Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Production of documents

Credit assessment

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (10:09): I move:

That this house:

(1) notes that the Treasurer commissioned a private credit assessment from Fitch Ratings in 2022;

(2) further notes that details of the assessment, including the rating and Victoria’s financial position and economic outlook, have never been released;

(3) requires the Leader of the Government, pursuant to standing order 10.01, to table in the Council, within one week of the house agreeing to this resolution:

(a) the credit assessment commissioned by the Treasurer in April 2022, produced by Fitch Ratings and provided to the Department of Treasury and Finance; and

(b) any documents and/or materials, including but not limited to reports, briefs and advice, provided by the Department of Treasury and Finance or the Treasurer in relation to the assessment referred to in paragraph (3)(a).

I am pleased to be able to rise to speak to this short-form documents motion, because it is an important part of the transparency process that this government fails to provide. The people of Victoria deserve to know the truth about the state of our economy, and today we are demanding that transparency from the Allan Labor government. My motion goes to the point that the Treasurer commissioned a private credit assessment from Fitch Ratings in 2022 and that the details of the assessment, including the rating and Victoria’s financial position and economic outlook, have never been released by the government. What this motion asks for is for the government, pursuant to standing order 10.01, to table in the Council, within one week of the house agreeing to this motion, the assessment commissioned by the Treasurer and any documents or materials, including reports and briefs and advice provided to the Department of Treasury and Finance.

I think Victorians are very concerned about Victoria’s increasing debt. If we look at our interest repayments today at $18 million each day and into the future when they are going to $26 million a day, with debt increasing in just a few years to $188 billion and rising, we are in real trouble. I think it is absolutely imperative that these documents that have been hidden from Victorians, where Victorians have been kept in the dark, need to be released, and we need to see the state’s true financial problems. They are, as I have just highlighted, immense. They are concerning to business, they are concerning to households and they are concerning to those that want to invest in this great state, providing confidence back into a system that has been trashed under the Allan Labor government.

The Allan Labor government’s reckless financial mismanagement is, as I said, driving that debt to record levels, and other states are seeing this as a competitive advantage. We cannot have that happen. We need to claw it back and we need to have proper fiscal management in place. To understand what information was provided to the government by the Fitch Ratings agency is incredibly important. We also need to ask the question: why has the government actually hidden this from Victorians? I think that question answers itself, because it is probably very bad news and news that the Treasurer himself does not want to release given that he is at odds with the government and the Premier on spending. Her focus is on the Suburban Rail Loop, and extraordinary amounts of money – billions of dollars – are going into that project when other parts of Victoria are being neglected.

The record debt, the record waste and mismanagement of projects under the management of the Premier, not only as Premier but when she was the responsible Minister for Transport Infrastructure, are issues that are critical to Victorians. They can see the lack of investment in areas where services are failing. They deserve to have access to health care in this state, and that is failing. Our ambulance system, our health system, our education system and our community safety are all at risk here because of the mismanagement of Labor. It is critical that these documents be tabled in the house, so Victorians can see the true extent of the advice provided to the government and the true extent of the financial and economic situation of the state.

The secrecy comes, as I said, off the back of those figures that we know about but also Standard & Poor’s damning assessment of the government. That assessment warned the government that the fiscal outlook for our state was on shaky ground, and that cannot be overstated. That is of very huge concern to so many Victorians, as it should be, because they know what is at risk here. Victorians are saying this in many ways, and they are pointing directly to the reckless financial mismanagement of the Allan Labor government.

In conclusion, I want to just say it is a very simple motion. It is asking for the documents commissioned by the Treasurer back in 2022, this report, to be provided in the interests of all Victorians, in the interests of transparency and in the interests of this Parliament understanding what is at risk here and what the true financial situation and the risks are from this credit rating agency. I think that is the decent thing to do. It is the right thing to do, and I urge the government to comply with this and support this motion in the interests of all Victorians.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:14): I rise to speak on Ms Crozier’s motion, which notes that the Treasurer commissioned a private credit assessment from Fitch Ratings, one of the private ratings agencies, in 2022; notes that the details of that assessment, including the rating and Victoria’s financial position and economic outlook, have not been released; and requires the production of a credit assessment commissioned by the Treasurer and produced by Fitch and any other documents or materials, including the range of reports and recent advice presented to the Treasurer in relation to that document. Many would know, including those opposite, that the government and governments across the board have credit ratings assigned by international credit rating agencies. The two most prominent and well known, Moody’s and S&P, have provided credit ratings on the Victorian economy and the state of the Victorian budget for many, many years, and those ratings remain stable and positive. Fitch is another of the international ratings agencies, and further to the two ratings agencies from which we have historically received our ratings assessments, an additional rating was sourced from Fitch to supplement the ratings reports from Moody’s and S&P in 2022. The credit environment in 2022 was exceptionally challenging following the global pandemic, and it was important for the state to obtain these further and additional credit rating reports to enable it to undertake the necessary and proper assessments of the credit climate and the economic environment.

I think it is important for the purposes of this debate – these motions generally do succeed in the course of debate, and there will be, I am sure, a response from the government – we understand that Fitch provided a point-in-time rating. It was not an ongoing rating, it was a point-in-time rating for that particular point in time because of the particular circumstances that were faced. Fitch provided that to the government on a non-publication basis, and so the government has legal obligations to not publish the rating at this stage. The government is obviously committed to ensuring that we do whatever we can to make sure that information that is capable of being placed in the public domain is in fact done so. We understand that the Department of Treasury and Finance is in discussions with Fitch to address this issue on an ongoing basis, but we are not in the habit of breaching our contractual obligations – a pretty straightforward position. If there are commercial obligations that we have entered into, the state is not in the habit of breaching those contractual obligations. But I am really happy to talk about the Victorian economy. Unfortunately, because –

David Davis: The motion is not about that, fundamentally. It is about documents.

Ryan BATCHELOR: Well, it is about an assessment. The motion is about an assessment of the Victorian economy, which is exactly what the documents that the opposition seeks go to. So I think it might be relevant to the conduct of this debate to get into a broader discussion about the state of the Victorian economy – one that is creating jobs and one that is investing in our future capability and investing in the productive infrastructure that our state needs to continue to grow.

What is unfortunate I think, though – this is the consequence of the genius that constructed these short-form documents debates – is that we do not have an opportunity, under the terms of the sessional orders, to get into a discussion about those issues, because we do not have time under the sessional orders because we only get a couple of minutes. We only get 5 minutes in the course of this debate to make contributions. That is not enough.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:19): I also rise to make a contribution on this motion in Ms Crozier’s name. I will not go through it again. Mr Batchelor very eloquently did that, but by and large it calls upon the government to release a private credit assessment which we commissioned from Fitch in 2022. I think the important point that Mr Batchelor made and I will make again for those opposite is that the rating –

Georgie Crozier: You are reading from speaking notes.

Sonja TERPSTRA: No. I am making sure that I make my contribution accurate, which is something that you guys do not actually worry about. What I was going to say is that it is something that we commissioned, and it was obtained in 2022. It was a point-in-time –

Georgie Crozier: Well, release it.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Ms Crozier, I will take up your interjection. This is the thing that I struggle with that you do not actually understand. It is now 2024 and Victoria’s economy is the powerhouse of Australia’s economy. If I can point to so much investment and the jobs that we have created –

A member: People are fleeing the state.

Sonja TERPSTRA: No, they are not.

Members interjecting.

The PRESIDENT: Order! Ms Terpstra, without any interjections.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Thank you, President. Again, they do not want to hear about it because there is good news and plenty of it. When we came to government our economy was around $400 billion. It is now worth $600 billion and is projected to be worth nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars by the end of the estimates. We have created more than 850,000 new jobs since November 2014 through our investments in the economy. If you look in my electorate alone, North-Eastern Metropolitan Region, we have got huge infrastructure projects which are driving investment.

Georgie Crozier: On a point of order, President –

Ryan Batchelor: You don’t want to hear about it, do you?

Georgie Crozier: I will take up the member’s interjection. The North East Link is well over budget.

The PRESIDENT: Do not take up his interjection. What is the point of order?

Georgie Crozier: The documents motion is very simple. The member is straying from a very simple proposition about the government releasing this Fitch report that was provided to the government, and I would ask you to bring the member back to what it is about, not congratulating herself for a poor project that is absolutely running over budget.

The PRESIDENT: A long point of order. I bring the member to the motion.

Sonja TERPSTRA: I guess what is lost on those opposite is that when our government invests in projects such as North East Link, level crossing removals and the Suburban Rail Loop, which is a fantastic project, it creates jobs. Again, if I look across my region, the jobs that are created mean that we create growth in our economy. What they do not understand is if a credit assessment report was sought in 2022, it is now two years old. Again, it is a point-in-time assessment. I would love to stand here for much longer than I have on the clock, because those opposite sought to change the standing orders to make sure they gagged the government so we cannot actually respond to things in an appropriate way. I would love to talk about all the things that we have done to support the Victorian economy and the growth that has happened because of our investment in our major infrastructure projects and also our spending in schools and the –

David Davis interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: No, no, no, it is not. I am not going to be verballed by those opposite to say that I cannot make the contribution that I want to make in the context of our economy, because again, you do not understand what this actually means. Again, this is a misguided motion asking for a point-in-time credit assessment that is now two years old. I can point to the failings of those opposite and the economy that we inherited. Like I said earlier, our economy is now $600 billion. The growth is happening because of our investment. And again, as Mr Batchelor said, we often do not oppose these things. Our record on providing documents stands for itself because we have provided lots more documents under these documents motions than you ever did when you were in government. You objected to every single documents motion. You objected to all of them because – talk about secrecy – you had so many things you wanted to keep secret that you did not want the Victorian public to hear. You gaslight us every day in this chamber about these sorts of things, but people remember your record. You did not produce any documents at all. I will conclude my contribution there.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:24): I also rise to share a few words on the short-form documents motion that has been put forward by Ms Crozier today, and I acknowledge the contributions of both Mr Batchelor and Ms Terpstra. Indeed, as Mr Batchelor rightly noted, this particular report, the Fitch report, was obtained in 2022 –

David Davis: I think that’s what the motion says too, doesn’t it?

Michael GALEA: I will give credit to Ms Crozier for getting the year correct then. Yes, she also got the year – it was 2022, very good job. It was a moment in time. It was provided to the government on the condition that it not be released, because it was not a full, comprehensive report. That has already been gone into in detail by Mr Batchelor. I know those opposite did not like listening to that. Obviously they have no respect for such things.

There was no respect for commercial in confidence in the bizarre attack just now by Ms Crozier and no respect even for small business cafe owners – they are attacking coffee and sandwiches now. It is bizarre from the supposedly Liberal Party to now be attacking enterprising Victorians who operate these small businesses right across the state, whether it is the cafes across the road or in my region. We have great cafes, including Mr Grumpy’s in Springvale and One Fine Day in Beaconsfield and many, many others as well, and indeed in regional Victoria. Indeed cafes and restaurants like that and many other businesses in metro Melbourne and across regional Victoria are providing these jobs. We have seen the lowest unemployment rate in a generation and indeed the lowest regional unemployment rate in a generation, all of which is helped by the fact that this government has actually reduced the regional payroll tax rate not once but several times so that it is now a quarter of what it was under those opposite, when we saw regional unemployment go up. Under the Liberal–National government regional unemployment in this state went up. It is now lower than it has been for generations. It is now lower statewide, 2 percentage points lower than the rate that those opposite set. It is a very important thing when you are talking about the economy to talk about not the hypothetical in the budget papers but how the economy is impacting everyday Victorians. It is those jobs. Whether it is the start-out jobs in places like hospitality and retail or whether it is the big construction jobs that this government is funding through its major projects, right across the state we have seen business invest in Victoria.

We have seen, as I spoke about yesterday, medical research and innovation. You might find that boring, Mr Welch, but I think a lot of Victorians are actually very excited about the fact that Victoria is one of the three leading centres for medical innovation and research in the world. I know Monash University is excited. It is one of the reasons why they are so keen to see what they see as not just a nice-to-have but a critical-to-have Suburban Rail Loop. Monash University and the precincts around it recognise the importance of governments who invest in these sorts of projects, because they know that with Labor you have projects that actually help to build the state of Victoria rather than send it backwards, which is exactly what happened with those opposite – they sent Victoria backwards. They did it in the 1990s and they did it in the 2010s. They have got no plans and no vision. They are too obsessed with fighting each other in court, being summoned to court, which we are going to see next week when fearless John Pesutto –

Joe McCracken: On a point of order, President, as much as I was enjoying this rant, it is completely irrelevant and nothing to do with the motion. I ask that you draw the member back to the question.

The PRESIDENT: I understand the member has been talking about the Victorian economy, and I rule that in. But I think the member was straying towards the end there, so I call him back to the motion.

Michael GALEA: Thank you, President. Indeed I note that even many members opposite quietly recognise the importance of delivering a strong economy for Victorians. You would certainly not know it, anyone watching the rabble over there on the other side of the chamber, from their pronouncements in this place, but a strong economy for Victorians is of critical importance. It is even otherwise good members, such as the member for Narracan, who did a bizarre and grubby political attack on the member for Pakenham yesterday. The member for Pakenham today is doing –

David Davis: On a point of order, President, this is a narrow documents motion. An attack on the member for Narracan is well beyond the purview of the motion.

The PRESIDENT: I call the member back to the motion.

Michael GALEA: Anyway, he can explain why he did that.

David Davis: On a new point of order, President, he is heading off on another attack on the same member for Narracan.

The PRESIDENT: It is a new point of order, and the time has expired for the debate.

Motion agreed to.