Thursday, 30 November 2023

Motions

Budget papers 2023–24

Debate resumed on motion of Jaclyn Symes:

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

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (16:04): I rise to speak on the budget of 2023–24, a budget that was handed down last May. I feel like I have made this speech a million times already, as I have spoken about so many of the projects that were not funded in my electorate in this budget. What I would say about this budget is it is a budget of wasted opportunities. It is a typical Labor budget: it is high in debt, it has budget blowouts and it fails to meet time lines. We have seen underfunding in a whole range of areas, particularly roads et cetera, and we have seen a whole range of projects that were actually in this budget that we have seen backflips on already. One of those was the visiting teachers program, where they cut the visiting teachers program but then, after negative publicity towards the government, reinstated it. There are potholes in this budget. There are a lot of potholes in this budget.

But let us talk about the elephant in the room in this budget: the Commonwealth Games – the promised regional Commonwealth Games. They promised regional Victoria the world. They promised us the world would come to us. They were full of bravado at budget estimates, saying it was on time, it was being delivered and it was all fantastic. But what happened? They have been cancelled. The government promised us 5000 athletes would be competing in regional cities, that there would be hundreds of thousands of visitors to regional cities and that it would give us international exposure for our tourism. They promised us that the games would bring tourism opportunities galore and new sporting infrastructure into regional Victoria. But the Commonwealth Games turned out to be the con games, not the Comm Games. When Daniel Andrews, Jacinta Allan and Harriet Shing cruelly pulled the rug out from under regional Victoria’s feet by cancelling the games, this was a devastating blow to regional communities. It was an international embarrassment to our state. Who would ever do business with this state again? First they cancelled contracts on the east–west link, costing the state over $1.1 billion to cancel a road that only had $2 billion of state investment in it, and now it will cost Victorians nearly $1 billion to cancel a contract this government entered into less than 12 months earlier, to cancel the Commonwealth Games.

This not only affects the cancellation of government investment and the promised promotional opportunities, this also will affect private investment, so we will lose private investment in regional Victoria as well as government investment. We know that there were a number of planned private developments that were going to go ahead in regional Victoria. We know that Bendigo had proposals for two 5-star hotels. Will they go ahead now that the Commonwealth Games is not happening? These are things that were planned to go ahead because they knew that first boost was coming from the Commonwealth Games. They knew that that would get them up and running. The Huntly Hotel planned a 26-room expansion and expansion of their dining and entertainment areas; they knew the Commonwealth Games was coming. It was going to give them that initial investment that they needed. The Bendigo Oval Motel had planned a major upgrade and refurbishment, including all of their bathrooms. They are less likely to do it now. They had actually been booked out for an entire month by the English team. That has been lost to those private businesses, and perhaps that private investment in those businesses has also been lost to Victoria. Some of them may choose to go ahead, but some of them may think twice about doing those refurbishments. Other bars and restaurants in Bendigo were planning to do refurbishments and expansions, and we are now less likely to see that private investment as well.

The Commonwealth Games is just one embarrassment in this budget. There have been other embarrassments to the government, and I talked about one of those before – the visiting teachers, where they said that they would cut 85 visiting teachers to save costs. Also there is the schools tax, the payroll tax that was to be imposed on schools. We have seen backflips on these, so we know that there are major potholes and holes already in this budget.

Talking of potholes, and our regional roads, the road asset management budget in this budget has been cut. It was expected to reach $702.2 million in 2022–23. That was the projected expected expenditure for that year, yet the 2023–24 target for spending is only $441.6 million. That is a huge cut in the road asset management budget. It is a $260.6 million cut this year, a 37 per cent cut out of a budget where the government is not keeping up with maintenance now. Roads in country Victoria are dangerous; the potholes are appalling. Even worse than the 37 per cent cut on last year is that there has been a 45 per cent cut in this budget since 2020. Regional roads are now falling apart. The lack of investment prior to the floods was exacerbated by the floods, which caused further deterioration of the roads, and as it is we have huge numbers of lives lost on Victorian roads.

It is some time since I updated this, but to 18 October there had been 227 lives lost on Victorian roads this year, and that was an increase of 30 on the same time last year, or 15.2 per cent. In the metro area, there was an increase of eight deaths, or 9 per cent, but in country Victoria that figure was up by 22, or 20 per cent. In the community of Greater Shepparton there have been 12 deaths; in Moira, 13; in Strathbogie, five; in Indigo, five; in Campaspe, five; in Wangaratta, four; in Bendigo, five; and in Whittlesea, four. These are just some of the larger losses in my electorate. But we know, as I said, those figures are up until 18 October, and had I had time to update those again now, they would be even worse.

Harriet Shing interjected.

Wendy LOVELL: Minister Shing, you might say ‘Google it’, but I was chairing the committee stage of the bill right before this and I have come straight into speaking on this, so I did not have time to actually google it and update it today. As you say, between 18 October and now we have actually had an increase in the number of deaths, so there you go. That is something that you are obviously proud of, but the rest of Victoria is not.

Harriet Shing: On a point of order, Acting President, I ask that Ms Lovell immediately withdraw that.

Wendy LOVELL: I withdraw, but the minister has been pointing out to me that increase in deaths.

Harriet Shing: On a point of order, Acting President, I ask that Ms Lovell unconditionally withdraw that.

Wendy LOVELL: I withdrew my statement.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Thank you, Ms Lovell.

Wendy LOVELL: The housing assistance budget has had a cut of 18 per cent in this budget. We know that housing and homelessness is a huge problem in Victoria, yet the budget for next year is an 18 per cent cut on last year’s budget. That is appalling. This government keeps saying they are doing so much to help people, but they are not. We see in the actual budget performance measures for homelessness that they actually helped less people this year than they did in the 2021–22 year. Around 2000 less people were helped, yet we know the wait time for those who are waiting for assistance is getting longer. We now know that for those who are waiting with priority status for family violence that wait time has blown out from 17 months to 20.2 months. That is dreadful. That is nearly two years. You are waiting to escape from an unsafe environment, and this government is happy to let you wait for nearly two years. For other people on the priority list, in the last year it blew out from 15 months to 16½ months. They are delivering less services, delivering them to less people and yet the waiting time is going up, but the government seem quite happy to go ahead with that and just say that they are doing a wonderful job.

They are not doing a wonderful job. We all know that life is getting harder under Labor. We all know that we have budget blowouts under Labor, and this state is in a dreadful position. We know that the money that is being spent on interest is less money that can be spent on services in this state. Just the other day I was talking to somebody who said that in three years time Labor will spending more on their interest rates than they do on the education budget – interest will cost them more than they spend on education. Within six years they will be spending more on interest than they spend on health. This state needs to think about that. We cannot afford any more of this incompetence by this Labor government.

Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Housing, Minister for Water, Minister for Equality) (16:16): It is a good opportunity at the end of the parliamentary year to rise, with the time that I have available, to talk about the importance of investment in not only recovery, which continues under the $18 billion pandemic response and recovery plan, but also in managing the growth of the state of Victoria. We know that with projections of more than 10 million people in Victoria by 2050 there are challenges but also many, many opportunities. I think it is important that in discussing these opportunities here today and discussing the budget response we look to the unique circumstances which are present not only in Victoria’s economy but in the Australian and indeed international economy settings where macro-economic influences have had a significant role in the way in which services and programs, infrastructure and employment have oscillated and changed over time.

We are indeed in strange times. One of the things that this budget does is lean into the strengths of the government’s priorities to date – the investments that have been made in new jobs, skills and training and education pathways; the record investments across rural and regional Victoria; making sure that people all over the state have opportunities that meet their needs; and indeed at the heart of all of this creating a better measure of equity and opportunity through helping people to manage the cost of living.

Starting with the unemployment work that we have been doing and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been created under the Andrews and now Allan Labor government, we see that, for example, in regional Victoria the data is very clear – we have the lowest unemployment rate on record. It is about 2.4 per cent. Now, there is some variation of course, as there always is, from location to location, but we see that where growth industries have been supported through a range of government interventions and supports, we follow that with growth. We support this through an ongoing investment, a record investment, in TAFE and training and in opportunities through the more than 80 courses that are part of the free TAFE list. This encourages people to earn and learn closer to where they live.

We also know that where we provide opportunities for households to move from one income to two incomes, or indeed from no reliable income to one income, the cost of living is assisted in almost immeasurable terms. Free kinder is one of the levers which is so central to delivering that respite from cost-of-living pressures. The Best Start, Best Life program has been instrumental in tackling some of those significant gender-related imbalances in opportunity and workforce participation metrics. Free three- and four-year-old kinder is saving Victorian families $2500 a year per child. But it is going further than that.

It is also providing opportunities for a parent or caregiver, whether as a single parent or caregiver or indeed as part of a household with two parents, the opportunity to head into paid work, whether returning to paid work or entering the paid workforce for the first time. And I do say the ‘paid workforce’ because it is important that when we look to the budget investments that have been made under the Allan government and under the Andrews government since 2014 we note that gender is one of the significant factors in disadvantage. The statistics are very, very clear. When we look to whole-of-life earnings, when we look to job security and when we look to the challenges around access to services overall, we know that women are at a disadvantage. This is where gendered budgeting has been a central part of the work of the budgets that the Treasurer has been delivering and indeed the government has been delivering for many years.

Across rural and regional Victoria an investment of $41 billion since 2014 has ensured that through everything from heavy infrastructure to new TAFE campuses and primary, kindergarten and secondary educational facilities; new hospitals, including through the latest investment in the $320 million Regional Health Infrastructure Fund; and making sure that we have pathways for people in addressing disadvantage – whether through apprenticeship registration, the Veterans Card Victoria or the opportunities for free TAFE, free kinder, access to breakfast clubs and initiatives that are intended to make and keep people connected – we see very significant and enduring positive benefits.

We also know that in continuing to deliver on the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, those 74 recommendations, and having delivered on the 227 ‍recommendations of the Royal Commission into Family Violence, there is always more work to do. We also know that ignoring these problems or failing to address them in funding does not make for any long-term success. It does not make for anything more than a three-word political slogan sugar hit – those opposite know all too well about this sort of strategy. In fact when we say we have invested in infrastructure, the Regional Rail Revival or record investment in regional roads, it is against the backdrop of successive cuts under the former coalition government, against nine years of withering disregard from the former federal government and of an ignorance, wilful or otherwise, from the Commonwealth government around the importance of GST revenue and a fair share for Victoria based on population.

What a relief it has been in that regard to have found in Canberra an opportunity for partnership. And one of the examples that comes to mind for me in the housing portfolio is the commitment from Minister Julie Collins in Canberra to make sure that Victoria can take advantage of the social housing accelerator program – $496.5 million – to deliver at least 769 new social housing homes. It is a real shame that, in this place at least, there are people who squander the opportunity to talk about what this means for people’s lives: the dignity and the pride of a place to call home and a place that is able to accommodate their needs and their aspirations and their sense of desire, a desire we all have, to connect to and be a part of the communities around us. It is a great shame – it is a travesty, in fact – that we see people, for example, from the Greens, refusing to even acknowledge the importance of social housing through community service and community housing providers that make sure that people in the most vulnerable of circumstances can access support. It is a great shame that for the sake, again, of a small set of sugar hits at the expense of people’s sense of certainty about their futures they can pedal misinformation and disinformation about the future of people living in the tower estates.

To be clear, the housing statement and the Big Housing Build are about making sure that we give people the right to secure, modern, fit-for-purpose, accessible, energy efficient and connected homes. The Big Housing Build, which has brought to book around 60 per cent of that $5.3 billion investment since it was announced in 2020, has delivered alongside whole-of-government investments around 8000 homes across the state. We have also got more work to do in making sure that we, in acquitting the final 40 per cent and in addition to that a further $1 billion across rural and regional Victoria and a further 1300 homes as well as $150 million for the Regional Worker Accommodation Fund, lean into those challenges.

We note that the partnerships, to my point earlier, with the Commonwealth remain of key importance in the areas of homelessness, of rough sleeping and of crisis accommodation. What a sad disgrace therefore to have people in this place go around to the public housing towers and tell people that they are about to be kicked out of their homes. What a disgrace to have people say that they will not be given any notice or options, any chance to express priorities. What a disgrace for certain people in this chamber, certain people who will never have the responsibility of government, certain people who cry from on high about how it is that a certain way of doing things is the only way to do things and anything else is abject failure, to go about and to cause fear and confusion for the sake of political division.

We are determined as a government, as this budget shows, to make sure that ongoing investment is done in a way that is sustainable, is responsible and is equitable. The work we are doing to continue with our record investment into level crossing removals has, as so many of us in this place and so many of us across Victoria well understand, led to significant improvements in quality of life – in the time spent every day on a commute; in the capacity to deliver more trains, more services, more often; and in wide-open spaces that create corridors and parklands, created, built and supported by social enterprise. These are the sorts of joined up initiatives that provide us with opportunities to help communities not only to connect but to build a measure of resilience for further growth.

On the question of further growth, with the time that I have left I do want to touch on the housing statement – a statement which is a framework for responsible innovation in managing population growth and in prioritising livability. The housing statement is formative work. It is nation-leading work. It is work that begins with the housing statement and must continue, and we are determined to do exactly that. In setting an ambitious but achievable target of 80,000 homes a year for the next 10 years, we have also announced an affordability partnership. This affordability partnership with peak bodies and with partnerships across the state and with all levels of government is about making sure that through planning changes, residential tenancies changes, dispute resolution mechanisms, the development of precincts, the creation of additional social housing in areas where there is that measure of connection that everybody deserves and of course making sure that we have at the heart of all of this coverage of the entire state, we have a framework by which this conversation, these funding rounds and these partnerships can continue. There is a lot of appetite to assist in facilitating this growth. This appetite exists across industry, across regional towns and centres in our peri-urban areas and in our outer metropolitan areas.

We are ensuring, for example, that second dwellings, the granny flat example, are able to be built on blocks of at least 300 square metres, provided that they are not greater than 60 square metres in size, without planning approval. Adding an extra 90 planners into the mix ensures that hundreds of outstanding planning applications can be resolved quickly. We are ensuring that the Minister for Planning has the capacity to make decisions on certain developments and proposals and that standardised plans for specific dwellings of medium density builds are able to receive de facto approval immediately because they comply with those standards that make for decent living. These are just a few of the examples of the sort of work that is happening that continues our commitment, our determination, to keep working toward a growing Victoria that is prosperous; that accommodates everyone; that has a measure of pride against how we represent ourselves to the world; that enhances our already world-class offering on the visitor economy, on tourism, on major events; and at the heart of it all, that represents the very best of the values of fairness that we have long talked about and long delivered and will continue to focus on from here.

Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:31): Just over a year ago when I was elected to this place, as part of my maiden speech in this chamber –

Harriet Shing interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: Am I still going? That’s right, I’m still going. I haven’t finished. As a continuation of that speech, it is great to rise 12 months later and get the chance to finish it and bookend the year as it were. I will start off on a similar theme. Back then I reserved some of my judgement, some of my concern –

Ryan Batchelor: You’ve only got 14 minutes left.

Nick McGOWAN: Fourteen minutes left – okay, that’s great: 14 minutes and 24 seconds. I need to dedicate quite a bit of that to one of my favourite subjects, and that is my contempt for the Reserve Bank. I will start with that, and then I will get straight into the government itself.

Harriet Shing: Go back to the Magna Carta.

Nick McGOWAN: The Magna Carta. I am tempted to go to the Magna Carta as well, but I need to reserve it particularly. To take us back for a moment though: 13 interest rate rises. As much as I perhaps give more levity to this debate than I should, for the folk out there who are doing it tough in my electorate of Ringwood and all the other surrounding areas – including Eltham and Ivanhoe, Mill Park, Bundoora, Box Hill, Glen Waverley, Bayswater, Warrandyte – there is a very stark reality occurring right now. People are struggling to pay their rent. People are certainly struggling to pay their mortgages. In fact I frankly do not know how they can juggle their finances enough to pay their mortgage and/or rent, whichever it is; still pay for the groceries; pay the electricity bills when they come in; pay the water bills; if they have rates, pay the rates; and have enough money for anything that they might have to provide for their children for schooling and so forth.

In our last Reserve Bank governor we had somebody who was completely, it would appear, tone-deaf. That governor finally left, and in my opinion he should have gone much earlier. He should have resigned because of his commentary around the advice he gave at a particular point in time. I am not a Rhodes scholar, but people take it for granted that when the Reserve Bank governor says interest rates will stay like this, they will stay like this for some years and they act upon that advice. That was my view. Sadly, the legal world does not share my view on this occasion, because I would have loved nothing more than for the Reserve Bank governor and the Reserve Bank to be sued. That is exactly what should have occurred, because thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Australians would have made decisions because of the advice coming from the Reserve Bank governor, as inept as he proved to be. And he did not even have the dignity to resign. He stayed it out; he sucked out every last wage cheque he could. What a disgraceful effort that was.

Then we had a new Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock, the rookie. What did she do this week? I will quote some of her comments, because they are nothing short of atrocious. I thought Philip was bad, but now we have gone from bad to worse. This is a unique achievement in Australian politics. She said:

We have, like other countries, raised interest rates much more quickly than we have in the past, and that has created, in fact, a lot of political noise and a lot of noise from the general public …

Noise – what a demeaning, insulting way to downplay what in actual fact is not only media noise but families, mums, dads, singles – you name it – businesses too, expressing their inability to keep up with the bills and to be able to put food on the table. What an absolutely disgraceful comment that was.

But of course then she went one better. This is the Governor of the Reserve Bank, who is paid a measly, let us not forget, $1 million for this sort of advice – my goodness. I had more sophistication in some Playmobil sets when I was growing up than they have at the Reserve Bank.

Harriet Shing: Put your notes away. You’ve got this.

Nick McGOWAN: It’s not a note; I’m quoting. Guess who the Reserve Bank governor is blaming for all this?

Harriet Shing: You.

Nick McGOWAN: Not me, no – not this time:

Hairdressers and dentists, dining out, sporting and other recreational activities – the prices of all these services are rising strongly.

Oh, it is terrible that the good people of Australia want to go to the dentist. How horrid of them. This Reserve Bank governor wants us to stop going to the dentist. What a comment of stupidity. So she should go. She should absolutely resign. If this is how she is going to start in the job, like her predecessor, she should resign, no doubt about it. I have got no time for these people. They are devoid of reality. If I was living on $1 million a year, maybe I would be devoid of reality too. But I tell you what, there is one way to come crashing back down to earth, and this Reserve Bank governor has done it spectacularly. She should quit. I hope she does, because I do not know how she comes back from that, and it just shows me they have no compassion for the ordinary people.

Members interjecting.

Nick McGOWAN: I do not care that she has just started. She should finish. She is an embarrassment. If she does not understand the common people in Victoria and Australia to that extent, what is she doing there? She is in a position where she is going to ratchet up interest rates more. In fact Philip Lowe at the same conference in Hong Kong remarked that they should continue to ratchet up interest rates. That would be great. Once we get people on their knees, then we will get them down on the ground fully. At some point, when they have got just the slightest bit of a pulse going, maybe then we will pull back on the interest rates. What do we want to do? Do we want to destroy every last business there is in this country and this state? Do we want to make sure that mums and dads go bankrupt, default on their mortgages, default on their rental payments and get thrown out of their homes? What a disgrace.

Speaking of disgraces, I will transition very nicely to the government and their last budget, which brings me back to the point of this debate. When Daniel Andrews came into power in 2014, Victoria’s public debt was $22.3 billion – not good; not terrible, but not good. This will rise to $171.4 billion in the year 2026–27, although to be quite frank, let us face it, they are going to smash that out of the park. This is a prediction.

Joe McCracken: Gold star.

Nick McGOWAN: Gold star? They get more than one gold star. In my day it would be a scratch-and-sniff and a gold star. I am no clairvoyant, but I am guessing that with this figure, in years to come people will look back and read this speech and say $171 billion in 2026–27 was wildly optimistic.

Ryan Batchelor: They’ll be quoting it through the ages.

Nick McGOWAN: Mr Batchelor, I will take you up on that. It will be a figure for the ages. In reality what this is going to mean for Victorians is that the average debt per Victorian will go from, can we guess, around $4000 – I am going to round up, but if you want to be specific, $3755 – per person in June 2015 to an estimated $23,709 in 2026–27. That is a 531 per cent increase. It sounds like our WorkCover rates, doesn’t it, a bit. They are blowing out by the same magnitude. It is extraordinary. Everything they touch does not turn to gold. Look at this place. If this had been built under the current government, we would not be surrounded by this beautiful gold leaf, no, and it probably would not be aluminium, because that would be untoward in some way, shape or form. It would have included mining efforts, so that would not have happened.

Harriet Shing: You wouldn’t need to make a hard hat out of it, though, would you.

Nick McGOWAN: I wouldn’t need to make a hard hat, because there would be those sticks and stones. We cannot have any forestry occurring, so we know that. I do not know what I would be surrounded by.

Harriet Shing interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: It could be tinfoil hats, but I am not sure where we are going to get the tin from, because I am not sure that we have that many tin mines in this state. However, during Mr Andrews’s reign, Victoria has also, let us not forget this in terms of this legacy, been downgraded by the international rating agency Standard & Poor’s from the highest AAA rating to first AA-plus and then recently to AA.

Harriet Shing: He looks like he’s a bit moody today.

Nick McGOWAN: I am not moody, but I like your pun – were it not for the fact that there is a serious reality, and the serious reality is that we Victorians are now paying a lot more for the same money. It means we have to pay more for the same. In anyone’s language this is not a good deal at all.

For all this money that we are spending, one might say, ‘Well, presumably we’re getting some stellar results from this. We’re getting some great results in terms of our education outcomes, our health outcomes and our road and infrastructure outcomes.’ Well, no. That is not true either. Sadly, the last NAPLAN tests revealed that one in three Victorian children are failing to meet the minimum standards in literacy and numeracy. How is that possible? How is it possible in 2023 that we are failing so miserably our next generation, the future leaders of this state? Further than that, we are also experiencing one of the worst teacher shortages in this state’s history, and that should concern us all.

Medical services have also declined dramatically. In Victoria 33 people have died just waiting for an ambulance, more than 70,000 people are on the waiting list for elective surgery and the ambulance system – as we have heard in this place over the last few weeks and months and, sadly, years – is in disarray. The Victorian health system today has the second lowest spending per person on public hospitals of any other state or territory in Australia.

Victoria’s justice system currently has 83,000 cases outstanding, the highest number of pending cases of any state or territory in Australia. It is a pretty sad list, and it keeps going on. This is the list of so-called achievements. This is what we are getting for our money, the money we are paying more for – it is the irony.

Businesses – well, businesses must be clamouring to come back to the state of Victoria. Remember back in the 1990s the joke was: ‘If you want to start a small business in Victoria, buy a big one in New South Wales and bring it to Victoria.’ Such was the state of business in this jurisdiction at that point in time. Well, the latest ABS data shows that in the last fiscal year the number of businesses in Victoria actually reduced in the order of seven-and-a-bit thousand. This is not an Australia-wide phenomenon. The number of registered businesses grew by just over 11,000 in New South Wales and 8000 in Queensland, so what we see there is quite a difference, a stark difference. Except what is the difference? Those states are run by different governments. That is of course the clear difference.

When it comes to housing of course – the minister is here today, and it is great; I am very happy she is here to talk about all things housing – this pledge of 800,000 new homes and this demolishing of the 44 –

Harriet Shing interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: I’ve got your attention now, don’t I, Minister? Here we go.

Harriet Shing interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: I’m happy to talk –

Harriet Shing: And now what’s just happened?

Nick McGOWAN: You just got interested.

Harriet Shing: I’m just like the Terminator now.

Nick McGOWAN: You’re like the Terminator. Well, you’re already terminating 44 housing commission towers –

Harriet Shing: Literally we didn’t.

Nick McGOWAN: Well, you’re about to. They’re on the chopping block.

Harriet Shing: Literally that’s not the proposition.

Nick McGOWAN: They’re literally on the chopping block. And all that we would ask is that we have some transparency around the actual net number of new homes, because this is sort of this evolving spaghetti. You can never quite find where the beginning and the end of the spaghetti is, and this is the same thing and the same predicament with social housing and public housing and so forth.

We can never forget of course that the Premier also promised us no new taxes. Well, that did not last, did it? Silence in this place. It is a nice thing when you talk about no new taxes. They have fallen asleep. They have fallen asleep, and the people of Victoria have fallen out of patience with this –

Harriet Shing interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: I needed a better segue, maybe. I will work on that. Nonetheless, the point remains the same. That is, there is a –

Harriet Shing: Have another crack.

Nick McGOWAN: Have another crack. I will go back at it. There was a clear commitment to no new taxes, and unfortunately years later we are now all paying that very price for their commitment and their failure to actually live up to it. What a sad state of affairs it is here in Victoria.

We can also talk of course about the additional imposts that have now been placed on schools, particularly non-government schools. Well, that was an absolute shemozzle. I mean, that took months to sort out. The right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. We suddenly decided in this state – we have never ever in the history of education charged schools payroll tax. We have done this sort of magic-pudding economics over here with state schools, where we have charged it and given it back to ourselves, which is bizarre. In fact all that does is prop up the so-called spending on education to make it look better than it actually is, when that money ought to be going to children, to new classrooms, to teachers, to teacher training, to investing in principals – but no.

Then what we decided was we were going to rip almost half a billion dollars out of the non-government system, because let us face it, there is nothing worse than parents who want to put their hands into their own pockets and contribute to their own kids’ future – awful, disgraceful parents. Well, we are fixing that. We will punish them. Let us show them what for and let us make sure that their school pays even more. So that is what we have done. It has to be one of the most draconian, backward, stupid decisions I have seen any government ever make, and that includes the Cain–Kirner government – and that was a remarkably bad government. We all know that. It brought this state to the brink. It brought this state two weeks off defaulting on public pay cheques. It brought the state’s running of the superannuation program for the entire public service to a standstill, to a footing which made it entirely unsustainable. It was a tragedy. And yet somehow this Andrews–Allan Labor government has managed to attack the very thing Labor people will often speak about: education and our future. They have managed to tax it to the tune of half a billion dollars and rip money away from those schools that are actually lifting maybe more than their fair share. I cannot comprehend what drove Labor to go down that path except the terrible mess they have now helped us come to and arrive at. What an absolute disgrace. I will pick you up on your word; I am using your word, ‘disgrace’. And I did not want to use too many negative words like that today. I think I have used enough this year.

Harriet Shing: You did say ‘shemozzle’. It was a strange turn of phrase.

Nick McGOWAN: Shemozzle – well, it was a shemozzle. Last but not least, I think I have no more seconds left. I will have to leave it there.

Motion agreed to.