Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget update 2023–24

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (17:33): I want to speak on the 2023–24 Victorian budget update. The points I want to speak on are related to infrastructure. We know that there has been a massive infrastructure blowout. We saw the Premier forced to begrudgingly acknowledge that the North East Link has blown out to $26.1 billion – a massive amount of money, a massive amount of taxpayers money. I am very keen to pursue many reasons behind this. We saw on the weekend, revealed in the Herald Sun, that labourers and junior stop sign holders working a 36-hour week on construction sites will soon earn $120,000 a year under a CFMEU pay deal. We already know that on CFMEU sites the costs for building are far greater than they are with other unions. Data obtained by the Liberals and Nationals from Major Road Projects Victoria show that to be the case. The CFMEU-run Craigieburn Road upgrade project reached more than $190 million, compared to the AWU-run Sunbury Road project, which was just $116 million in the same 16-month period, so a $74 million difference – 6 kilometres for Craigieburn Road, CFMEU run; a 7-kilometre duplication for Sunbury Road, AWU run. They even built a bridge as part of the Sunbury Road upgrade. So the government really needs to explain the cost difference here with taxpayer money. Jacinta Allan needs to explain why a stop-go sign holder could earn up to $120,000 a year while at the same time she is penny-pinching our nurses, our teachers, our ambos and our firies. She needs to explain also why she is penny-pinching customers of Montego Homes for her failure to fix compliance issues in the construction industry. The government will sacrifice just about anyone except for her CFMEU bosses.

Victoria deserves better. We need value for money. This is why the opposition are calling for a standing infrastructure oversight committee of the Parliament. We all want better infrastructure, and Victorians deserve value for money on these projects.

Jacinta Allan expects to build 80,000 homes a year for the next decade, but many, many builders report not being able to source the labour required to build those homes, and this would make it even worse. We have seen reports of evidence of fraud in the government’s Big Build. We have seen reports of ghost shifts, where shifts are faked. At the time, the former Premier and then minister Jacinta Allan brushed this aside. It has now been confirmed by the national safety regulator. Surely the government has a view on the rorting of taxpayer money going on on Big Build sites. Surely the government has a view. If you do not and if you are silent, you are truly the guilty party. There is rorting going on on construction sites. It is taxpayer money. Taxpayers deserve transparency as to how their money is being spent.

On the pay deal that is supposedly in the works, Jacinta Allan on the weekend said that the government is not party to these negotiations and does not have a view. Well, the government should have a view, because again it is taxpayer money. She is not going to be able to meet her housing targets and her promises, because already we know from people that do build homes that they cannot source labour, supply and materials because they are all being sucked into government Big Build projects. But again we see the government cave to this basic extortion going on on construction sites, where it costs more for CFMEU-run projects, where there are ghost shifts going on, where there is clear evidence from the national safety regulator of rorting of taxpayer money on construction sites. Yet this government stays silent. Even though they are aligned with the AWU, which is a much more efficient workforce for the government to use, it stays silent – all to please the Premier’s union bosses. It is an absolute disgrace.