Wednesday, 13 May 2026

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:07): (2528) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Economic Growth and Jobs. Given his portfolio, you would think that the key concern and consideration he would have had in the budget was exactly that: economic growth. Anyone who understands these matters knows that economic growth is deeply tied to the economy’s ability to generate productivity gains through it. Speaking to business leaders, CEOs and industry leaders, they are a mixture of frustrated by and despairing of the fact that within this budget there was not a single measure that would assist business and assist productivity in order to generate economic growth. We are all well aware of the statistic that over the last two years only two out of 10 jobs generated in Victoria were generated by the private sector. The rest was by the public sector. We are all well aware that our economic growth has practically halved. We are all well aware that we are a deeply uncompetitive state and that we have other states directly calling our businesses to entice them across the border. We all know that we have fallen way behind other states on key industries such as the AI industry and data centres.

We are a deeply uncompetitive state, and yet there was very little, if anything, to give businesses and industry in this state hope that something was going to change. There was no tax relief from land tax and there was no tax relief from payroll tax – two things that are absolutely integral to a business’s ability to deepen its capital and innovate, by which we create productivity growth in this state. We will continue to run as the state with the highest inflation and with the highest unemployment because we cannot grow the economic capacity of the state, because we continue to confiscate capital from those businesses to pay down the ridiculous amounts of debt in this state.

Even in that environment, you may expect, then, the government would put other measures in place – other measures that would encourage economic growth and productivity growth, vehicles such as Breakthrough Victoria or LaunchVic or exercises such as the Avalon air show, all things that would encourage these things. Breakthrough Victoria certainly had its problems, but now there is nothing. There are no tax cuts. There are no special bodies set out to help businesses accrue and develop their capital to produce productivity, which produces economic growth, which produces wealth for the next generation.

The action I seek from the minister is a really simple one, actually: please explain. Please explain to Victorian businesses what measure you have to increase the productivity and the economic growth of this state, so that business conditions can get up from the floor – we are the last-rated state for business in the nation – into a state that is top of the heap once more.