Wednesday, 17 June 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:55): I move:

That this house:

(1)   condemns the Premier for a failure of leadership that has left Victoria less safe, less livable, more indebted, and less confident in the integrity of government;

(2)   notes that under the Allan Labor government:

(a) Victoria’s health system is closing beds, cancelling surgeries and struggling to pay its bills, while patients wait too long for ambulances, emergency treatment and elective surgery;

(b) crime has reached its highest level since records began, while 1500 police positions remain unfilled, police stations have been cut, and Labor’s weak bail laws have forced repeated crisis-driven reversals;

(c) alleged CFMEU corruption on Big Build projects has exposed a culture of secrecy, waste and criminal infiltration, at an estimated $15 billion cost to taxpayers;

(d) state debt is forecast to approach $200 billion, with interest repayments exceeding $32 million a day, draining funding from essential services, costing families and businesses more;

(e) the cost of living has worsened under this government addicted to higher taxes, higher charges and political gimmicks;

(3)   further notes that even Labor members of Parliament are now discussing whether the only way to defend Labor’s record is to find someone else to front it;

(4)   believes that Victorians do not need a new salesman for the same failed government, but a change of government; and

(5)   declares that Victoria cannot afford more chaos, cover-ups and excuses from a Premier who will not accept responsibility for Labor’s failures in crime, health, integrity, debt and cost of living.

I move this motion today somewhat reluctantly. Believe it or not, despite being in opposition, we do not always celebrate failure, even failure by our political opponents. But we cannot just stand by and watch this great state being run into the ground by a government that has plainly run out of road. I do not like to be overly personal, but ultimately politics is inescapably about personality, because at its heart it is about leadership, and there has never been a clearer demonstration of the failure of leadership in this state than the extraordinary spectacle Victorians have been forced to watch over the past fortnight.

When confronted with reports that her own colleagues, including members of her own faction, were holding secret discussions about removing her, the Premier did not seem to pause for reflection. She did not ask what it was about her leadership which has driven her own side to plotting in the background. No, instead she breezily dismissed those colleagues as ‘a few scallywags out there that might need a bit of a cuddle’. The Premier wants Victorians to believe that the deep divisions in her own party room are nothing more than the mischief of a few scallywags in need of a cuddle. But the truth is rather different. The only people who need a cuddle right now are the nervous Labor backbenchers staring down the barrel of the latest opinion polls – polls that show their primary vote collapsing, polls that show the Premier with the lowest approval rating of any leader in the nation, a dismal minus 37. These are not scallywags, they are politicians who see the coming electoral apocalypse. They are not joking around, they are just terrified. And what is the Premier’s response to that fear: denial. She dismisses it as navel-gazing. She tells us she is all in for this challenge. Her deputy, the member for Niddrie, when asked whether he had missed his shot at the top job, told reporters he was a marathon runner. We are left to wonder what that means.

But here is the most remarkable thing, from this morning’s papers: it is not just the Liberal and National parties saying this government has stopped trying; it is now Labor’s own union paymasters. The secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council Mr Luke Hilakari has fired a broadside at Labor MPs and candidates for failing to campaign. He has written to them on the very morning of the Premier’s first caucus meeting since the leadership crisis erupted to inform them that 23 of them have had, in his words, zero conversations with voters in a fortnight. He told them, ‘Start campaigning or start packing.’ The subject line of his email read ‘Complacent MPs should not expect any support’. I think that is pretty extraordinary. I am sure that the people of Victoria think it is pretty extraordinary as well. The union movement is now monitoring the doorknocking performance of individual Labor members of Parliament. There is an internal report tracking who has knocked on how many doors. The unions are checking up on their own MPs because they have so little faith that this exhausted, demoralised government will lift a finger to save itself. And Mr Hilakari was blunter still. He said that those who, and I use his words, ‘don’t give a shit about winning’ their seat should not expect a cent of union support. When your own financial backers are publicly threatening to cut you off because you cannot be bothered talking to voters, that is a pretty sorry state of affairs.

Now I want to come to the central point of this motion. Whatever Mr Carroll might want to think, Victorians are not looking for a change in Premier; they are looking for a change in government. A new salesman will not fix a broken product, and it really is a pretty broken product.

Consider our health system. Beds are being closed, surgeries are being cancelled, hospitals are struggling to pay their bills and Victorians are waiting too long for an ambulance, too long in emergency and too long for the elective surgery that would let them return to work and to life. This is the lived daily reality under an Allan Labor government.

Consider community safety. Crime in this state has reached its highest level since records began. 1500 police positions sit unfilled, police stations have been cut and Labor’s weak bail laws have been reversed, re-reversed and patched again in crisis after crisis – not through considered reform but through panic each time another tragedy forces their hand.

Consider integrity on the Big Build or the lack of it. CFMEU corruption on major projects has exposed a culture of secrecy, waste and criminal infiltration, at an estimated $15 billion of cost to Victorian taxpayers. Here is the tell: this government’s brand is now so toxic that it is reportedly scrubbing its own vocabulary, quietly dropping the phrase ‘Big Build’ from its announcements because the slogan it once boasted now stands for nothing except waste, cover-up and scandal.

Consider the debt. state debt is forecast to approach $200 billion. The interest alone now exceeds $32 million a day; $32 million every single day is siphoned away from nurses, from police, from roads and from schools and is handed instead to bondholders. That is money Victorian families and businesses will be repaying for a generation and another generation.

Consider the cost of living made worse by a government addicted – and ‘addiction’ is the only word for it – to higher taxes, higher charges and political gimmickry. Make no mistake, the Victorian economy has crashed. The Big Build costs spiralled out of control, the public service payroll ballooned and the true engines of prosperity – the private enterprises, the risk-takers, the wealth creators and the small businesses who employ their neighbours – have been squeezed to death by a relentless tide of new taxes and anti-business regulation. This government has spent more than a decade punishing the very people who generate the wealth it so freely spends.

This is a government in a death spiral. There is an unmistakeable stench of decay about it. It is out of ideas, it is out of money, it is out of steam and it is very nearly out of time. The whole rotten edifice, to coin a phrase, is Jacintegrating before our eyes.

Richard Welch interjected.

Bev McARTHUR: Jacintegrating. Did you hear that, Mr Welch? It is Jacintegrating before our very eyes and before the eyes of the people of Victoria, Mr Welch, who are very concerned about what is happening to this once great state and who know their taxes are being misspent as they grapple with the 65-plus new or increased taxes that have landed on them.

But of all the failures, it is the failure of integrity that matters most, because it is what poisons trust in everything else. Integrity is vital to the confidence of a nation and a state. I have spoken before about Labor’s trust problem, but it bears repetition, because it is so thoroughly deserved. Consider the pattern: the systematic abuse of this Parliament, treated as an administrative inconvenience; the contempt for parliamentary questions – the dodging, the deflecting, the non-answers; the lack of supply of documents when they are rightly required and asked for; the weaponisation of urgent legislation – rushing complex bills through with no time for scrutiny; the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee protection racket, an estimates process turned into a shield for ministers rather than a check upon them; the collective amnesia of officials at public inquiries – their obfuscation is next-level and they are even outdoing some of their own ministers; the broken freedom-of-information system, delaying and redacting to keep the public in the dark; the deliberate starvation of IBAC and the Ombudsman; the politicisation of a once fearless public service; and the pork-barrelling that rewards Labor seats and punishes everyone else.

Those in rural and regional Victoria, outside the tram tracks of Melbourne, constantly cry out for attention and investment and care. You totally disregard everybody outside the tram tracks of Melbourne and outside your vanity projects, like the suburban rail link that we have just heard about in the previous motion. The millions sprayed on government advertising that is nothing more than political advertising and marketing in disguise should be paid for by the Labor Party, not the taxpayers of Victoria. There are the fake surpluses dressed up to hide the true scale of debt, the lucrative contracts for friends and allies lining the pockets of your union mates and others with alacrity. And over it all is an unprecedented army of spin doctors whose only job is to manage the headline and bury the truth. That is why Victorians no longer believe a word this government says. The trust is gone, and once trust is gone, it does not come back with a new logo or a new leader. They have passed the point of no return.

I should say, in fairness, that it is not the Premier’s fault alone. The rot set in over many years under her predecessor; I think his name was Andrews. The addiction to spending, the love of the grand announcement, the cosy deals with mates – she inherited a culture and she has been unable or unwilling to break it, which is precisely why the only honourable course now would be to gracefully accept that the project has run its course and to let Victorians choose afresh. Instead, we have a Premier gripping on to office by her fingernails, waiting for a miracle that is not coming, while her own colleagues brief against her and her own unions threaten to abandon her, let alone abandon many Labor MPs who are apparently not fulfilling the needs that Mr Hilakari suggests they should be. This is terminal. It is the end of the road, and the answer is not to wheel out a new salesman to flog the same failed government. The answer is the one thing this tired, divided, scandal-plagued Labor Party cannot give Victorians from within its own ranks, and that is a change of government. That is what Victorians need. They are crying out for a change of government. We hear it every day. We see it every day. People in Victoria want a new government. They have had enough of this corrupt, lazy, incompetent, tax-addicted, regulation-addicted Labor government, which actually kills business at every opportunity.

Speak to any small business or any business organisation – which I do regularly, as the Shadow Minister for Small Business – and you hear the tales of woe and the tales of despair. They are not safe in their own businesses. At every point along the way they are worried that their premises will be robbed, firebombed or attacked. How does that leave consumers and customers? They do not want to go near a retail outlet for fear of being caught up in this absolute wave of crime. This is the crime capital of Australia. It is a disgraceful situation that we have crime out of control in this place, on top of the fact that we are so debt-ridden that our children and grandchildren will never be able to pay back what the Labor Allan–Andrews government regime has foisted on the people of Victoria.

The Labor members in Bendigo failed to turn up at a rally on Sunday in Bendigo, where over a thousand concerned farmers, CFA volunteers, career firefighters and local government councillors protested at the extraordinary and egregious tax, the so-called emergency services volunteers tax. It is the greatest insult to volunteers that you could possibly imagine. They turned up to protest about this tax that has been inflicted on them, and not one Labor MP was present. This was in the Premier’s own area of Ballarat. A member for Northern Victoria Region, the Treasurer, could not turn –

Harriet Shing: Ballarat?

Bev McARTHUR: Bendigo, sorry, Ms Shing. She could not even turn up in her own electorate of Northern Victoria Region. It was absolutely disgraceful; not one local Labor MP, and they are wall-to-wall Labor in these areas.

They do not care about the people in rural and regional Victoria, but they do not care about the people in metropolitan Melbourne and the great cities of Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo. They are afflicted by this government so badly that they are despairing. The only thing that will restore confidence in this state and will restore integrity in government is a change of government, and we will deliver that change of government in November, absolutely. The Premier may well remain; her opposition seems to have died a bit of a death. But anyway, the people of Victoria know there is an election coming on 28 November. They are geared up for it. They know what they are going to do, because they have had enough of this tired, lazy, corrupt government. All it does is tax them, regulate them or tell them how to think and behave for no real outcome for any family, any business or any individual in this state. You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves for what you have done to the people of Victoria and to this state. I urge everyone to support this motion.

 Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (11:13): I rise to add a brief contribution on behalf of the Victorian Greens on Mrs McArthur’s motion 1484. Can I just begin by saying how ridiculous it is that this chamber is focused on petty bickering and political mudslinging rather than the issues that actually matter to Victorians: the cost of living, the housing crisis, fixing the climate crisis, better public education, better public health and more public housing. It is as if people outside these walls want to bear witness to political pointscoring and retribution between the two major parties, who are dying anyway. Victorians have wised up to the fact that you do not care about them. You do not care about addressing the high cost of living or the high cost of groceries. You do not care about whether they can afford a GP or whether they can afford to turn on the heater this winter season. Victorians dealing with the cost-of-living crisis do not care whether it is Jacinta Allan or someone else leading the Labor Party. Seriously, who cares? The problem here is that people are fed up, and rightly so. They are fed up with Labor and they are also fed up with the Liberals, because all the corporate-backed political parties care about is maintaining power, keeping their seats and making sure that they have the backs of their billionaire backers looked after, not about the greater good.

People are fed up because all you care about in this place is yourselves, bowing to vested interests and your big corporate puppet masters. That is why the two major parties system is dying. People do not trust you, and who can blame them when all you are doing in here is squabbling and playing petty politics? This is exactly why we are seeing division and racism gain a foothold in this state. One Nation is a symptom of the failure of all of you. You are all in here squabbling over power and playing politics instead of talking about people and the things that would actually progress their lives and make them better. It is made worse by an Allan Labor government that is nowhere near strong and courageous enough to confront racism, while the Liberal Party waits in the wings ready to weaponise division under the guise of unity and protection. Let us be clear: swapping one corporate political party out for another will not fix everyday Victorians’ struggles at the structural and systemic levels. The two-party system is simply failing to fight for people because they are too captured by vested interests.

The Greens recognise and value humanity in each other. We should not be living in societies where billionaires and a trillionaire hoard more and more wealth when others are struggling to afford rent and groceries. We should not be living in a society where communities struggle to have their voices heard while the ultrawealthy enjoy unfettered access to politicians and do all sorts of dodgy dealings behind closed doors. It is no wonder people have lost trust in these institutions. Right now, in a cost-of-living, housing and climate crisis, Victorians are looking for visionary, courageous leadership that does not falter but stands up for the working class, for the migrant and refugee families, for the young people, for First Nations justice and for all oppressed groups and does not just demonise and divide them. Politicians should be unburdening people’s lives and showing them what is possible, not what to settle for – things like free public transport, like rent caps, like bringing down the cost of housing and like making the big ultrarich corporations who are ripping us all off pay their fair share. The work is far from over, but the Greens are here, and we are going to demand better for all Victorians.

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Health, Minister for Water) (11:17): I want to go to some of the things that Mrs McArthur said, but before I do that I want to address the position just advanced by the Greens in Ms Gray-Barberio’s contribution. If the Greens were interested in discussing the solutions to problems that keep Victorians up at night, they would not come to this house with cheap platitudes about how we do not care, because frankly that does a great disservice to the work that drives us in delivering actual practical, meaningful assistance to Victorians.

This is about so much more than describing the problems, which is at the heart of the motion put by Mrs McArthur today. To that end, I would invite every single person in this chamber, if they are serious about addressing the cost of living, about addressing the challenges involved in housing and rental affordability, about the opportunities that we want to provide for our children and about managing growth in a way that ensures that we are not leaving parts of the city and the state to manage increased challenges without either investment in infrastructure or other parts of the city doing their fair share to accommodate some of that heavy lifting, if they are at all interested in those things, to look not only to identify the problems – problems which every single Victorian household knows because they live with these problems every day – but to talk to the sorts of solutions and options and support that we work every single day to deliver. They would identify them through the savings finder. It is an online resource.

There are more than 90 options available to assist Victorian families to manage the cost of living, whether that is the 20 per cent rebate on registration that is saving people up to $180 per vehicle – you can put two vehicles on it; whether it is the half-price public transport that is available until the end of the year for adults, with ongoing free public transport for people under the age of 18; whether that is the support for three- and four-year-old kinder, saving households thousands every year for each child; or whether that is free TAFE with more than 80 courses on the free TAFE list. The former minister for TAFE Ms Tierney, who is in this place, drove more than 345,000 opportunities for Victorians through free TAFE to get into a career in a growth sector.

This stuff is not happening by accident. It is not happening in a vacuum. It is not happening because of motions like this one here today. It is happening because we are talking to and hearing from Victorians about the things that matter to them. The planning and housing reforms that we have developed and delivered are not happening because of the support of this place; they are happening despite it. They are happening despite constant opposition to the sorts of things that we know will unlock land and help communities to develop and deliver more housing for people so that our children and their children have an opportunity at home ownership in the same way that we have had those opportunities, because that is fair and that is the equitable thing to do.

What we are doing is working. Despite the howls of derision from those opposite and from various parts of the media, we are building, commencing and approving more homes than other states. Housing affordability is better here in Victoria than it is in other states. Rental affordability is better here in Victoria than it is in other states. These are facts, and yet we operate in a fact-free zone full of hyperbole and anecdotal evidence which just is not supported by the empirical data that is necessary in responding to a motion like this.

We also want to make sure, as we deliver the work, the reforms and the supports that people need, that we do not stray from the things that drive us as a Labor government – public transport, public education and public health care. And we have delivered in all of these areas, because we know that it is these public services that Victorians rely upon. When we deliver enhancements and improvements to our public transport network, we are doing so because it will mean that more people can get around, that more people can live in a way that is connected to something other than moving around by car. We know that we can enhance and deliver good livability, good expansion of our communities and equity in the way in which people can live, work and spend time together.

Free and public education is another pillar of the work that Labor governments deliver. We have invested record funding into public education. We have done so with a sense of determination and resourcing that those opposite will never know and will never deliver, because they are allergic to the idea that equity and educational opportunities should be at the heart of policy decisions and funding.

When Mrs McArthur makes these lofty claims that it is only government-held seats that are the beneficiaries of these investments, I would like her to look perhaps at one of the former leaders of the opposition, the member for Berwick in the other place. Last time I checked he is not a government member, and yet we have got six new schools in his electorate. Let us have a look at the seat of Morwell, held by the member for the Nationals Mr Cameron in the other place. Again, there is record investment in that part of the world, not just to assist with transition away from coal-fired power generation but also to make sure that we have intergenerational opportunity – well over $2 billion across the Latrobe Valley region. They are not government seats; they are not metropolitan communities.

Then when we hear the opposition talk to how it is that in the event that they secure the privilege and the honour of government they will have a plan to address all of these things, they do not go anywhere near actually explaining it beyond these platitudes again, beyond these adjectives, beyond this hyperbole, beyond these general statements not backed up by any detail. They say they will fix the things that they describe as problems. They do not actually fix anything, though. They block and they wreck and they oppose. We know that they do that because they have done it before.

Let us touch on public health care, our public hospitals. When the Liberals were in government, they closed 12 hospitals and they privatised two more. They got ready to sell off the Austin. They went to war with paramedics. They ditched and scrapped and walked away from nurse-to-patient ratios, and they opposed those ratios when we introduced legislation in this place. They opposed wage theft legislation. They opposed industrial manslaughter legislation. They opposed free TAFE. They opposed three- and four-year-old kinder. They opposed the sorts of supports that they are saying need to be delivered to assist with the cost of living. You know what? If they are given half an opportunity, they will do it again, because they have already belled the cat on $40 billion in cuts. Let us talk about the health system – $32 billion in the budget. It is the biggest component of the budget, and therefore it is the part of the budget that will bear the brunt of that $40 billion in cuts.

It is very easy to shout from the sidelines and to describe the problems, but we know the problems. We know the problems because Victorians tell us these problems, and Victorians come to us and ask for solutions, as they should. This is where, again, if the coalition care at all about wanting to make sure that Victorians are assisted with the management of the cost of living, they will not go around opposing the work we are doing on power saving, opposing the 3 free hours of power, opposing the work on the Victorian default offer or opposing the sort of work that we do on making sure that water prices are the lowest anywhere in Australia. What they will do is get on board with the hard work of delivering on the sorts of things that make a difference, dollar by dollar, pay cheque by pay cheque. Never once has the Liberal Party supported an increase in the minimum wage for workers, and One Nation, their coalition partner, is led by somebody who thinks that penalty rates should not actually apply. Again, these are the things that we will see imposed upon Victorians at the end of the year, should there be a change in government. Those cuts will mean that Victorians pay, and the government opposes this motion.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:28): It is so ironic that the minister then just mentioned how the Liberals have never supported minimum wage increases for workers, yet in the gallery today there are workers that have not had a pay rise in six years because of this government. But anyway, that is an aside. I rise today to speak on Mrs McArthur’s motion and in support of it, and I believe that it is an important one. I am going to particularly focus on one part, and that is part (2)(b), and it notes that under the Allan Labor government crime has reached its highest level since records began, while 1500 police positions remain unfilled, police stations have been cut and bail laws are weak. This is the part that I am going to focus on: weak bail laws have forced repeated, crisis-driven reversals.

I am going to start on the current bail laws, not from my perspective and not from the perspective of a focus group but from the perspective of an ex-crim, one who has turned his life around, one who I think is absolutely inspiring. I first read about his story in the Herald Sun, and that would almost make a lot of people on the opposite side completely disregard it. But regardless, I think you should go back to 18 February and read his story. This was the headline: ‘“I needed jail”: A former youth offender’s confronting story of redemption’. I tell you, it is a story that changed my perspective and changed how I look at things. He was featured there. His story is inspiring, and I am happy to declare that it is now on my bucket list to meet this young guy Judo. I was so impressed, because his story is one of true redemption, a life turned around. He is now having honest conversations about why people end up in crime and what we need to be doing to prevent it. This young man is living proof that no matter what your background is – where you were born, what family you were in, what your socio-economic circumstances were – you have the power to turn your life around. I tried to speak on a similar topic yesterday when we were talking about the area of justice. A government member called a point of order and said it was out of order, and I could not speak about it. But today is our day, and I am glad that I can speak about people that have turned their lives around by the choices they have made and the power that they do have.

Judo was a young offender. He is now a youth worker. He is a mentor and somebody who is leading people out of the darkness and destruction of crime, not by making excuses for them but through learning and accountability – I am going to really focus on the part of accountability – and by creating a better path forward for kids that have ended up in a very bad situation. One of the things that started his turnaround was actually an awareness exercise when he was locked up in jail called the victim awareness exercise. What he had to do was to sit with a psychologist and he had to speak from his perspective about what it was like carrying out a home invasion. Then he had to flip it. He had to speak from the perspective of the victim and what it was like being the victim of that exact same home invasion and then speak from his mum’s point of view, and it started his turnaround. He is currently mentoring seven young offenders who are on bail, and I hope that we see the same turnaround in them that we have seen in him.

Earlier this week he was chatting to Commissioner Bush, the Chief Commissioner of Police, about the current justice system in Victoria, which allows offenders back on the streets about 3 hours, roughly, after they have been charged with committing a crime. He talked about the destruction of that. I am going to quote him. These are his words, not mine. He said:

… honestly it’s pathetic …

He is talking to the commissioner of police, so ‘you guys’ is the police:

… these kids, you guys are giving them bail, giving them an opportunity and another chance to go out into the community and do the exact same thing … you’re putting the community at risk.

These kids, they need some time to really sit back and understand what they’re doing is wrong …

He said custody is the perfect time for intervention. He went on to say:

… you just gotta hold them a bit longer … get us involved …

He is talking about mentors, and that is something we are going to do as a coalition – mentoring – to drag these kids out of the pit of hell that they have ended up in, down the path of crime and destruction. He said:

… we’ll talk to them, we’ll mentor them, we’ll give them the right advice, and hopefully it clicks …

He spoke about that in the Herald Sun in this article and about when what he called some ‘old heads’ came and spoke to him. He said:

I had a couple of old heads come up to me and tell me ‘you’re better than this, you have a future, you’ve got a family out there that love you and care about you, you shouldn’t be doing this, there’s more to life than hanging out with these …

unparliamentary word, so I will say ‘fellas’. Basically what he is saying is when kids are in custody they are free. They are not on drugs, they are not with their friends and there is an opportunity for people to get to them and to turn their life around.

This kid, Judo, 24 years old now, is a South Sudanese Australian who went down an extremely dark path, but it is a common trajectory and one that I am worried that our policies are setting up for other children to also follow. His story explains why we have to begin with interventions not when we see a machete-wielding kid on the street but when they are at school.

This is his timeline. On not doing well in school, he said, ‘I wasn’t the smartest kid in the class.’ He also said he struggled in the classroom. From starting to smoke – first with shisha pens, then marijuana – and then doing other drugs, at 15 he got expelled from school. There were mischievous activities at school, he said, which turned into low-level offending at shopping centres. Still nothing was done. Then petty thefts from shops progressed to robbing people on the streets. Still nothing was done. At 16 he was stealing cars, and then there were the home invasions that landed him in prison. We must be able to acknowledge and see that by not tackling this early on, we are causing these children to take riskier steps. You can see that we should be seriously considering what we could be doing. With compassion in our hearts, saying, ‘Oh, these kids don’t have the right to think for themselves,’ what we may be doing by not addressing it there is sentencing them to a life of crime. We see it often. We should seriously consider that when we raise the age of criminal responsibility and when we tell these kids that they are not smart enough to even figure out that robbing somebody is wrong, we are actually setting them on a path. When we bail kids back into the same old situation and the same friendship group, we are in fact training them to be living a life of crime – living a hell, really, that sucks them in further, and the further it sucks them in, the harder it is to get them out.

I was with some firefighters last week, and one of them said to me that the reason these kids were not charged with serious arson was because they did not actually know how to do the job properly. What they will then do if they are let off and bailed is they will get out, they will figure out how to do it better and they will go and end up in a worse situation where they could be locked up for life. It is wrong. I think we have to realise that our soft-on-crime approach is not compassionate. It is not kindness. It is setting children on a path, when they could be doing so much more.

Some people in this house talk about the effects of power imbalances, and when the commissioner was talking to Judo on Monday they brought up a perspective that, quite frankly, changed mine. They said this: ‘People do not have a choice when somebody is invading their home. It is their safe space. But the invader has a choice to enter that home.’ Think of this: that is a power imbalance, because perpetrators have choice; victims do not. If you want to talk about a power imbalance, that is one. That is a real power imbalance, because I tell you what, choice is power. The one holding the cards here is not the one innocently lying in their bed while a child breaks into their house and terrorises them. The person holding the power in this situation is the child.

Another thing is that one of the things that set Judo on this path, and I wish I had more time, was that he saw a friend shot. He was in a terrible situation. However, he says it is not a proportional response to your hurt to go out and hurt others. I am out of time, and hopefully there is an opportunity where I can talk about that later.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (11:38): Mrs McArthur has brought to this chamber a list of grievances and recycled attack lines, and she has called it leadership. It is nothing of the sort. It is what a party reaches for when it has no plan, no policy and no agreement amongst its members about what it actually stands for. The opposition has invited a conversation about leadership, so let us have one. Weak leadership is a party that would cut $40 billion from the Victorian budget and the services Victorians rely on every day while it looks after its own wealthy and powerful mates first. It is a party so emptied of values that it is prone to capture by religious lobby groups, by the extreme right and by neo-Nazis. It is a party that preselects candidates who are ineligible and unsuitable and who share so little in common that they spend their days fighting one another instead of representing –

Members interjecting.

Gayle Tierney: On a point of order, President, I think that there are unnecessary interjections. We have heard the others in silence, and I would expect the same courtesy to be held in respect to Ms Ermacora.

Nick McGowan interjected.

The PRESIDENT: No, you were not assisting. I uphold the point of order, and as the last speaker did not get interjected on, I expect the same for this speaker.

Jacinta ERMACORA: It is a party where MPs sue each other and then internally litigate the outcome, a party that leaks nasty text messages about an incumbent preselection candidate and a party that makes up its priorities each morning based on what it reads in the media bubble because it has no values of its own to guide it. The divided Victorian Liberals are now on their sixth leader in seven years, and nothing has changed. The former member for Nepean did not just walk away; he quit, saying behaviour inside the Liberal Party room had fallen below the standard he came into public life to accept. A party that cannot govern itself cannot govern Victoria.

I could go on, but I want to talk about what good leadership looks like, and we need look no further than the Jacinta Allan Labor government. What does this good leadership actually look like? It looks like a record you can stand behind; it looks like 11 new hospitals and 40 upgraded, and 40,000 more doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals with a 28.4 per cent pay rise; it looks like a record number of planned surgeries completed – over 212,000. When those opposite were last in office they cut billions of dollars from health and closed hospitals in 12 regional towns.

Leadership means safe communities, and we will not be lectured – sound familiar? – about community safety by a party that slashed $130 million from Victoria Police the last time it was in government. Our record is more police and tougher laws. The machete ban has resulted in 40,000 weapons off the streets and knife crime is down 10 per cent.

Leadership is leading the nation in building new homes and reforming the planning system so that young people have a real chance to buy a home of their own; it is the stalking law reforms and the work on women’s pain, which for too long was ignored; it is closing the loopholes that stop survivors of historical sexual abuse from claiming the compensation they are owed from the Catholic Church; it is protecting people’s right to work from home; it is progressing treaty – a positive and constructive initiative in the face of appalling dog whistling from those opposite and in the face of an awful politicisation of the circumstances of First Nations people in this state. Strong leadership is standing up for diversity and inclusion while those opposite keep trying to sow division and hate.

The motion also includes a figure on worksite crime that is simply false. Mr Watson himself, the author of the report the opposition is citing, said publicly he was misquoted on that figure. They know it and they use it anyway. They call for a royal commission. Australia already had a royal commission – two years, $46 million, one conviction. Ours is the approach that is actually working. You are the party of doing the same and expecting a different outcome.

On the economy, the facts speak plainly. Victoria’s economy is now 12.7 per cent larger than it was pre pandemic and 28.7 per cent larger than when Labor came to government. We are the only state on the eastern seaboard to deliver an operating surplus. And we are putting money back in people’s pockets: 20 per cent off vehicle registration – 2 million Victorians have applied; and free kinder, saving up to $2700. But understand what this motion is really meant to distract from: the opposition’s own plans – at least 1500 workers across regional Victoria, 430 in Barwon South West, 350 in Ballarat, cuts to the public sector. These are the communities that I represent. Cutting too hard and too fast wrecks frontline services, it costs jobs and it shrinks our economy. That is not responsible leadership, it is just ruthless.

Bev McArthur: Where’s the PET scanner in Warrnambool?

Jacinta ERMACORA: I will take you up on Warrnambool. It has a low unemployment rate and incredible population growth – all growing beautifully.

We do not see responsible leadership from those opposite, and they will not even do it alone. Along with One Nation they are offering a coalition of cuts and closures. We on this side know what we stand for and we stick to it: working people, families, diversity and inclusion and equity. A stronger, thriving and more equal Victoria – that is what we stand for, and we know it. That is the difference between a government that delivers and an opposition that only knows how to tear things down, including its own leaders and its own MPs – fighting amongst themselves, suing each other, litigating each other, leaking texts about each other and generally undermining each other. This motion is a statement of Liberal desperation, not Liberal vision. There is no vision, and the government oppose this motion.

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (11:47): I thank Mrs McArthur for bringing an excellent motion to the chamber. Victoria cannot afford any more chaos than has been demonstrated. I think particularly over the last two weeks it has been a very inelegant way to conduct yourself or a government. I note Ms Ermacora in her Premier’s private office written contribution mentioned the $15 billion – the number that is on the lips of each and every Victorian, as they know themselves and have been briefing the papers about. But I want to point to the Premier’s train wreck interview on ABC’s 7.30 last night. She obviously had a pep in her step, having overcome the challenges of the day, and thought it would be a good idea to go on 7.30. She was asked for 4 straight minutes if she refuted the $15 billion figure, to name her own figure. She could not name a figure of corruption on construction sites in Victoria. We have seen time and time again wicked corruption on construction sites, women being put into locked rooms, ghost shifts, bribes, cash payments, strippers, drug deals – as we saw on the Hurstbridge line site – and using taxpayer-funded cars to take out hits and murders. This is the kind of thing that has happened under this government. And who has been responsible for enabling the CFMEU monopoly on construction sites? Who was the minister responsible? It was the Premier. It was Jacinta Allan, who was the minister for the last 10 years.

She also happened to be the Minister for Commonwealth Games Delivery. How did that go? Six hundred million dollars down the toilet. ‘We’re going to spend all this money on regional infrastructure that these communities are going to get.’ How much of that has been built? Maybe if some of these members actually talked to constituents, they would realise that none of this has been built. They are not getting anything that they promised because of the failure of this Premier.

Some of the comments that Labor MPs have been putting out there are pretty brutal:

One MP from the party’s Socialist Left said the south-east group have “never been happy” with how Allan came into the role, effectively appointed by Andrews. Andrews himself was a member of the south-eat grouping.

“Now because her polls are down, they see it as an opportunity to move” …

They argued the Premier was “always on borrowed time” because while she was “notionally in the left” she never had their support.

That is probably true. Another article states:

One Labor MP said they believed Allan’s leadership was now “terminal” and the caucus was expecting a challenge within the next two to six weeks.

So watch this space.

The MP said a “significant number” of Labor MPs are talking about the possibility of a change.

Further:

Some MPs have realised it is really, really bad and that [Allan] is politically inept … ‘Jacinta has been –

and I will not use the expletive –

… hopeless for three years. What makes anyone think she will improve in the next six months?’

…

‘We are entering the killing season …’

…

One MP said bad polling was finally dawning on other members, who were increasingly nervous after the Victorian Labor Party headquarters emailed MPs in recent weeks to talk about their election campaigns.

That is not nearly as brutal as some of the comments about the Deputy Premier as well, who says he is a ‘marathon runner’. They wanted him to strike. They are using terms like ‘wuss’ and ‘hopeless’, that he has ‘botched it’ and is – expletive – ‘hopeless’. They are not a happy camp over there.

Who is paying the price? It is Victorians that are paying the price, because you have a mob over on that side of the chamber that is not focused on Victorians. They are not focused on the fact that the infrastructure is failing in the growth areas of Melbourne. They are not focusing on the fact that ambulances do not turn up when you call them. They are not focusing on the fact that police stations are closing and reducing hours in every neighbourhood. I note the Deputy Premier repeated his comments from last week that they want to see police stations open. This government is closing police stations in every neighbourhood. They are reducing hours of police stations, like they have in Craigieburn, like they have, as recently as last month, again in Mernda – the same suburb where we had an awful tragedy recently. This government is an absolute joke.

We note that Labor MPs have been briefed that their internal polling has Labor in the teens. Is it any wonder senior ALP figures are contacting people like me, begging for preferences in inner-city seats to save the Labor Party from annihilation? Of course the preferences are not up to me, but you can tell the desperation in these ALP figures for some sort of assistance from the great Liberal Party. To be honest, you do not know who to speak to because you do not know who their leader is going to be. It seems like they are not very experienced in how to operate a spill over there, given they have not done it since 1999. Instead of glum faces over there, maybe they could learn how to actually pull the trigger.

They are all at sea over on that side of the chamber because they have a Premier who has failed this state fundamentally – $600 million on the Commonwealth Games, $15 billion lost to corruption on construction sites. And reportedly she really pissed off colleagues by belatedly, last sitting week, announcing changes to IBAC – follow-the-money changes that have been called for for a very long time. But she never called a royal commission. When you have the kind of scandal that we have seen and we have known about since mid-2024 – and we know from documents the Premier knew about it much earlier and was warned about it much earlier – that demands a royal commission. We can see in Queensland they have now extended their royal commission, such was the work that it was uncovering through its investigations.

But we know through reporting as well that was in the Age by Shannon Deery that both the Electrical Trades Union and CFMEU figures within the ALP were propping up the Premier’s leadership because they do not want a royal commission. So the very thing she is holding out on, which has become a political liability for this Premier, is the exact thing that is keeping this Premier in her job. Seventy-five per cent of Victorians polled want a royal commission into Big Build corruption on construction sites. This Premier has not delivered that. In fact the fact that she has not delivered that is keeping her in her job. Is it any wonder why Victorians have worked out this government?

Gayle Tierney: On a point of order, President, can I please ask that when people speak into the microphone, they do so without yelling? It has been constant yelling from those opposite, including the current speaker. Tone it down, for God’s sake.

The PRESIDENT: I sympathise, but there is no regulation on how loud someone can speak.

Evan MULHOLLAND: I know they are a bit edgy about the last couple of days, and why wouldn’t you be? You have got a Premier that has fundamentally failed Victorians. You have got a Premier and a head office that keeps delaying upper house preselections so as to not finally get rid of several members on the other side and supposedly to move people from a different district downstairs into upper house positions – potentially roll ministers, potentially roll people in the Northern Metropolitan Region and shuffle around members, as we know, in several other regions as well: Southern Metro, Western Region, North-East Metro. You see members despairing that the Premier has not sought to abolish group voting tickets, keeping a rigged system that works against the voters. That goes to show the Premier’s failure. It is no wonder why her colleagues do not think much of her, because this Premier has fundamentally failed Victorians.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.