impact renters and make rents even less affordable. According to the Council to Homeless Persons, homelessness has more than doubled in some parts of the state. In fact there are 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria every night. They are sleeping in tents or cars, couch surfing or in unsafe accommodation. I have seen tents set up in Bendigo and Castlemaine, and I note that the Mount Alexander shire has just removed the need for a permit for putting tents or caravans on people’s properties in their backyards. Northern Victoria is home to two of the 10 fastest growing electorates for homelessness, with Bendigo East rising by 107 per cent and Mildura by 96 per cent.

I am concerned also about the impact on small businesses and jobs, with payrolls over $10 million being hit. There will be another tax for payrolls over $100 million, and this will mean $1 billion a year in additional payroll tax for the government off the back of businesses and employers.

We have seen an impact on smaller programs in this budget as well: on our historical societies – it seems like budgets have been cut there – and on our leadership programs. I have spoken with leadership communities in regional areas. These are important programs, but again they have been cut. I guess too there is just an ongoing decline in this budget. We have seen the debts continue to pile up.

I think it is also worth mentioning the parliamentary services and the impact of the support in this bill. I am six months into being elected and do not yet have a permanent electorate office. My phone has not been working at the office and the internet is not connected properly, and it is very frustrating to be in this position when I am doing my best to serve the region. I will continue to do so in a temporary office at the moment, but it has been extremely frustrating. Getting the support from the parliamentary services team is very important, I think, for any new member, and I hope that other members in future do not experience the challenges and the battles that I have had in this process. Certainly I value the support that is given through IT and through library services here, through the tours that take place in this house as well, but from an electorate office perspective it has been incredibly frustrating getting the services. We have had an antenna put on the electorate office just this week and I am hoping that that will contribute, but I will have to wait until October to move to a new premises. So it is very frustrating. I will continue to work until 2026, and I hope to be part of a government so that we can help make the changes that this state so desperately needs. While we are not permitted to block these bills, it is clear that rather than stimulate further investment and growth the state budget highlights this government’s financial mismanagement –

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.