Thursday, 6 February 2025

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:03): (1399) This state is at a crossroads as services fail, as food bank queues grow, as spending cuts are made, as crime rises and as state debt grows and grows to the point where once again our state’s credit rating is under threat. And I say ‘once again’ because Victorians, as most Victorians know, have been here before – a failed state Labor government bankrupting this state, driving business into the ground and overseeing the most rapid fall in living standards in the state’s history. In the Cain–Kirner years we were quite literally the laughing-stock of the nation. I remember a joke from the time: what is the capital of Victoria? Punch line: about 2 cents. And I remember the comedy show Fast Forward or The D Generation doing a skit with the Labor Premier in a polka dot dress desperately busking for money. We were humiliated, we were bankrupt, we were lost. Those of us around at the time all saw the pain this state went through to right the ship, to slowly return pride to the state. It took vision, it took courage. It was not plain sailing, but it succeeded, and one thing was certain: the solution did not reside in the party that had caused the crisis. The solution resided in the Liberal Party.

Sadly, the thing most Victorians thought could never happen again is happening again. We are back in the days of the death spiral of the Cain–Kirner years. All the signposts are there. In 1990 the collapse of the Pyramid Building Society and the collapse of Tricontinental were monumental events. They were disasters for the people of this state, in many cases personal life-changing disasters. In 2025 it is our generation facing disaster. We now face our generation’s Tricontinental moment, our generation’s collapse of Pyramid moment, our generation’s loss of state credit rating moment. It is that serious. And this generation’s moment is the Suburban Rail Loop. The commitment to and the lack of funding for the Suburban Rail Loop will ruin this state. To put all the state’s money into one single project will destroy lives. The bloody-minded determination to continue with it, to sign contracts regardless of the almost certain risk of costs beyond the current pseudo budget of $34 billion, is every bit as reckless and negligent as the Cain–Kirner financial negligence in 1990.

The action I seek from the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop is to commit to a full financial review of the SRL project, inclusive of updated project costings, intended tax capture methodology and contingencies in the event federal funding is not provided as budgeted. Anything less is to repeat history. Anything less is to condemn this generation of Victorians to the economic catastrophe that only Labor governments deliver. We have reached our Tricontinental moment.