Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Production of documents

Department of Treasury and Finance

Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (09:58): I move:

That this house requires the Leader of the Government, in accordance with standing order 10.01, to table in the Council within three weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution, all briefings provided by the Department of Treasury and Finance to the Treasurer, including formal briefings, advisory documents, background information documents from the date the Treasurer, the Honourable Jaclyn Symes MLC, was sworn into the role of Treasurer to 7 March 2025.

Why is this important? It is important because this was a great opportunity to take stock of where we are financially as a state. There will be important briefings that really do set the scene. You have an incoming Treasurer. It was important for that Treasurer to be briefed and have the scene set and take stock of where we are, but it is also important really as a matter of transparency. This is not an unusual motion in that sense. These documents should be readily available to the chamber.

There is a perception in the community that this government is reckless with our finances, and I think the figures demonstrate that pretty clearly. The business sector in particular want to know that their interests and their ability to thrive in our community are going to be protected and in fact helped to flourish. There is a fear that we may be trying to tax our way into prosperity or trying to borrow our way out of debt. So having clarity around these things is good for the community.

It is also good in another sense for society: it is good as an education to the community of what the mechanics are of this state’s finances. We all have a very vested interested in the mechanics of how we are going to get our way out of this debt.

The community should understand, when choices are being made, what the mechanics of those choices are, because these have material impacts on people’s lives. The Treasury department is not just the government’s department, it is the state’s department, and the community are entitled to know what advice, what counselling and what briefings they are giving so that we know on what basis they are made.

There are some pretty important things to be educated about – for instance, debt management. We have got approximately $30 billion of debt to be raised or rolled over every year for the next 10 years – about $120 billion dollars in debt to be re-raised. A lot of that debt, when it first came out as Treasury bonds, was loaned out at low interest rates – around 3 per cent or in that range. Now 10-year Treasury bonds are at over 5 per cent, so the refinancing of debt is not trivial in the least. In fact as we refinance that debt there is going to be significantly greater interest burden on the state. The advice that we received around debt management is going to be of particular interest because we are in a state that has been warned more than once that our credit rating is in jeopardy. If our credit rating goes down, those interest rates on our bonds go up, and we have got an earth-shattering amount of debt to refinance. So the balance between what we have in the forward estimates for debt, what projects we are doing, what cuts we are going to make – and there will be cuts – how that advice has come through and how those judgements have been reached, is incredibly important to the community.

Over the last 10 years there also has been – and the Treasurer herself has acknowledged this – this creeping exercise in using Treasurer’s advances to paper over shortcomings in planning and execution within government departments. The Treasurer herself has confirmed that this is not a good trend. The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office has confirmed that this is not a good trend and has raised concerns around this also. The concerns are because the need for a Treasurer’s advance, particularly once it has become habitual budget to budget or between budgets, means that there is a systemic problem within government department planning, within government policy, that you are not following the budgetary process appropriately, that there is a breakdown in there somehow that would mean you are going to need these advances habitually. The Treasurer herself has said that she will be looking deeply at Treasurer’s advances. In looking at them there will have to be a diagnosis of why that has happened – why there have been more Treasurer’s advances. It would be very informative for the chamber and for the community to understand why they are occurring, how they are going to be addressed and how you are going to improve the budgetary process, which is in the interests of all.

This is also in the government’s interest; it is clearly in the government’s interest that we have these documents, because of course there are going to be cuts. There are going to be cuts, we would presume, to health, to roads, to schools. There will be departmental amalgamations. There will be drives to, on paper, achieve efficiency. So explaining those cuts to the community, why they have been justified through the Treasury briefings and what the judgements have been in terms of this cut versus that cut, this borrowing versus that cut et cetera, is all going to be very educationally useful.

I support this motion. It is a very sensible; it is a matter of transparency. We should have these documents.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:04): I rise to make a contribution on this motion 922 standing in Mr Davis’s name. Might I say, I note that Mr Davis did not even hang around to talk to this motion – he left the chamber – and I notice that there are a very scant number of Liberals actually sitting on the opposition benches. Unfortunately, it was chucked to Mr Welch – a hospital pass to Mr Welch – at the last minute to stand up and try and get this ridiculous motion over the line.

As is our practice, we do not oppose documents motions. It is our practice in this chamber; we are quite happy to not oppose them. But the bottom line is that this motion is again a frivolous waste of this chamber’s time, because Mr Newbury, the Shadow Treasurer in the other place, has already sought an FOI application for these sorts of documents. Again, it is a frivolous waste of this time; it is wasting precious government resources and parliamentary resources to make public servants go through truckloads of documents. It is a fishing expedition.

I might just talk about what is actually in the motion too, because this is what is being sought. It says, pursuant to standing order 10.1:

… to table in the Council within three weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution, all briefings provided by the Department of Treasury and Finance to the Treasurer …

on what?

including formal briefings, advisory documents, background information …

If that is not a fishing expedition, I do not know what is, because you have not even articulated exactly what it is. So let us get truckloads of paper; let us have a billion boxes for some poor public servant to go through and figure out what is relevant and what is not. You cannot even get a motion right in the house to call for documents and information to be tabled, and that just proves that this is nothing more than a frivolous waste of time. It is a joke. Is this the best that Mr Davis can come up with? He had five weeks to come up with something a lot better than this, and the bottom line is this is a really pathetic attempt at trying again to say, ‘Look, the government’s bad; they’re trying to hide things,’ all the rest of it.

I note Mr Welch’s contribution was all about government debt, government this, government that. But the bottom line is, Mr Welch, I do not know what your proposals are, because again you come in and you attack the government but I do not hear any skerrick of information about what you propose, about what you might do, because we know what the Liberals will do: if you ever got into government, you would cut, cut, cut, cut. You would cut everything. You would start with public education, and you would also then go to public health, because you hate the public. You hate public servants. Let us talk about what Peter Dutton went to the election with. Let us cut. Let us do a ‘department of government efficiency’ and cut the public service. Let us get rid of all diversity, equity and inclusion. I mean, it is just the playbook – the worst examples.

You are bereft of ideas over there. You have had to copy from America, and you got resoundingly rejected. Let us talk about the election result. How many kombi vans, please? Can somebody order a kombi van for the Victorian Liberal Party? Because that is what you need to pull up. How many seats are there? Five, I think, in Victoria; that is it.

Michael Galea interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Six? You are being generous, Mr Galea. But anyway, we need a kombi van to come along and pick you all up, because your politics – your nasty, divisive politics – was resoundingly rejected by the Victorian public. I go back to my earlier comments: I am yet to hear one idea or one suggestion from those opposite – oh, Mr Davis, welcome back. Again, it is your motion. You did not even have the confidence to sit here and listen to the contributions of the government on this matter. Again, I might add for the record – and I have said this before – every time I get up and talk about –

David Davis: President, I have come back into the chamber to seek a point of order on this matter because the member has strayed way, way from a simple documents motion. She was talking about Peter Dutton before. I will just point out clearly that it has got nothing at all to do with the federal government or the federal opposition. She has strayed from what is a narrow documents motion.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Further to the point of order, President, Mr Davis was not in the chamber, so he did not actually hear the context of what I was talking about. The point was I was referring to the lack of ideas from those opposite in regard to this motion and drawing an analogy with his federal colleagues, so it is entirely relevant to the motion.

The PRESIDENT: Ms Terpstra, being the first speaker of the government side, has some latitude.

Sonja TERPSTRA: I have a minute or so left on the clock, but I am yet to hear what those opposite and what Mr Davis might propose that the Victorian public might actually be interested in. As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by a frivolous point of order yet again, the cuts that would come under the Liberal Party if they were ever in government – you would start with public education, because, again, you hate the public.

Let us be honest here. You are all about small government; you are transparent about that. Every time I hear you guys talk publicly about anything, you say, ‘We’re about small government. We’re the party of small business.’ So what you do is you cut government services so that your rich mates can go and profit from them – it is absolutely transparent. Oh, and let us talk about small business. You were so bereft of ideas that when your federal colleagues decided to tell the women of Australia to go back to work, you forgot that they were also supporting the small businesses of Australia and you got resoundingly thumped for it, because all those small business operators who are struggling out there –

David Davis: On a point of order, President, the member has just strayed far, far beyond her purview.

The PRESIDENT: The member’s time has expired.

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:10): I rise to contribute to this debate. Documents motions are an important tool of this Parliament to scrutinise decisions of government to hold governments accountable. Normally, in principle, I am very supportive of documents motions as a way of scrutinising government decision-making, but to be quite frank, given the way the Liberal Party has continuously sought to question and to criticise the new Treasurer in a way that often extends I think far beyond her role in this government, it is impossible for me not to see this motion through a thick veil of misogyny.

I look forward to genuinely scrutinising decisions of this government and of this Treasurer through the budget estimates process and throughout this term of Parliament. I reckon there are going to be a lot of things that we disagree on – let us have that debate. However, instead this Liberal motion seems to me to be an attempt to weaponise processes of Parliament to further their sexist lines of questioning and personal attacks on this Treasurer. If the opposition want to talk about scrutinising government budget decisions, then I will remind them they had that opportunity recently in this Parliament through Greens amendments to ensure that our Public Accounts and Estimates Committee is chaired by someone not from the government themselves, and they voted against it – so there is that. To engage in this way makes a mockery of this important tool that we have established in the Parliament to request and retrieve documents. But I think given the huge scope of what is being requested in this motion, particularly between the Treasurer and her own department, my guess is that this is solely an attempt to further sling mud, an attempt to bring into question the personal competence of the first female Treasurer, prior to her even having the opportunity to deliver her first budget. The gendered nature of this is impossible to miss, and it must be called out. That is what I am doing today.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:12): I rise to speak on Mr Davis’s motion that was moved this morning by Mr Welch in his absence. In a point of order Mr Davis referred to this as a ‘narrow’ motion. Of all the very wideranging motions that we have had in this place, I would say this is perhaps the most wideranging of them all. It is not some narrow motion seeking one or two documents, it is seeking everything that has been briefed to the Treasurer from the Department of Treasury and Finance since she was Treasurer. That is the opposite of narrow, Mr Davis. That is perhaps the most wideranging motion you could say. Indeed as the Treasurer interjected before, why not just live stream her office if that is the sort of information that you are seeking.

It is part of a pattern that we have seen from those opposite, in particular Mr Davis, seeking to undermine and trash at every opportunity the important concept of executive privilege, that being that advice to ministers and advice as part of cabinet processes are confidential, and they are confidential for good reasons – so that those public servants can provide frank and fearless advice. It is an important part of our Westminster system of government. It has been an accepted part since – I forget the exact year – a point in the 19th century in fact, in which the Victorian constitution makes reference to the standing orders at the time of the House of Commons. And just in relation to matters of privilege –

David Davis interjected.

Michael GALEA: What was it, 1856? Thank you. You may have been witness to it when it was brought over here, Mr Davis – no, you were not. The privileges – which were then termed Crown privilege, which we now know as executive privilege – are an important part of the Westminster system. Despite your many and varied attacks, this may just be the most extraordinary of them all, Mr Davis, seeking everything that was briefed to a minister. You know that that is an unreasonable request. You know that it is unreasonable, with such a short window for a response as well, to expect public servants to be able to fulfil that request. The truth is we know that you really do not expect them to. It is just another attempt to throw anything you can out – a fishing expedition, as is your wont. As we know – I am not sure if you actually have consulted with your Shadow Treasurer on this – there is already an FOI request for these documents in place as well.

Maybe, Mr Davis, you want to know a little bit more about how the Treasury role works. I know that you were Shadow Treasurer for a period. Maybe you are keen to learn a bit more about the process, because when you are a treasurer you have to actually come up and face people with the costings for things. You have to come up with a budget, and you have to be accountable to that, and that is exactly what the Treasurer is doing and will be doing in just a couple of weeks time. I make note of Mr Puglielli’s reference to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, which will be undertaking that process. As Mr Puglielli says, that is the appropriate forum to do that – not these frivolous personal attacks on a treasurer, on a fishing exercise because you are all out of ideas yourself. And indeed, if you are going to ask what a treasurer does, maybe one of the things that a treasurer does is have their election costings ready before they go to a press conference to announce their election costings. That might be one example – some free advice that we could give you from this side of the chamber, Mr Davis, because that is one of the many things that a treasurer would do, or indeed in many cases a shadow treasurer.

So again, whilst I note Ms Terpstra’s comments as well that we will not be opposing this motion on the basis that we do not typically oppose short-form documents motions, it is a ridiculous overreach. It is an overreach that Mr Davis knows is ridiculous and no doubt will fuel another vent and display in this place when he rails against the fact if we are in a position where, as I suspect, many of these documents – if not the majority, if not more – will actually be subject to executive privilege. It is an important part of our Westminster system. It is disappointing to see a party which is supposed to represent the conservative traditions of this state and of this place so readily keen to trash those Westminster traditions, but that is exactly what we see in this place today. That is what we see as a pattern of behaviour when it comes to executive privilege, whether it is in committee reports or whether it is in motions in this place and short-form documents motions in particular, and it is a trend that we are seeing that remains unabated. I will leave my comments there, but again, I will finish where I started: this is a ridiculously broad overreach.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:17): This is a narrow documents motion. It seeks a series of briefings that are provided to a new treasurer, a set of documents, a set of briefings that are easily locatable for the department. There is no question the department can do this quickly and expeditiously. It is true that we will FOI these matters, as we would with any treasurer and as we would with a range of different ministers.

Mr Puglielli, through the President, I say to you very clearly: this is not a gendered step in any way. We actually would do this whatever gender the treasurer was and have done so. I FOI-ed many of the briefs for the former Treasurer and will continue to do that, as you would expect with a scrutiny role of this chamber and indeed more generally. But I would say we are actually at a point where the state has serious financial problems. We have massive debt, we have the real issues of the state’s taxation and other competitiveness, and it is important, I think, to understand how the new Treasurer has been briefed with respect to these matters, and that is one of the driving factors behind this particular motion. And I do agree there will be FOIs as well.

Motion agreed to.