Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Motions

Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:43): I am pleased to rise on what is an important motion, 1071. I move:

That this house:

(1) notes that the Allan Labor government’s new emergency services tax, implemented from 1 July 2025, is listed on the 2025–26 municipal rates notices currently being received by Victorian home owners and businesses, is a tax on households;

(2) further notes that the state government’s emergency services tax:

(a) will hit many Victorian families and small businesses hard during a cost-of-living crisis marked by increased state government taxation, charges and rising energy costs;

(b) will impact harshly in Melbourne and country Victoria;

(c) sharply targets agriculture and primary production with higher charges;

(d) harshly impacts small businesses with a new tax on top of already surging taxes;

(e) will place pressure on municipalities adding to budgetary challenges and collection difficulties in an environment where council taxes are tightly rate capped, but the state government household tax increase is not capped;

(f) will impact families on fixed incomes more sharply; and

(g) in some cases, makes up more than one half of the total bill posted to the household or business by the local council.

I am just going to talk carefully through these, but for the community to understand, the state government, just before the end of the financial year, passed the new emergency services tax. It is a badly named tax; it is really not about emergency services. Yes, it will fund emergency services, but most of them were already funded. There was a fire services levy, but then the bulk of many of the emergency services was funded from consolidated revenue – from the main bucket of money that the state uses to fund all of its services, whether they be health or roads or whatever. What this new source of money will do is fund the emergency services, but the money that the state government has put to those services previously will be pulled back into the central budget. That is the truth of what is happening here. It is a pea and thimble trick. There is not more emergency services funding provided – there is not. There is a rejigging of the funding and an ability for the government to claw back money and deal with its huge budgetary problems.

In essence, every single rate notice in Victoria has got a new and large levy on it. People are going to their letterbox, opening their council rate notice and getting a terrible shock. It is not the council rates that have gone up so much; it is this massive levy that is being paid by every family, every business and every landholder in the state. It is a new tax. It is a property tax. Let us be clear: it is a special tax that has been put on to clobber families and to clobber businesses. And whilst the government claims that it is an emergency services tax, nothing could be further from the truth. They are not more adequately funding emergency services.

A member interjected.

David DAVIS: No, they are not. I am sure Mrs McArthur will have something to say about the fire units in country Victoria, in western Victoria, and the difficulties that they face. They are not being dealt with by this. In fact the state government is pulling back the money which will go into consolidated revenue in effect. It is just a circle that is occurring here, enabling the state government to take more tax out of the community. They are being clobbered with this significant tax.

It will hit businesses too. All of those small shops on the high streets and all of those small factories – all of them – will have very significant increases in the tax applied to them, and they are going to feel it. They are feeling it. They are telling us now. Many of the members of this chamber have people coming into their offices saying, ‘My goodness, this is actually a very, very large tax.’ It is a shock when people open the envelope with their council rates. The council rate is on the top and down the bottom is the state government’s so-called emergency services tax. It replaces the fire services levy. The fire services levy was a modest levy. This is a much larger levy – a new tax that is being applied to every household, every business, every piece of land in Victoria.

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

David DAVIS: We have actually said we will. Yes, we have. That is what we have said. We have said that does need to be repealed. We have said that it is actually a nasty hit on the community and it is a nasty hit on families, and yes, it needs to be gotten rid of. It is a bad tax. It is a tax that hurts families. I am interested in whether you are going to keep hitting families across Southern Metropolitan Region. In our region people are being hit quite hard by this tax. They can feel it. I tell you what, it is not at all popular and nor is any Labor member who stands up and says, ‘I am in favour of this tax.’ No-one is thinking this is a good tax.

I want to pick up the context of where we are. We have got a massive cost-of-living crisis, and we have got 63 new and expanded taxes under this government – a massive increase in taxation under the Allan Labor government and the Andrews Labor government. They have been in power for almost 11 years now – 11 long years, 11 dark years – 11 high-tax years, as every year there is a new sequence of taxes, and this is a new tax that is being applied. Those taxes are hurting. They are making it more difficult for the community. There are rising costs more generally, and energy costs are one of those. Far from energy costs going down under Labor, they are going up, up, up, and people, families and businesses are all being hit hard.

The context of this new tax is massively rising state government tax, massively rising energy costs and massive increases in the cost of living for each and every family, and piled on top of that is Jacinta Allan’s household tax, which is what this is. It is a special tax on every single household and every single business in the state. It is a nasty tax; it is a hurtful tax. It is a tax that will make it harder, and it hits in the country and it hits in the city. Wherever you are in Victoria, you are being clobbered by this new and impactful tax. Country Victoria is reeling at the moment. There are really challenging conditions in terms of the dryness of parts of the state. There are really challenging conditions in terms of the ability of farmers to make a living, and they are under attack, I might say, from the government on some of its powerline policies and so forth as well. But country Victoria feels this very much, and it is very clear that fertile agricultural land has been targeted by this tax for very significant increases. They are not modest increases from the old fire services levy; they are very big increases, and that is actually hitting country Victoria very, very sharply.

I also want to pick up the issue with councils. Councils are being forced to wear this. It is true there was a fire services levy on rates notices, but it was a much more modest tax.

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

David DAVIS: This is a massive increase that you are putting on. I brought up with the Treasurer here in this chamber a massive increase in the fee that a Whittlesea-based business was being clobbered with. I will talk through the Chair. I am being provoked here, and I want to come back to the example that has been elicited from me by the interjection. I want to point out that in that Whittlesea-based business that I raised with the Treasurer, more than a third of the bill is now the emergency services levy. It has gone up 60-odd per cent in that particular case, so that is a huge increase.

Ryan Batchelor: Are you getting rid of it all?

David DAVIS: I am sure, because I actually had the forms in front of me, and I raised it directly with the Treasurer. She did not have a satisfactory answer, but I actually had the forms. I had the old forms and the new forms, and it is clear that there is a huge increase in the charge.

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

David DAVIS: I have been very clear: we do not agree with this charge. We think it is wrong. We think it is hitting families, and we think it is hitting businesses. We have said we are going to get rid of it. That is what we have said, and you can understand why, because of the impact that it is having on so many families and businesses. For families who are on fixed incomes – I have been talking to a number of pensioners; I have been talking to a number of people who are on retirement incomes of various types, but they are fixed – these are massively rising costs. They own their own home, and good on them. They have saved and they have scrimped; they have worked hard for their whole lives, and they have retired. Now those pensioners in many cases are being hit very hard by these big increases. Every dollar that comes through on the rate bill from the state government is a special present from Jacinta Allan: you will pay, and we are going to take it out of your fixed income. That is what they are doing, and that is a direct hit on the living standard of those people on fixed incomes.

It is wrong, it is nasty and this is what Jacinta Allan is about. She has been doing this all the way through this period, as part of the government that has done it, with Tim Pallas at first and Daniel Andrews. They have been there for almost 11 years now. Taxes have gone up, charges have gone up, families have been hit, businesses have been hit, and this is the coup de grâce on top of it all – another big hit on families; $3 billion over four years. It is a very significant hit on the bottom line of very many Victorians. As I said, in some cases the share of the bill of these charges is very large; the fixed charge part of it is quite large. Councils are having to put out a rate notice with their small component and then a large component from the state government. They are wearing some of the odium of this, that is true, and that is not quite fair, because they are not the levier of this particular charge. I think that Victorians know that this is not the right way to go. Victorians know that these costs are impacting. They know that it is not the right way to clobber households and so forth. The state government needs to tighten up. It needs to stop its waste. We have seen more than $50 billion of cost overruns in projects. This is not the cost of the project, this is the cost of the overrun on the project: more than $50 billion – $50,000 million – over the government’s term in cost overruns on projects. That is because of the state government’s incompetence, its failure to control project costs and its hopeless cost containment measures.

I can go through the list, as people know I have done in this chamber before. Look at the Metro, which started south of $9 billion – it is now north of $15 billion. We will find out eventually what it actually costs, but it is a huge increase. It is a project that might be a good project at one number, and then you have got this huge surge in cost because of the state government’s model of commissioning these projects and its failure to control cost. Or look at the North East Link, which started, again, well south of $10 billion but is now north of $26 billion – $26,000 million. This is why the state government is so desperate for money – because it has had all these cost blowouts and it has not been able to contain the costs on its projects. I say the state government is culpable, and sadly, with the taxes and charges, families and businesses are paying the price of Labor. They are paying the price of an incompetent government that cannot manage money, an incompetent government that cannot manage the state’s finances and an incompetent government that cannot manage projects, and the consequence of that is families are being hit and hit and hit again by large cost increases, and this tax is the most recent of these large cost increases.

Families, I think, are very entitled to be angry with this government and to say, ‘Our standard of living is being hit, our standard of living is being reduced.’ Businesses are entitled to be angry and to say, ‘Our costs are being hit. It is much harder for us to compete internationally, it is much harder for us to bring products to market and it is much harder for us to sell products, because the state government has put all of these additional charges onto us’ – including this new one on top of the other 62 charges. These charges – these increased taxes, these expanded taxes, these expanded charges – that have been put on are having a big effect.

It is interesting. In the chamber yesterday I quoted the former head of the ANZ bank, and he said Victoria was the toughest place in Australia to do business. Well, that is true, and so many businesspeople say that. They point out the difficulty of doing business here. They point out the costs and they point out the additional taxes, the additional charges and the high level of regulation. And the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, to their credit, with their work on regulation very much made the case that Victoria has the worst regulatory approach of all the states and territories in Australia and that those regulatory costs are very significant for business. That is part of the context in which these new taxes and new charges are being applied. I think the community is entitled to be very angry, I think councils are entitled to be angry and I think that families and businesses have had enough of this government.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:58): In Victoria the taxes are too damn high, and I think that pretty much everyone knows this. Certainly the people in my area, in Frankston and Cranbourne, know it when they get their rates notice; the farmers know it when they turn up out the front of Parliament; the firefighters union know it; the opposition know it; and I think even the government know it. Victorians have reached the limits of what can be extracted from them through taxation. I think that even the Treasurer knows this. I know that sitting with the government and with the Treasurer at the moment is this Silver review. What I think should have been done with this emergency services levy is that rather than having a new tax the government should have looked for savings in other areas, and I am certain there are lots of savings to be made. In fact that is what I anticipate is in the Silver review – I do not know what is in it yet – and I look forward to reading that when it comes out. But I would say this: the Treasurer, I know, is trying to come up with a response to this review and some sort of plan, and I would urge the government and I would urge the Treasurer to be bold here and to actually, rather than go through things with a magnifying glass, get out the chainsaw and do what is necessary in this state and cut waste from the budget, because as I say and as everyone knows, the taxes are too high. Unlike the opposition, when the government does this – if they do it, if they have the courage to do it, if the Treasurer has the courage to do it, to get out the chainsaw – I will not be criticising the government and asking why they are making these cuts. I will cheer the government on if they do it. I urge the government to do this, to do what is necessary.

The government is too big. The government is funded by taxes. There is so much waste in Victoria. I cannot believe when the government says we cannot cut expenditure. No-one believes that there is not waste that cannot be eliminated, that there are not unnecessary things that the government does. I have said for ages now one of the most important and primary functions of the state is protecting people from violence. The government has gotten so big that it cannot even focus on the primary functions of the state and manage them well. I say what the government should do is stop all these extraneous things and start focusing on the real basic stuff and get that right before they do anything else.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (11:01): I am very pleased to rise to speak on Mr Davis’s motion about the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund. I want to start just using a little rubric that Mr Davis mentioned in his analysis of what is happening with this new fund. He said it is impacting on metropolitan Melbourne and it is impacting on regional Victoria. I want to use that to draw a comparison to something else that had pretty significant impacts on metropolitan Melbourne and on regional Victoria, and that is the October 2022 flooding event – 81 per cent of the local government areas in Victoria were impacted by a flooding event that was the worst in the state’s history.

This chamber asked the Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee to do a pretty in-depth response and inquiry into that flooding event. As a member of that committee I was very pleased to spend time listening to communities across the state, here in metropolitan Melbourne and also across regional Victoria, about the impact that that flooding event had on their communities. What they told us was that it was devastating, that it was a devastating impact that the flooding event had on them, their livelihoods and their businesses. The universal cry that we heard from them out of that inquiry, the universal theme, was the gratitude that they had for the SES volunteers who came out and sandbagged their homes, who helped protect the levees, who did everything they could to help those communities in what was the worst flooding event in Victoria’s history not three years ago.

That inquiry, having travelled the state, heard that evidence. What did that inquiry recommend? It recommended a lot of things – a nearly 500-page report the Environment and Planning Committee of this chamber tabled. Recommendation 49 from that inquiry is:

That the Victorian government increase funding for training of volunteers to boost the capacity of State Emergency Service units in the Shepparton and Echuca and Moama Search and Rescue squads to respond during emergencies.

If people go and look at that report and look at the extracts of proceedings at the back of that report, they will not find any dissent from the members of the committee to that report and to that recommendation.

More recently, the Environment and Planning Committee has done an inquiry into the resilience of our built environment to climate change. I will not go into that in detail other than to say that the evidence that we heard from climate scientists about the changing weather patterns in the state of Victoria should make us concerned about the increased frequency and severity of natural disasters in this state. Our temperatures are increasing. The mean average temperatures are increasing and we are having hotter summers. We are having longer bushfire seasons. This year’s bushfire season has been brought forward a month from its normal start date. The end date has not been brought forward, but the start date has been brought forward. We know that the storm events that we are seeing with increasing frequency across Melbourne are being driven, according to the evidence that we received in our committee, by the changes in the climate here in Victoria.

With that comes increased frequency of natural disasters, and what the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund does is increase funding to the agencies that support us during those natural disasters – increase funding to the Victoria State Emergency Service, which is the primary agency responsible for responding to flooding events and to storm events. Just as the former fire services levy was a recommendation by and arose out of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, we have a significant piece of work done by the –

David Davis interjected.

Ryan BATCHELOR: No, I am not, Mr Davis – just listen. What we saw from the detailed inquiry into that flooding event was that we needed to increase funding to the SES. What did the government’s response to the report into the flooding event do? It detailed the $250 million investment in additional support to the Victoria State Emergency Services and to the CFA that is coming as a result of the additional funding that is coming as a result of the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund. That is what the government is doing – it is responding to the changes in our climate. It is responding to the concerns of our communities, who want to make sure that the emergency services are there for them when they need them. And I have got to say that this government is there for the emergency services volunteers when they need it.

That stands in stark contrast to those opposite, because what they want to do, what the Liberal Party wants to do, in the words of Mr Davis earlier in this debate about this additional funding, about this levy and its additional funding, the fund and its funding, is, and I quote Mr Davis, ‘We are going to get rid of it.’ All of the funding that has been made available to support our emergency services is going to be abolished by the Liberal Party, because when they say ‘scrap the tax’, what they mean is cut the funding. ‘Scrap the tax’ means cut the funding, because there is not a magic pudding here. There is not a magic pudding that allows the Liberal Party to all of a sudden magically find the close to $6 billion over a term of government, about $4.6 billion over the rest of the forward estimates, to fund support for emergency services in this state.

When they say ‘scrap the tax’, they mean cut the funding, and they have got form because they did it the last time they were in government. They cut funding to the CFA the last time they were in government, and what they are telling us now – Mr Davis, in this chamber just now – ‘We’re going to get rid of it.’ If you get rid of the levy, you get rid of the funds that it provides. That means you get rid of the support that is being provided to our CFA volunteers. That means you get rid of the additional support that is going to our emergency services volunteers. That is what their plan is. Their plan to scrap the tax is a plan to cut the funding. It is going to leave Victorian communities vulnerable to the increasing natural disasters that we know are here. It is not that they are coming, it is not that the climate change is something that we need to get ready for in the future – the changes to our climate are occurring now. Our summers are hotter, the bushfire season is longer, winter storms are more extreme because of the changing climate. And what we have from those opposite is hypocrisy, because when it comes to supporting our emergency services volunteers, hypocrisy, thy name is Liberal.

Out in their communities, the Liberal members are willing to go out and talk about how great our volunteers are. Recently we had Mrs McArthur get dressed up in orange and post a little video about Wear Orange Wednesday to support the SES. She said in January that she wanted to say a huge thankyou to all the volunteers of the CFA, the SES and relief centres that had given up their time to protect the people and properties of western Victoria. We saw Ms Bath say, in August:

Whether it’s storms or floods, road rescues or supporting other emergency services during crisis, their professionalism, courage and commitment are nothing short of extraordinary.

Mr Davis earlier on talked about southern metropolitan Melbourne, which has been hit pretty hard by storms recently. We had the member for Sandringham say:

Thank you to the incredible volunteers from the SES Moorabbin Unit who are working night and day to help those who need it.

When our community needs help, they are there for us – in any conditions.

My response to that, to the SES volunteers across our state, is that the Liberal Party is not there for you. The Liberal Party is not there for you, because they want to cut the funding that comes to support your activities, because when they say ‘scrap the tax’ they mean cut the funds, and they have not detailed anywhere how they are going to do anything other than cut this, than scrap the tax. The hypocrisy that we see from members of the Liberal Party in this debate is breathtaking, because what we see is that in here they will get up – Mr Davis and I am sure others – and bloviate until they are red in the face about the impact of the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund, and then, just like the hypocrites they are, they will go out and pat our emergency services volunteers on the back. Unless they support our volunteers and support this fund, they are demonstrating that they are the hypocrites they are.

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (11:11): I rise to support Mr Davis’s motion and to speak on the critical issue that affects every Victorian household and business – the cost of government. We have heard the term ‘cost-of-living crisis’ tossed around for years, particularly in the context of taxes, housing affordability, energy bills and inflation. But let me tell you something: what we are truly facing in Victoria is not a cost-of-living crisis, it is a cost-of-government crisis. And the new emergency services tax, as highlighted by Mr Davis’s motion, is just the latest example of the government’s failure to control spending, driving up costs for everyone. The government likes to blame rising prices on external factors – the weather, global markets, even wars or, in the case of the most recent tax hikes, the supposed need to fund essential services. But let us be clear: prices do not rise by magic, they rise because of decisions made here, right here in this Parliament. Every time the government imposes a new tax, adds more regulation or mismanages spending, it compounds the financial burden on every Victorian. This emergency services tax is no exception.

Take a moment to think about the real cost of government here. The Allan Labor government has once again turned to the taxpayer to solve its own fiscal problems. This emergency services tax, set to appear on municipal rates notices from 1 July 2025, is a direct consequence of Labor’s budget mismanagement. While the government claims that the tax is necessary to fund emergency services, the reality is that it is simply another attempt to cover up their financial missteps. And it does not stop there. As this motion points out, the tax is going to hit households, small businesses and especially farmers, who face so many other challenges at this time. This is not just another levy; it is a tax on struggling families and businesses, many of whom are already dealing with higher energy costs, increased taxes and inflation.

The question must be asked: why are Victorians being asked to foot the bill for a government that has failed to control spending? The cost of government is what drives inflation, and inflation is what drives the so-called cost of living. The $2 billion patch-up job for a broken budget does not address the fundamental problem – government spending that is out of control. The emergency services tax is just the latest in a long line of taxes and levies introduced by this government to try and balance the books – over 60 of them, over 60 taxes, new or increased – in this state. But this tax, as we all know, is not just about funding the CFA or the SES. Rather, it is about filling the Treasury’s coffers to pay for the government’s inefficiency. To make matters worse, there is no guarantee that a single cent of this tax will even make it to the volunteers who rely on adequate funding to do their jobs. In fact with $165 million in cuts to the CFA and Fire Rescue Victoria budgets this seems to be less about funding emergency services and more about shoring up Labor’s bottom line.

Let us also take a look at the broader picture. The cost of government does not just show up in the form of taxes like the emergency services levy. It is in housing costs, where stamp duty and excessive regulations drive up prices and stifle development. It is in energy prices, where a rushed, poorly planned transition to net zero is causing bills to skyrocket – let alone the impact on rural Victoria, where you want renewable energy zones and transmission lines, absolutely decimating prime farming land but also the environment. Do not talk about how you care about the environment because you clearly do not. It is in construction costs as well, where union deals and government-imposed red tape make projects more expensive and delayed. What we are seeing is a pattern: government spending causes inflation, and inflation makes everything more expensive for everyday Victorians. The emergency services tax fits squarely into this pattern. It is an example of the government’s inability to address its budget crisis without making Victorians pay for it. It does not stop with farmers or businesses. This tax will hit every household across Victoria, including those on fixed incomes, as Mr Davis has outlined, who will be the hardest hit by this extra burden. As Mr Davis highlighted, in some cases this tax will account for more than half of a family’s total council bill. This is not just an inconvenience, it will be the last financial straw for many. I have councils in my electorate where they already had a 40 per cent increase in arrears before this tax was introduced. Now with the drought across rural Victoria they have no hope of paying their rates, let alone this tax.

Furthermore, the municipalities that are being tasked with collecting this tax are facing their own financial pressures. Local councils are already struggling with rate caps and budget constraints, yet they are now being asked to act as the unpaid tax collectors, the debt collectors for a government levy they did not design and have no control over. This is classic cost shifting on steroids. This is the cost of government once again being offloaded onto local communities, forcing them to absorb the administrative burden and collect bad debts, all at the expense of local services. I want to ask the Labor government and those on the other side of this chamber: are you going to be standing by the local municipalities that have to claim somebody’s house because they cannot pay their rates and this levy – this levy you are going to extract out of local government rates whether the ratepayer pays it or not? This is the cost of government once again being offloaded onto local communities. Growing arrears caused by these hikes will see councils lose out on their own revenue. Surely the most important thing, the most important role of government, is to keep the citizens safe.

This government, as we know from everything that is happening at this moment at this time in this state, is failing dismally to keep people safe, but their solution to keeping people safe is to apply another tax. Victorians are being taxed now to keep themselves safe. Surely that is the core responsibility of government: to keep people safe. You are failing on all fronts and now you want to tax people to actually keep them safe. It is actually criminal what you are doing.

In conclusion, the emergency services tax is not just another levy. It is a clear example of the cost-of-government crisis we face here in Victoria. It is the latest in a long line of tax grabs from a government that has lost control of its spending, and once again the burden is falling squarely on the shoulders of every Victorian. The Liberals and Nationals have made it crystal clear: we will scrap this unjust tax, reinstate the fire services property levy and ensure that emergency services funding comes from a well-managed state budget, not from the already stretched pockets of struggling families. This is not a cost-of-living crisis, it is a cost-of-government crisis. But more than that, it has become a cost-of-Labor crisis. It is time for this government to take full responsibility for its mismanagement, stop shifting the burden onto taxpayers and put an end to this endless cycle.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (11:21): I rise to speak on Mr Davis’s motion. The Greens will not be supporting the motion, as we believe in the importance of stable and secure funding for our essential emergency services in the face of the climate crisis. I think Mr Batchelor has well outlined the disasters that this state has experienced and the urgency of the need to be better prepared. I have also spoken to that previously in relation to this matter. What that means is that our emergency services need to be ready to respond and support our communities. However, I did want to take this opportunity to raise concerns about how this levy is being implemented by this government. In particular I want to acknowledge the concerns raised with me by many councils across the state, including in my own electorate, since the levy was passed. The government has made a number of promises, including on the record, in regard to how this levy will be implemented, including the support that they said they would provide to councils. But from what I am hearing from constituents and councils, this is not being honoured. I would also like to note that I have a number of questions on notice to the Treasurer asking for clarification on these matters, and I am still waiting for responses to some of those.

Firstly, while we would have liked to see this levy being collected by the state, we understand the rationale and practical limitations of doing so. We accept that could not be the case, but given that situation, it was incumbent on the state government to ensure strong support, practical and financial, to assist councils with implementing this on behalf of the state government – and rightly so. Councils want assurance about support and reimbursement for costs they encounter as a result of doing work for the government. This government has an extremely poor track record when it comes to shifting costs onto councils. We had a whole inquiry that clearly outlined that that is the case. Some councils are facing an existential threat because of the issue of cost shifting, and I do not really think this government appreciates the seriousness of that.

The cost of operating core government services such as libraries, maternal and child health services, aged care and even recently VicRoads services have been incrementally shifted onto local government to the point that they can no longer take them on. They are having to choose between providing the services that their community needs that they are committed to and having to deal with costs that they are being forced to take on by the state government with no funding to support that. Unsurprisingly, this has created an environment of mistrust, so it is reasonable that councils are seeking assurances that the state government will fully fund both the initial and ongoing costs of the delivery of this levy. In addition to the costs of implementation, there are persistent concerns that councils will have to carry the debt of ratepayers who are unable or unwilling to pay the levy. Many councils I have spoken to have received legal advice that they must pass on a proportion of whatever amount they receive, regardless of what the intention of the ratepayer was.

A ratepayer might say they will pay their rates but they cannot afford to pay the levy. The council collects that amount for the rates, but they are being advised that legally they have to pass on a proportion of that to the state, regardless of the fact that it was only the levy component that was not paid. Rural councils in particular are worried about a high proportion of rates notices that are fully or partially unpaid. We are yet to see whether that will come to bear, but they are rightly concerned about this and want to know what steps will be put in place to ensure that they are not left carrying large amounts of debt that then put further financial pressure on councils. These concerns remain despite the assurances from the Treasurer that they would not be letting councils carry debt. This is an unresolved issue that urgently needs to be addressed.

Primary producers, as we are all aware, continue to be concerned about the rate that they are paying. We were really pleased to successfully negotiate a reprieve for farmers who were drought affected, which included basically the entire electorate of Western Victoria, which had been long drought affected. We were really pleased to have been able to include that as part of the conditions for supporting the levy. We also did welcome the expansion of the exemption to all primary producers for the next 12 months, because whether they are officially drought declared or not, we know that all primary producers are struggling at the moment, and this will be a big adjustment. There does, however, remain ongoing angst in parts of rural Victoria. It is worth noting that the rate applied to different types of properties is directed and set by the Treasurer, not by the legislation that was passed in this Parliament. We continue to urge the government to work with councils and communities to ensure that the rates being set are fairly distributed.

Moreover, the crux of what I am putting on the record here today is that the government needs to better engage with councils in particular and communities in general on the levy. I do not think you would find any argument that we need our emergency services to have stable and adequate funding. It is in all of our interests that this occurs, and as I said, that is why we felt that this levy was an important part of securing that funding for those services. But it is also in everyone’s interests to make it work. If this is the mechanism to fund our emergency services, we need it to work. Everyone needs to come together in good faith, and we particularly need the Labor state government to sit down with councils, to sit down with rural communities, to listen and work together to find a constructive way forward.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:28): I rise to make a contribution on this motion in Mr Davis’s name in regard to the emergency services levy. I am going to talk a little bit about the history of this. I have also had the benefit of listening to a number of contributions in the chamber. I will perhaps start with why some of these reforms were important and remark on Dr Mansfield’s contribution as well. In recent years we have seen the huge impact of climate change, population growth and the frequency and response to emergency incidents in Victoria. We are seeing more floods more often and storms and fires that result in long-term devastation to communities. The effects of climate change mean that we may have less water over time, but the effects of the floods that we are seeing are more severe. Bigger dumps of rain in more concentrated periods of time will often mean that our local drains are not able to cope with the deluge and you will get ponding and increased levels of water. And it can catch people out; these things can happen quickly.

I live in close proximity to the Yarra River. In the last deluge in October 2022, I think it was, I saw in my own community the Yarra River rise to a level which I thought was going to cover one of the quite significant roads, which would have meant that where I live would have been cut off from being able to get out. I note that. It was quite interesting. Large parts of Bulleen around the Yarra were also inundated and over into the back of Ivanhoe in those parklands. Whilst a lot of that is parkland, a lot of those areas are within a flood zone for very good reason, because the Yarra does flood. I note the flood inquiry that was launched did not look at the Yarra, which was very disappointing as it should have. It is a very important river because the Yarra River does swell in times of deluge like that.

I watch all the emergency services notifications and apps to make sure that I can see where the inundation is occurring, because it does affect our roads. We have to be realistic about what is happening in our climate. As I said, the impacts of climate change are incredibly real – more intense floods, more severe storms. That means trees down, damage to properties from trees coming down, winds being quite severe and being whipped up and of course fire. What we did was we listened to our emergency services people who were saying that they needed support to ensure that they have the best equipment that they could have on hand to ensure that they can help Victorians in time of need.

That is why from 1 July 2025, which is now behind us, the essential services levy replaced the fire services property levy. Despite what those opposite say, it is not a new tax. The tax existed before as the fire services property levy, but the application of that tax has changed. There are people who did not pay it before that are now going to be captured by that tax. The reason for that is it is a broader emergency and disaster response. It is similar to other Australian jurisdictions. The dedicated funding ensures our hardworking emergency services workers have the tools and resources they need to do what they need to do when it happens. When we are faced with storms, we need those volunteers to be able to come out, whether it is to remove fallen trees and the like or to help sandbag or whatever it is – fighting fires – we need those volunteers. People say, ‘Oh, well, the people who are impacted, if they are out in the bush they are going to be protecting their own property.’ But as we know, when we see those really severe floods and storms and fires happen we often see many volunteers come from interstate. You will often see the ADF come out and assist as well.

Our emergency services, the way that they are managed is they scale up depending on the severity of the incident whether, like I said, it be fire, flood or storm. It is a bit of a furphy to say, ‘Yes, of course if people are volunteering, they protect their own properties if they are part of a local brigade.’ But, as I said, those who are in the command centres make decisions about where the resources are needed, and that is when they are able to scale up and flex up and bring resources in from other areas as well. There are important exemptions with this tax. If people are in local areas and they do volunteer for some of our emergency services, then they can be exempt. We are always looking for more volunteers. That is something that was talked about in the flood inquiry, that it is quite difficult to recruit and retain volunteers, especially in the SES.

A shout-out to all of our emergency services workers who turn out for Victorians each and every day; they do really important work. The more we can get people to volunteer for these services is obviously critical, because the strength of these services depends on having appropriate levels of staffing or volunteers to be able to staff trucks and turn out and clear trees, do on-water rescues and all the rest of it. It does not matter how many times we tell people not to drive through floodwaters, people do it every time there is a deluge. ‘Do not go out on our waterways when they are swollen,’ but people do it. Even in my own electorate the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Manningham SES regularly do mock rescues because we have the Yarra in Manningham and other river areas as well. They regularly have to rescue people from swollen floodwaters, so they do really important work. I can think of nothing better than supporting those emergency services workers in the work that they do, because they are turning out for Victorians.

Our government made a decision to make sure that we could fund them appropriately. As I said, this tax is funded from a broad base of properties across Victoria. This ensures all Victorians make a fair contribution to our emergency services while keeping the impost as low as possible for each individual property owner. Previously people who owned farming properties were exempt, but this new iteration of the tax is going to apply to everybody. But as I said earlier, there are exemptions. If people do not want to pay the tax, they can go and volunteer. It is simple. A lot of these people in regional areas may already be volunteers, so they would be able to claim the exemption. It is only fair that this tax applies to Victorians equally, because we are all beneficiaries of this service.

Those opposite hate the word ‘tax’. They double down on the word ‘tax’. I heard Mr Batchelor’s contribution about how the Liberals have said that they would scrap this tax, which begs the question: how would they pay? How would they fund our emergency services and the important work that they do? There is no answer to that. All they do is go, ‘We hate tax.’ Not every Victorian hates taxes, because taxes fund our public schools, they fund our public hospitals and they make sure we have got roads to drive on and all the rest of it. If you keep doubling down on taxes and spreading that rhetoric, we will not have government services. I know what those opposite want. They actually do not want any government services. They want their rich mates to come out and provide services at a cost. That would mean you would have wealth inequality in our community and you would also have inequality of access to services. That is what we do not want. We want all Victorians to have the services that they need when they need to access them. Again, this goes back to what the emergency services and volunteers (ESV) levy is about. It is about making sure that this tax is applicable to all Victorians who are eligible to pay it under the rules and that this funds our vital emergency services work.

As I said, at the heart of the reform is making sure that the funding is secure. It was what the bushfire royal commission recommended we do for fire services and what thousands of VICSES members have been asking us for. I have visited a number of SES volunteer brigades in my own electorate, and they tell me all the time, ‘We need up-to-date and effective equipment to make sure we can do our work when we need to do it.’ I support our volunteers, and as I said before, I will give a shout-out to our hardworking volunteers and emergency services workers, who turn out for Victorians each and every time there is an emergency or a disaster. Every dollar raised by the ESV tax will go towards vital life-saving equipment, vehicles, staff, training for volunteers, community education and recovery support for when Victorians need it the most. That is in stark contrast to the contributions that we have heard from those opposite about this. It is a lie to talk about government blowouts and all the rest of it. It is just the rhetoric that they have. It is their go-to rhetoric when they do not have any facts at their fingertips. We heard earlier today in this chamber about the complete debacle that was the opposition, the worst opposition in history, in their stance and take on machetes. Again, they are very low on policy, very low on ideas. They have no alternative to this. But what we are doing is making sure that our hardworking VICSES volunteers and all of our other very important volunteers have the funding that they need to do the vital life-saving work they do. We will not be supporting this motion.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (11:38): The question on everyone’s minds is: why does the government hate farmers so much? Why, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, has it chosen to slug the very people that put food on our table and clothes on our backs? Why has it decided that the men and women who rise before dawn to feed Victoria should now be treated as the cash cow of Spring Street? Instead of backing the bush, the government is bleeding it dry. In my electorate of Western Victoria the so-called emergency services tax has landed with a thud. Families from Ararat to Bacchus Marsh are opening their rates notices and seeing for the first time a separate state government tax sitting alongside their council rates. Farmers cannot pass these costs on. Every extra dollar dragged out of regional Victoria by this government is a dollar that is not spent in regional communities. It goes to Melbourne to be spent on Melbourne projects, and it all gets wasted on cost blowouts like the Metro Tunnel, over $13 billion; like the North East Link, over $16 billion, and the Auditor-General had a lot to say about that; and like the West Gate Tunnel, initially priced at $5.5 billion – now the cost is closer to $10 billion. People in regional Victoria are lucky to get a road fixed. Labor’s message to regional Victoria is clear: pay up, shut up and do not expect a thing in return.

But we cannot ignore the toll this is taking on people’s mental health. In regional communities across my electorate I hear the same story over and over. People are stressed. They are anxious. They are worn down. They dread opening the next bill. They feel like no matter how hard they work they are failing to get further ahead. When a farmer outside Ararat sees another tax on their rates notice, this is not just a number on a page, it is another weight on their shoulders. When families in Ballarat or Maryborough talk about skipping meals or cutting back on heating, it is not just financial pressure, it is mental pressure. We have got a government that have broken the state budget, they have broken the confidence of the Victorian economy, and now they seek to break the spirit of regional Victoria. We know that regional Victoria has fewer local mental health services than those in the city have. Not one new local was announced in the Grampians region in the last round of announcements. This tax makes it worse. It fuels despair in communities already under pressure, and it shows just how out of touch this government has become.

But we cannot forget that in Western Victoria, in my electorate, emergency services do not just mean paid departmental employees, they also mean our amazing volunteers. In every corner of our region the CFA and the SES are the backbone of local safety. They are the mums and dads in Ballarat, farmers in Ararat, shopkeepers in Maryborough, tradies in Bacchus Marsh, locals who drop everything in the middle of milking, in the middle of dinner, in the middle of the night to protect lives and property. Yet this government now tells those same volunteers and their communities that for the privilege of volunteering they need to pay even more tax. The people who give their free time are now asked to pay twice – once with their service and once with their wallet. You cannot put a price on courage, but Labor are certainly trying to tax it. This tax will not buy any more CFA volunteers. It will not put more SES members on the ground. All it does is erode goodwill in the community where service comes from the heart.

This government has the gall to cap council rates, but it will not cap its own taxes. Councils across my electorate are bound by the rate cap, forced to justify every single cent they extract from ratepayers, and rightly so. But the state government does not bind itself to that same standard. The result? Councils are forced to be the unwilling tax collectors of the state. They are the ones posting out the notices. They are the ones copping the phone calls. They are the ones wearing the anger from local residents. Councils send the bill, but Labor sends the pain. What is worse, it is regional communities that are disproportionately impacted. The bill might come from the local council, but it is Labor’s hand in your pocket.

We know that this tax is not really about funding emergency services, it is just another attempt to fund Labor’s big black budget hole. The government tells us that it is there to fund emergencies, but we know that that is just not true. Victorians previously funded emergency services through land tax, stamp duty, insurance levies and payroll tax. It is called consolidated revenue. Every Victorian supports our firefighters and first responders, but we were already paying for them without the need for a new tax. This new tax is not about supporting emergency responses, it is about attempting to save the government from a self-induced, self-inflicted emergency.

Over the last decade Labor have introduced or increased dozens of new taxes. Victoria is already the highest taxed state in the country and carries the largest state debt in the country – $200 billion of debt, which equates to $1.2 million in interest repayments every single hour. And what do we get for that – a health system in crisis, crumbling infrastructure and roads, and services stretched to breaking point. This new tax does not fix those failures, it only deepens them.

Why does the government hate farmers so much? Why does it punish volunteers? Why does it raid families already struggling with the cost of living? Western Victoria does not need a new tax. It needs a government that helps households, not punches down on them. It needs a government that is respecting farmers, not robbing them. It needs a government that values the CFA and SES volunteers, not taxing them into oblivion. And it needs a government that understands that financial pressure is also mental pressure, that taxing people into despair is no way to govern. This tax must be scrapped. We have committed on this side of the chamber to do that, because we know that it is the right thing to do. If this government will not fight the fire of the cost-of-living crisis burning through family budgets in this state, the least it can do is stop pouring petrol on it by inflicting another tax on Victorians at a time when they can least afford it. Show some compassion, show some care, show that you actually listen to regional Victorians and scrap this tax.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (11:45): I rise to oppose this motion. I want to start off by acknowledging farmers across Victoria. It is, as many of the speakers so far in this debate have acknowledged, a difficult game. It has been for many decades, and it is getting more difficult, particularly when we see the impacts of droughts over the last 12 or 18 months in Victoria and indeed around much of Australia. In light of that, I absolutely support the decision that was made not to increase the rate on agricultural primary producers when the value is being set, as occurs on an annual basis.

The Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund has been established in a way where it looks at property values, which I think is a good way to implement it. The issue for farmers is they can have high asset values but obviously have years where cash flow is severely restricted or very minimal. Again, I support the decision that has been made not to raise the rate for primary producers this year. I also know it has been a difficult year for volunteers with a lot of this conversation going around and going through needing to apply for rebates for the first time.

I do think it is important to face up to the bigger conversations that we need to have and why we need to have these conversations. Climate change absolutely underpins the need for this legislation that came through this year. We know that farmers are incredibly hit by it, but all of us are hit by it. We are on an incredibly dry continent as it stands, with only the perimeter of the nation effectively being able to be farmed, with increased flooding and increased peak temperature days impacting ambient soil temperatures, killing plants and decreasing the productivity of livestock, and all this with a sea level rise. We are seeing coastal inundation with increased flooding and increased water coming down our rivers and into our areas of housing and indeed agricultural paddocks and whatnot impacting livestock.

We are seeing more and more pressures on the homes, the businesses and the infrastructure in all of those spaces. 2019–20 was the most catastrophic event we have seen. Unfortunately, all the science tells us it is only going to get worse. We need to be able to, for our emergency services, provide them with the best possible equipment to save lives and protect property. I absolutely acknowledge that CFA volunteers are there on the front line defending their neighbours’ properties and defending regional and rural towns. I want to acknowledge SES volunteers are also doing that throughout the state, as we have seen greater impacts from wind events, fires, floods and of course the continual impacts of stronger and stronger droughts. So it is important that our volunteers are equipped with the equipment to deal with this. The reality we have got to face is that with these increasing impacts, there are increasing costs and increasing difficulties in dealing with the immediacy of fires, floods, windstorm events et cetera. There is also the rebuild – the build back – which can take significant time, particularly when we are building back better to ensure that our public and private infrastructure is equipped for future events, which, as I have just said, are getting worse.

Those costs are flowing onto all of us in insurance. We saw insurance up 16.5 per cent last year – as I said before, from 2019–20 – when effectively the Top End of Australia was in floods and New South Wales and Victoria were under ferocious fires. The costs impacting us all – to deal with it but then respond, and where we are able to, build back and build back better – are increasing. I think we absolutely have to acknowledge that as a starting point. As the baked-in increases in the amount of moisture in our atmosphere and the baked-in increases out of our ambient soil temperatures are having greater and greater impacts, that is something we all have to deal with. In some years it will be worse than others, but year on year it is going to be worse and worse.

That is why I think the cost-of-living measures that the Labor government has made are so important to communities, particularly regional and rural communities. We are investing in early education in those early years, those formative years of a child’s brain development, getting parents back into the workforce and getting them working in their communities that need a local workforce to keep towns ticking. That early education in our schools – the infrastructure that we have made and investments in primary schools and secondary colleges, ensuring that from three years old onwards our kids are getting a world-class education – sets up not only that family to be back in the workforce but that child to go on and be an incredibly productive participant in our economy. We should want our state, all our regional towns and our rural towns, to have dynamic, thriving, resilient economies, and that is what education does for us.

The investments we have made in health to ensure that people can age in place with their communities, can access pharmacies and can get virtual EDs are another way of keeping those cost-of-living pressures down, again for regional and rural communities, as is the regional fare cap, which is seeing massive reductions on V/Line trains and bus services from regional Victoria to anywhere around the network. Connecting regional and rural Victorians into education, into health services and to each other is so incredibly important. I am very proud of those cost-of-living measures and what they have meant for communities, what they have meant for families and what they have meant for local economies. And although there are challenges of meeting the workforce needs in our regional and rural towns, I think it is a good problem that we are having demand that we need to meet as opposed to economies that cannot offer jobs. The fact that we are training young people to fill need in local workforces is an incredible positive, as opposed to not having the jobs to put them in. I will leave my contribution there as I have run out of time.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:55): We have just heard a lovely outline of all the wonderful things that the Allan government is doing. We have heard the government members over there talking about their passion and their love for farmers. Meanwhile, right across this state there are rallies, there is frustration and there are trucks and tractors in the streets. Indeed there were trucks and tractors at the bush summit only last week, where we saw the bubbling over of frustration by emergency services volunteers – CFA and SES – and farmers. We heard just before the member talking about trains. Well, my goodness, they are an anomaly at some stages on the Gippsland line. In the last decade they have never met punctuality targets. The only time they met punctuality targets was back in February a couple of years ago when buses replaced the trains.

In relation to education, we hear about the importance of education, yet this government is turning its back on teachers, and teachers are leaving the profession through pure frustration and the loss of appetite to be in our regions, and this government is doing nothing to stop that. We have just heard about bushfires, and the 2019–20 bushfire season was one of the worst on record. Well, we have bushfires in this state – we are one of the most fire-prone states in the world – and what does this government do? It cuts funding. It cuts funding from the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and it cuts funding from Parks Victoria. It is one of the worst neighbours in history. It cannot manage public land management, it has got proliferation of pests and weeds, it is not doing targeted fuel reduction burns and it is not serving these vulnerable communities – the communities that we know and love – in regional Victoria.

The government is talking about the importance of funding our SES and our CFA. It is very, very important to fund, but out of this new emergency services tax, how much is it actually delivering to CFA? Let me give some instruction to those on the opposite benches. Only 20 cents in every dollar collected by the government on this emergency services tax goes to the CFA and goes to the volunteers. They have got machinery, equipment and trucks that are outdated, that are past their use-by date and that certainly could almost have plates on them that are 25 and 30 years old. This is an absolute indictment of this government. It stands there and says, ‘We care about volunteers, we care about the regions,’ yet it is underfunding CFA, it is underfunding the SES and it is giving 20 cents out of every dollar from this new tax grab to the CFA.

Let me consolidate that with some information. The VFBV, the Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria, who are the people who passionately care about our regions, have actually provided some information. It is the 2025–26 forecast funding for the new Victorian emergency services tax, and it clearly states that the percentage of the total tax collected, the forecast funding –

The PRESIDENT: Sorry, Ms Bath, I have to interrupt debate.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.