Thursday, 24 September 2026

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:33): I was speaking before lunch –

Michael Galea interjected.

Georgie CROZIER: Quite right, Mr Galea; we have just heard from Mr McGowan, who gave a wonderful valedictory speech, I might say – a fascinating account of his experience in and out of here, looking forward to his journey to Ringwood. I certainly am looking forward to his journey in taking on the new mantle of the member for Ringwood. But I will get back to what I was speaking to around the budget and –

Jacinta Ermacora: Nice humility, Georgie.

Georgie CROZIER: That is quite right. On the budget: as I was saying prior to lunch, we are the highest taxed state and we have got a mountain of debt, and our services are suffering because of that. If it is not roads, if it is not hospitals, if it is not our police service – it is every area of government that is suffering. That is at the hands of, and is the responsibility of, 12 years of Labor, who have, quite frankly, wrecked the joint. There are so many people now that are very concerned about the future of this state. As we go into the grand final weekend there will be a wonderful reprieve from this place. We will enjoy the celebrations of the grand final, even though our teams will not be in it, given it is two interstate teams. It brings such a wonderful spirit to the city and to the state, and I am looking forward to seeing that. It is those sorts of events which we can be very proud of and we always have been very proud of. They give a bit of a sugar hit to the economy.

We have got to have a sustained investment, a sustained economy and a strong economy to be able to deliver all the services that are required. One of the things that Ms Watt mentioned was the Suburban Rail Loop. If you look at this budget like you look at previous budgets, there has been no change. In 2021 it was $34 billion of investment – that is what the government said the Suburban Rail Loop would cost. Well, it is still $34 billion, so in five years it has not changed. The $34 billion amount has virtually remained static. No-one believes it, because if you look at the North East Link, it went from something like $9 billion to $26 billion in the same period of time with costs and cost overruns. Of course who can forget the $15 billion of corruption –

David Davis interjected.

Georgie CROZIER: at least, thank you, Mr Davis – that has set these costs to the Victorian taxpayer soaring. Nobody believes the government around these figures and the Suburban Rail Loop and the way they have just pursued this project. It has really been quite stunning, given where we are at and what we need to do.

If I look at health, look at the promises that Labor have made that they have not fulfilled, 10 community hospitals they said they would deliver back in 2018. Well, those budgets blew out. In this term we have seen that seven of those hospitals are somewhere in the process of being developed, but three have fallen off the radar. Those areas and those communities were again dudded. Just like with the Commonwealth Games, where every single Victorian was conned and lied to by Labor, so were these communities where these community hospitals were going to be developed. The West Gippsland Hospital was another promise that Labor made. They promised $675 million, and it was to start in 2024 and be completed in 2028. But there is still no line item in the budget anywhere around construction. It was another furphy, it was another con to that community.

I want to put on record my congratulations to the local member Wayne Farnham, who has been a terrific advocate in this regard. He has been relentless for the last four years in holding the government to account on their broken promise on this very necessary piece of vital health infrastructure, because if anyone has gone down to – I doubt whether the Minister for Health has and I doubt whether many of the current ministers have – the hospital at Warragul, you will see how substandard it is. Floors are wonky, there is asbestos, doors do not meet, there are narrow passageways. It is very dangerous and not fit for purpose – very difficult facilities for our doctors and nurses to be working in. It is another complete failure by Labor to deliver for that community, and there are so many more. It is not only that but Maroondah, and I know Mr McGowan has been a passionate advocate for that hospital. The government promised to start that last year, in 2025, to be completed in 2029. There is still no separate line item for the construction in the budget. The list just goes on and on and on.

The Armstrong Creek ambulance station, $31 million – a massive cost for an ambulance station – was included in the 2023–24 capital budget. The completion date was meant to be this year, but it is still in the planning phase. I mean, this is a government that is very big on the headline, but it is not following through. They are not following through on these infrastructure projects. They will champion some of them. But with the new Footscray Hospital, which was to open with over 500 beds, all they have done is taken the existing beds from the old Footscray Hospital and transferred them. There are items in that Footscray Hospital redevelopment, like a tower that is not even open because there are no staff. The government have not put in the resources to provide the workforce planning for the future.

I questioned the minister in question time today about the graduate nurse program. I can tell she is oblivious to what is actually happening. But letters have gone out to graduate nurses. She told this house just a couple of hours ago that the process was not finished. Well, the letters are going out, and there are 3000 nurses that are going to miss out, and there are not enough nurses in the pipeline to deal with the shortfalls into the future. That is a fundamental failure of Labor, who have failed to recognise what needs to be done. I had a phone call this morning from a frustrated nurse who told me, ‘They’re not doing agency nurses. We’re expected to come off and work overtime. Graduates are the only ones rostered, so we’ve got to come off and do overtime, and it’s blowing the hospital budgets.’ This is a government that on paper will say their EFT is meeting expectations, that they are not blowing out, but they are costing the taxpayer a bomb because their planning and mismanagement of how they are managing health is causing so many issues. Those nurses who are doing the overtime are getting burnt out. It is not safe.

The government will not release the sentinel report. We do not know the health data, and I have been banging on about that for months. Where is the latest health data? I really question a lot of what is in this budget, given the level of secrecy and transparency. We have seen what the government has promised before, whether it is the Commonwealth Games or whether it is the Arden Street medical precinct, the biggest medical precinct in the country. That was never going to go ahead. The Commonwealth Games were never going to go ahead. These are big promises that were made. As a result of the current budget and how it has been managed – it is the management of the budget that is really critical – Victorians are the ones that are not getting the best value for money under this government. The failures are too profound, too significant and too widespread. They are in every portfolio.

I will go back to where I started as I come to the conclusion. The potholes in this state are symbolic of the degradation of the state. They are right throughout the state. And we have got potholes in this budget. We have got massive black holes, we have got broken promises and we have got a debt that is running out of control and a government that has no plan to fix it.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (14:43): It is a pleasure to rise and share a few words on another very important budget that was delivered earlier this year by the now Minister for Environment, who is in the chamber with us. It was a budget that once again was a good, strong Labor budget, because I believe – and I can be corrected by the minister – the surplus figures now exceed what was budgeted in that particular budget when it comes to the operating surplus. It is a budget that is focusing rightly on two things, and one is an overall fiscal strategy which is returning the budget to normalcy in the wake of the COVID impacts and continuing to manage the state budget appropriately.

It is also – and in my view just as importantly – focusing on the many millions of household budgets of Victorian families. That is what good Labor budgets do, and that is exactly what this year’s state budget does. And it is, again, what we are continuing to do from the Labor side of the fence and what we are doing in fact when it comes to initiatives such as free dental, which a re-elected Carroll Labor government will bring in. They will bring in the same effectiveness of the urgent care clinics, which were often derided, slammed and undermined by those opposite but have been so enthusiastically taken up by the Victorian community that we are seeing really strong growth in the use of these facilities. In much the same way, we will provide these 10 free dental clinics to the people of Victoria, following in the footsteps of the urgent care clinics.

When it comes to the current financial situation, with the global effects of certain wars and trade impacts, there are many things that, like all jurisdictions in the nation, we are vulnerable to. It is so important that this budget has an emphasis on cost-of-living relief for Victorian households who need it the most. That is why we did see the very successful two months of free public transport, which was taken up very well. That is why we will see people continuing to be the beneficiaries of half-price public transport until the end of the year. In fact I was having a conversation with a constituent today who was remarking on their recent trip to New South Wales and the staggering difference in price for a family of three travelling around a city in a day in Sydney compared to Victoria. It was a remarkable difference – about a fivefold increase in the price they had to pay in Sydney compared to Victoria where they benefitted from those discounted fares. The regional fare cap – even under normal circumstances it is reducing the cost of all regional fares. Whether you are coming from the Macedon Ranges or from Mildura, that fare is now capped at the metropolitan maximum, so it is a significantly beneficial and ongoing discount for all regional Victorian communities. We have seen the absolute boom there has been in V/Line patronage. Through this budget we have seen a corresponding increase in the frequency of V/Line services across different parts of the state.

I will come back to some transport investments in a moment, but another investment in the cost of living that supported all Victorian households, or the majority of Victorian households, was the 20 per cent discount, or the rego rebate. Individuals were able to claim up to two vehicles and get that 20 per cent discount off their rego, putting hundreds of dollars back in Victorian households at the time when they needed it the most.

I did touch on the urgent care clinics at the start of my contribution. They are and remain a very important part of primary healthcare provision in this state. As I have said many times before in this chamber and in various different committees – such as the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, where we discussed urgent care clinics and had the opportunity to grill and interview secretaries and other officials about the funding nature behind them – we have to remember that both the then Andrews Labor government in Victoria and the then Liberal government in New South Wales decided to go it alone with primary priority care centres, which are now called urgent care clinics. It is a credit to both states for doing that under two different parties. But it happened in the face of and as a consequence of the complete dereliction of duty by the then federal Liberal government – one that certainly this Liberal opposition in Victoria seems determined to take its cues from.

It was a dereliction of duty in providing that primary care, causing that potentially catastrophic collapse in primary health care in Victoria and around Australia – as was seen in New South Wales – that prompted the state governments to intervene and set up these facilities, despite the fact that the federal government remains at least technically responsible for the funding of them. It is good to see that the current federal Labor government has put its hand up to join the call, so to speak, and contribute by co-funding at the very least, even if not fully funding, these urgent care clinics. It is something that I very much look forward to seeing them take more of a role in to fulfil and acquit their responsibilities in this space.

It is not just urgent care clinics, though. If I look at my own electorate and the investments in health infrastructure, I can see right now major works occurring at Casey Hospital. What was opened about 20 or 25 years ago as quite a small, hospital on the then outskirts of Melbourne is now catering to a rapidly growing population in the Casey–Cardinia region. That hospital is going to benefit enormously from the new emergency department that is being built right now, as we speak. I know from speaking with many people from within my own family the impact that that will have, going from an emergency department that was at its limit. This government is making the investment. As the south-east grows, we are growing our healthcare infrastructure with it, and this emergency department will be absolutely terrific for the region.

We have seen the opening of the Cranbourne Community Hospital as well. This is an absolutely incredible facility that the member for Cranbourne has been hard at work advocating for. As she frequently reminds me, she also advocated to ensure that there would be no parking charges at this hospital, making it one of the very few hospitals in Victoria where you can get absolutely free parking. Certainly in metropolitan Melbourne it is something that her community see – and they have seen her advocacy for that – as so central to not just getting the hospital but getting all the services in there, such as dietetics, dentistry and other things, those ancillary healthcare services in the community hospital, providing those benefits to people in the day surgeries as well, but particularly the accessibility for the community, and the free parking certainly adds to improving accessibility.

In this year’s budget we have also committed to opening a new urgent care clinic in the Cranbourne Community Hospital, which is going to be transformative. We already have one in the City of Casey, but with a population of probably well over 400,000 people right now, the City of Casey is on track at some point to overtake the population of Tasmania. We have one in the north in Narre Warren, and now with a forthcoming one in Cranbourne this will be a game changer for the local community. Certainly on the many times I have been out chatting with locals in and around Cranbourne with the hardworking local member Pauline Richards we have had many, many excited people who were very keen to hear about the new urgent care clinic at the community hospital.

Whilst this side continues to invest in and promote and support these essential services, the essential services and infrastructure that our growing south-east needs, we have seen, rather disappointingly, these services and in particular the Cranbourne Community Hospital being attacked by those opposite who are calling it a fake or not real hospital. That just goes very, very sadly to underscore the risk that we do have at the forthcoming state election, because when we have a party who seeks to claim government ridiculing a very recent but already very valued community healthcare facility, we know when they are facing a $40 billion black hole in their spending what that is going to mean, because that is going to mean privatisation, closures or cuts – frankly, take your pick.

We know because in the very electorate of Cranbourne we have seen this before from the Liberal Party. Back in the 1990s – some members may not be aware of this – the Cranbourne ambulance branch was in fact the first and thankfully the only ambulance branch in the entire state which was privatised. It was privatised by the Kennett government, by the Liberal Party. It was a fiasco. It was a disaster. What we saw was the paramedics having to beg neighbouring public units for simple medical equipment, such as bandages. It undermined services to the community at a time when Cranbourne was a fraction of the size it is now. We know that the Liberal Party has a track record of selling off, cutting, flogging off health infrastructure and health services in the south-east and in particular in Cranbourne. And we know from their statements repeatedly in this place and on social media attacking the Cranbourne Community Hospital that the community would be very well within their rights to question what the risk would be of that side being in charge and what they would do to close or sell off the Cranbourne Community Hospital. It is a risk that I know the community does not want to accept and one that the local member Pauline Richards will be fighting against every day to see that this hospital is not just retained but improved.

As I mentioned, the opening of the urgent care clinic that will be delivered under this Labor government, as well as the rollout of 10 free dental clinics across the state, is what Victorians can expect from a re-elected Carroll–Williams Labor government, because that is the track record of a government that has invested in health services, whether it is in the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department, whether it is in the urgent care clinics or whether it is in opening a new ambulance branch just up the road from the Cranbourne Community Hospital in Clyde North just a few years ago, a terrific new four-bay facility that is already catering to thousands of calls each and every year. These are the investments that we have made and that we will continue to make, and we will jealously guard those vital pieces of community infrastructure that are already in place, because we know how much the community relies on them.

If I turn to education, we have spoken many times about Best Start, Best Life and free three- and four-year-old kinder. Both of these things have, again, been relentlessly attacked by those opposite and by – sadly, she is not here at the moment – Mrs McArthur, who has ridiculed free three- and four-year-old kinder, which just goes to show again a clear warning sign of what we can expect to be cut, something that saves families thousands of dollars a year, not only providing world-class education to our young developing minds but also providing meaningful cost-of-living relief through our rollout of kinders on school sites such as Topiram Primary School in my electorate in Clyde North and Lysterfield Primary School in a different part of my electorate. We are seeing the investment that these facilities make to support parents but also to provide that wonderful pathway from early education straight into primary school in a comforting and welcoming environment.

The investments in free kinder are transformative and, again, are very much at risk from what a Liberal or a One Nation–Liberal government would do. They would seek to cut that away from working Victorian families, Victorian families such as mine in the south-east, who can least afford to have those cuts inflicted upon them. When it comes to schools, we have built in just the past 10 years 100 new schools across Victoria, six of those in the past four years in the suburb of Clyde North alone – four primary schools and two high schools.

Ann-Marie Hermans interjected.

Michael GALEA: Mrs Hermans is objecting, and it is quite remarkable that she is objecting to six new schools being built. While the same Liberal Party is opposing development in areas such as Kew and Camberwell, there is a surplus of classroom capacity that is requiring us to focus more and more of our development in the outer-suburban areas. We are meeting that demand. Where we have current peaks with new families moving into suburbs such as Clyde North, you actually see the long-term planning to provide the permanent classroom facilities for that long-term expected need whilst providing the additional near-term temporary accommodation given the current influx of young families in those suburbs. It is a sensible way to plan.

From the objections from across the aisle, I cannot help but wonder whether the two or three new schools in the Clyde North area committed to in this year’s state budget will be in fact continued or axed under a dreaded prospective Liberal–One Nation government, because if they are objecting here in the chamber, again this can be used as a useful indicator for one of the many things that they will seek to cut. We have seen a very firm commitment when it comes to school funding as well from the Premier to acquit the full Gonski funding. We do now have, as a result of the successful EBA negotiations with Victorian teachers, a situation where Victorian teachers have gone from being some of the lowest paid to being the best paid in the nation. It is a worthy recognition of the fact that we have seen Victorian students get their best results in NAPLAN for a second year running, setting a new Victorian record but also setting the national record for the best results in NAPLAN. You can laugh and snigger and mock, but if you are sniggering at and mocking the achievements of our young people that our teachers have worked so hard to achieve, that would be very disappointing.

We are very proud to have invested in our teaching workforce, and we will continue to do so, just as we will continue to invest in the infrastructure and the capital. Those 100 new schools that I mentioned: one out of every two new schools built in the entire country over the past seven years has been built in the state of Victoria. For a quarter of the population, half of the new schools have been built in this state. That is the track record that we will seek to build on as we continue to build the Education State. Of course I have not even gone to tertiary education and talked about free TAFE. Again, there is the transformative impact that it can have on young people in honing a new skill and finding a new career, giving them every opportunity to have the best start. I have not even gone into transport, which would take another 15 minutes, I am sure. I thank you for giving me the time to talk today.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (14:58): I am pleased to rise to speak to this take-note motion on the budget, the budget that was delivered in May this year. I am very happy to come and speak on this and outline not only my grave concerns for regional Victorians in the state’s budget but an alternate budget and an alternate vision for Victorians at the state election. The reason why we are here and the reason why we are doing this, in a sense – to the outside world, who cast a casual eye over this place – is because the government has not got its act together on a very important piece of legislation known as the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission Amendment Bill 2026. The government is ratting around trying to coordinate and organise its amendments, which should have been done days ago. The legislation is really important. It must pass this house tonight, so I am endorsing the passage of it; I am just not sure why we have not been able to start debating it today and get it done.

However, I am very pleased to speak about the issues in the budget that impact not only Eastern Victoria but regional Victorians. Acting President Broad, you well know that the Nationals have an undiluted focus on rural and regional Victoria. ‘Is it good for rural and regional Victoria?’ is our mantra, and we place our focus on that right across the state and indeed in the 2026–27 budget. What is not good for regional Victoria or any of Victoria is a net debt projected to be $199.3 billion by 2029–30. We can round up, because I am sure by that time, if the trajectory continues, it will be over $200 billion worth of debt. I do not know how normal people can picture what that looks like, but it is frightening. If you have been in small business like I have, owning and running a small business in regional Victoria, or if you have got a house or if you are wanting to invest, you know that debt is important. We know that debt is something that many people have and governments need to have, but it has got to be balanced with fiscal responsibility. This government over the past 11½ years has not been fiscally responsible. Indeed the debt is increasing by approximately $1.65 million every hour. That is a burden that is going to impact people, who are already in a cost-of-living crisis, for decades to come.

I speak to many people in my electorate, and they say, ‘Melina, you need to get in and turn this state around, but when you get in, how are you going to cope with that debt? How are you going to do it? It’s going to be a basket case.’ These are the concerns of residents in my electorate. The answer to that is that we must take the reins. We must take over. We must return to fiscal responsibility. We must return to discipline. We certainly have not only a 10-year economic plan – if I could use a prop, like some of those do, I would hold this up, but I am not going to; I am going to read from it – but we have a plan to turn this state around with discipline. It is important we do that without overburdening our communities or cutting frontline services. We hear from the other side this sort of scaremongering. We will put a hold on, we will stop, the back-end jobs. We will put a freeze on those public service jobs. No-one will lose their job. We will do that over that 10-year period and save $20 million. This is very important.

What we will not do is stand by and see any more small businesses in our beautiful suburbs – in my patch, towns and communities – go out of business. We do not want to walk down our streets and note that that was a dress shop, that was a hairdressers and that was a coffee shop, and they have had to go under because they simply could not withstand some of the 67 new or increased taxes that have occurred since Daniel Andrews stood on the steps of Parliament in 2014 and said that he would not implement or inflict any new taxes. Well, that has been a fallacy. Here we are today, only some 65-odd days out from an election, and we have got 67. It is probably more than that, but it may well be around 67. We have seen payroll tax double, we have seen land tax bills quadruple and we have seen the government claim in this budget to have a surplus while recording a $7.7 billion cash deficit.

What have regional Victorians been doing all this time? Well, we power the economy. We provide agricultural goods and horticultural goods that nourish our state and that make sure we can export, not only interstate but overseas, the best quality produce that this country produces. It is highly valued and highly marketable. We do that. We produce energy. Down in my electorate of Eastern Victoria Region in Latrobe Valley we still produce energy that is keeping these lights on. This government has botched an energy transition and will continue to botch it if we are not careful.

We have seen the closure of the native timber industry – a sustainable, evolving industry that was providing localised hardwood timber for our mills and communities. If you go to Orbost, you will see – I spoke about those closed businesses – it has had a material impact on beautiful Orbost and many others. This has happened in this government. We see some budget papers in relation to forest transition. I had a look at some of the forest transition payments the other day, and I think some of them were to do with a small business involved in imaging in a local town and community. I am all for providing grants to community, but when there are people directly impacted – I am thinking of a transport operator out of Orbost that was a second tier, and he has not got a cent out of this government – then you have to ask: why is it botching it even further? It is creating an expectation, and then people have had to work so hard putting in submissions and grant applications to be turned down, with then some rather interesting choices. I value all of our small businesses, but when the government has directly impacted those small businesses as a result of this policy, not as a result of poor management or not being productive in their environment, then this government has a huge indictment on it.

There is also freight tourism. I often hear that we are going to see more ecological tourism. I love tourism. In eastern Victoria – Dr Heath knows it – we have some of the most beautiful locations, from Omeo down to Wilsons Promontory, Phillip Island and the Ninety Mile Beach and everywhere in between. It is a beautiful place to go and visit. You cannot shut down industries and say, ‘Here’s a little bit of sugar,’ and lo and behold there is environmental tourism. They can happen concurrently.

We also need to see – this is in my shadow portfolio – tracks open. Do you know the fantastic location at Wilsons Prom? I am trying to think of the name of it. It is a beautiful little location where the track into Sealers Cove took about six years to rebuild. If this is what this government calls making sure that it is open and accessible, I will go he. That is unacceptable. We also know that in the electorate of my colleague the soon-to-be-retired Tim Bull – of the soon-to-come-on-board Gemma Rendell – the bushfires impacted that area so significantly in 2019 to 2020, and they are still waiting for cabins at Cape Conran to be rebuilt. If this is a government that has any eye on regional Victorians, again I will go he.

On this side we know that we want to see a fair share for regional Victorians. A Jess Wilson and Danny O’Brien government will ensure that a minimum of 25 per cent of the infrastructure spend will be spent in regional Victoria on 25 per cent of the population, and that is what we make up. We do our heavy lifting in the economy. We do our heavy lifting in prosperity. We need that response back. We will ensure that our CFAs are properly resourced and have the appliances they need, not 27-year old appliances, as we heard in Ruffy from those that fought the fires and in Inverloch, where the pumper tanker is I think about 29 years old. The day I was there – thank you very much to the Inverloch CFA – I could put my finger through a rusty hole on the pumper. These are some of the things that the Liberals and Nationals are going to do – 25 per cent. All of those need to be addressed.

Then we look to hospitals, and across the benches we hear how important the health system is. I thank my colleague and our Shadow Minister for Health for being so vigilant and so dedicated in her work. We have solutions to take that frightening list of 86,000 people off surgery waitlists. We have heard time and time again about the need for that. We know that we have a plan. We have a plan to start and complete the build of the West Gippsland Hospital. At the last election Daniel Andrews said, ‘Guess what, people of Narracan, you can have a new hospital. The old one is very old, and people have to work in it under very difficult conditions.’ Lo and behold, there is nothing. There is still a greenfield site donated by a very kind person years ago. The Liberals and Nationals will build it. We will also do stages 2 and 3 of the Wonthaggi Hospital. And we know that health is important, so we are going to incentivise our doctors, nurses, midwives and allied health workers to come out to the country so that they can see and understand and help supply our workforce needs. These are just a few of the things we will do.

I could go on about crime. The crime stats I think came out today. We know, sadly, in the beautiful region of Latrobe Valley those crime stats are alarming. We know that youth crime is still up. We know that car theft is up. I heard from one of my local constituents in Leongatha that their work vehicle was stolen in broad daylight only a few weeks ago. This should not happen. Very tragically we are seeing knife incidents with youths on the streets of the Latrobe Valley as well. We need to make this change. Victoria needs to make this change.

Let me just briefly, in the last few minutes, talk about roads. It is one of the primary concerns of all regional Victorians. Walk out the door, get in your car, drive down a highway and you will take your life into your own hands. Danny O’Brien and our Nationals and Liberals shadow cabinet have made the commitment to all Victorians of a 25 per cent uplift in road maintenance funding. We are going to eliminate 1 million potholes, and they are going to stay fixed. What we have seen over time is there is a bit of blue metal thrown in them and then the next week or after the next rain they are done. We need a better system. We need better contracts. We need better oversight. We will have Better Roads Victoria under a Wilson and O’Brien government. I am very excited about this.

This budget that we are debating today is from a tired government mired in debt and smeared with the corruption and waste of the Big Build – $15 billion wasted. We need a fresh start. We need a fair share for regional Victoria, and that is exactly what you will get if you vote for the Liberals and the Nationals this 28 November.

 Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:13): I also rise to speak on the budget take-note motion that was brought to this house in June. As we are about to finish up today in the 60th Parliament, I think it is really important that I address a number of issues as quickly as I possibly can. For a start, I think we need to remember that Victoria simply cannot continue on the path that it has been on all this time. It really does need a fresh start. It needs a transparent government. It needs a government that honours democracy. It needs a government of integrity. It needs a government that is going to show the people where their money is actually being spent.

I have had to listen to both Ms Richards in her speech that she gave in the other place and Mr Galea across the chamber speaking about the Cranbourne hospital. Let us talk about the Cranbourne Community Hospital. They are very upset because I have said it is not a real hospital. I remember in 2018 I was running for Cranbourne against Ms Richards. She won, of course, and has been the member for Cranbourne all this time. In that election she promised the community a hospital. A hospital will have an emergency department. A hospital will have beds. A hospital will have urgent care, and medical needs will be able to be met. A hospital will allow people to rock up and get medical attention.

The Cranbourne Community Hospital, which was an election promise in 2018 by Labor, is not a real hospital. If Labor made the effort to be that little bit more local, they would discover through their people and their MPs that it is not a real hospital. You cannot rock up there for urgent care. You cannot rock up there for a bed. You cannot rock up there for an emergency department. It does not have any of these things. The allied health services were up the road about 100 metres and perfectly happy there. In fact off the record I have been told by a number of these services and those that work in that area that they enjoyed working at the other facility more than the one they are currently at because it was more fit for purpose. This so-called hospital that your taxes have paid for has been built in such a way that you could think it was a hospital if you were driving past, a little mini-hospital.

I might add that they talk about free parking. Let me tell you that area has always had free parking because there is a library that is there for the people, so of course it has free parking. And if they take away that free parking for this fake hospital, it will be an outrage. It is there for allied health services, and the allied health services had free parking. If you take away the free parking and make people pay, when they already had access to free parking for the allied health services in the first place, 100 metres up the road in a building that was fit for purpose, it does not make any sense. It is certainly not going to help them in the election.

All I say is that your taxpayers money has been used and a whole lot of promises have been broken or have not been delivered. They promised 800,000 houses would be delivered over 10 years. Have they been delivered? We are nowhere near that vicinity. We have a record waiting list of about 60,000 people waiting for social and public housing, people in great need. And that number continues to increase because domestic violence is continuing to increase because under this government we have had so many taxes brought in and we have so much congestion and so many potholes on our roads that it is very, very stressful for the average Victorian. People that are in high-mortgage areas are suffering, their families are breaking down and their home life is breaking down. And in those areas where there is high mortgage stress we have a situation where there is an increase in domestic upheaval. Some of that is resulting in the police coming out, and now we have a number of fathers locked up and unable to see their children. I just see a complete breakdown in the fabric of our society. We have an increase in youth crime, and some of that crime is potentially being facilitated by poor decisions being made by this government.

The budget does not really show transparency in where all the money is going. It is really interesting that an Institute of Public Affairs major report reveals that the state government and the Labor federal government in Australia have been intentionally eroding democracy by handing out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to fund a network of progressive-leaning advocacy bodies that engage in lobbying back to the government. In other words, your taxpayer money is going into so-called services that are then going to feed back into supporting the Labor government. These are not always genuine bodies that have been set up, and this is a major concern because that is really a poor use of taxpayers money. The average Victorian does not have to go very far before they hit potholes, before they drive past weeds or before they are in a situation where they are seeing their roads crumble before their eyes to see that the money that we have been told is going through the budget into our areas has not gone where it is supposed to go.

I have visited a number of the CFA brigades, and I know that some of them have trucks that are over 20 years old. In one case in Skye you can still sit on the back of its truck, and that is simply not good enough here in metropolitan Melbourne. I have been to Carrum. I know that they are waiting for their promised vehicles and a number of things that they have been promised. A number of these CFAs have been promised all sorts of things with these budgets, and they have all been delayed.

If we talk about schools, there are about 27 schools that were promised funding that has now been pushed forward into 2027, and that is the earliest that they may get that funding. These are schools in desperate need today. It is simply not good enough to say you are going to deliver things – to go to an election and promise the people that you are going to deliver X, Y and Z, like you did with the Cranbourne hospital, only to deliver a very expensive multimillion-dollar building on land that may no longer all be public land and that is also not a real hospital. It is the removal of the allied health services from up the road into a very expensive building. I do believe you have added a little bit of physio up there and some mental health services, but that is not a hospital. It is deceiving the public to say that you are using public funds for a particular purpose and then fixing it up by changing the definition of the word ‘hospital’ by adding the word ‘community’ in front of it, as if somehow that changes how you are using the money. You are going to still use the word ‘hospital’ so you can say, ‘Tick – I delivered on my promise.’ But you have simply brought to the people a very expensive building for the allied health services, and it is not one that is fit for purpose or one that they even asked for. This deception has to stop. This use of public funds inappropriately must stop. The only way that it can stop, of course, is if we get rid of this government.

It is time for a fresh start. I have had the great pleasure of working alongside Jess Wilson. I am very, very excited that the fresh start team, the Liberals and Nationals going into government at the end of this year, will be able to deliver a 10-year plan with less crime in the community; lower costs and lower taxes; lower government fees and lower charges; more transparency and more accountability; more investment in health, in education and local infrastructure; and a 25 per cent fair share guarantee for regional Victoria. It will not be a situation like we have had – and we are all feeling it – where almost $600 million goes off to Glasgow for a Commonwealth Games that the public were promised at the last election: ‘This is going to uplift regional Victoria. We’re going to build this and build that. You’re going to be benefiting from it.’ Well, they did not benefit from it at all. It was a huge broken promise to the public – a broken promise with taxpayers money – and in order to get out of the promise they sent off a whole lot of money. It was not just a little bit; $589 million went to Scotland so that they could hold the Commonwealth Games that were supposed to bring the money into Victoria and all of the tourists and all the people that would have been able to do business. We were supposed to flourish. The communities were meant to flourish by having new sporting facilities and new accommodation. None of it was delivered – nothing. They got nothing but a broken promise and a whole lot of money that got sent off to another country for people to enjoy the Commonwealth Games. That is not responsible government; that is irresponsible government.

I have in this place mentioned a ton of roads that have not been fixed, a ton of roads that were promised in budget promises, a ton of things that we were told would happen, but all we find in Victoria are cost blowouts. We have at least $15 billion of corruption in Big Build cost blowouts. What about the machete bins? What was that, $13 million? That could have fixed a couple of schools – maybe several of them – or rebuilt them. I know for a fact that these schools that are being built have got a situation where they still may have roof problems. They have playground inadequacies. In many cases they do not even have enough classrooms. It is just not good enough to have the money going off to corruption in these Big Build projects with nobody able to see exactly where it is going because they have clamped down to prevent anyone from finding out. It is simply not good enough. Crime is out of control in this state. Taxes are out of control. Businesses are leaving in droves: ‘Anywhere but Melbourne,’ they say. ‘Anywhere but Victoria. We cannot do business in Victoria. There are too many taxes. There’s too much red tape. It’s too hard. It’s too difficult. We can’t make money here. We can’t employ people here easily. It’s too difficult and we’re getting out.’

The state is in a situation which we have never seen before. This level of decay is the full responsibility of a failed Labor government, and you will be failing yourselves and your state if you vote for this government again. You cannot vote for Labor and the Greens again – you simply cannot. We need a fresh start. We need a Victorian Liberal–National coalition government so that your taxpayer money will go exactly where it is supposed to go and you will be able to see it. You will see it in action and you will see the difference. We will have 3000 more police and 200 more PSOs so that you will be safe at your stations and out in the community. We will make sure that you can see where that money is going. It is not going to be easy, because we know that when we get into government it will probably be far worse than what we have been able to see from opposition. It is not going to be easy. It is going to take everybody standing shoulder to shoulder and being prepared to do the hard yards and the hard work, but we can fix this state. Enough is enough. It is time for a fresh start.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:27): I rise to speak on the budget take-note motion. When this budget was delivered back in May, the then Treasurer Jaclyn Symes began her speech with words that I think are definitely worth repeating. She said:

For a long time in this country there’s been this basic deal: that if you work hard, do the right thing and look after your family, you’ll have the opportunity to build a decent life … You’ll have a safe home and a secure job, good schools and good health care when you need it.

Enver Erdogan interjected.

Renee HEATH: What was that? I think even he sees the comical aspect of this. We will go and reflect on this in a minute, so you just hold fire there. I will return to Minister Symes’s words:

You’ll be able to put enough food on the table.

Those were the then Treasurer’s words. I love the sentiment of those words, I really do. There should be a basic deal in Victoria: if you work hard, if you obey the law, if you raise your family, contribute to the community and do the right thing, there should be an opportunity to build a decent life. I am going to spend the next few minutes maybe measuring the outcomes of the policies of this government against those ideals.

First of all, you should have the opportunity to build a decent life and to work hard to get ahead. This would have been a lot easier before the government either added or increased taxes 67 times in the state of Victoria. That would have been a whole heap easier. The reality is that in Victoria today there is more debt than New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland combined. Then she went on to say that you should be able to afford a home. Property prices across the state of Victoria have increased dramatically due to the ever-increasing property taxes and the higher building costs due to Labor’s mismanagement of the construction sector and the planning systems. What we are going to do to address this – I completely agree with the then Treasurer’s words; unfortunately, it is not happening in the state of Victoria – is restore the dream of home ownership. There is nothing better than seeing a young person work hard, save up and see their dreams fulfilled. What we are going to do is, first of all, scrap the emergency services levy or volunteer tax.

John Berger: What’s going to pay for things, then?

Renee HEATH: A great question by Mr Berger.

Members interjecting.

Renee HEATH: I am not calling a point of order. I do not mind a little bit of interaction. It is good to have a bit of life in here, because half the time they sit there reading. Remember that time when Mr McIntosh picked up his speech and said ‘Talking points for’ and the name of the bill? So I do not mind when they get out of it and use a bit of their own brain for themselves; it is good.

What we are going to do is scrap the emergency services and volunteer tax. We are going to exempt first home owners from paying stamp duty up to $1 million. We are going to deliver land tax relief and we are going to release land in growth areas. These are things that make a real difference. But going back to what the then Treasurer said, I am also going to talk about why all these pieces of the puzzle begin to come together. It has become almost impossible to own a house, to become a first home owner in Victoria, for many reasons. But I am going to reflect on what Mr Watson said when he was giving evidence about the corruption on the Big Build, the CFMEU and government worksites. You guys know this well, but I will remind you. These are the flow-on effects. He said that the flow-on effects reach ordinary Victorians renovating their homes, because tradies cannot compete with wages inflated by union standover tactics on government projects. He said that on 31 July this year. I agree that you should be able to work hard. You should be able to build a home. But Labor has not created the policy environments and the economic environment to actually be able to do that. We will.

The next thing the then Treasurer went on to say was that you should be able to feel safe in your home. We completely agree – you should be able to feel safe in your home. Yesterday the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office handed down its Preventing Youth Crime report, and there were some pretty shocking details in there. This one is amazing. I thought, ‘What a sorry state of affairs.’ It says a total of 236,727 Victorians, or 3.3 per cent of the state’s population, were victims of crime, committed by offenders of all ages, between June 2024 and June 2025 – 3.3 per cent in one year. If this is correct, that is absolutely shocking. This was 17 per cent more than the previous year. But imagine that – between June 2024 and June 2025 over 3 per cent of Victoria’s population became victims of crime. What the heck? And this is something –

Members interjecting.

Renee HEATH: No, I am serious. That is a staggering number. It is so hard to believe, but it is there in black and white, done by an independent investigator, not a member of the Liberal or Nationals parties. That is just pure data – no propaganda. It is not what you guys do when you bring out the numbers and say, ‘Oh, it’s actually doing really well. Crime’s going down.’ No, things have gotten so bad for people in Victoria. That is why we are going to increase the police force by 3000.

John Berger interjected.

Renee HEATH: We are. We have done it before.

John Berger: Where are you going to get them from?

Renee HEATH: I just love these things. All right, guys, let us go back a decade. Here we go. We did it last time we were in government. We were only in government –

John Berger: How long ago was that?

Renee HEATH: Yes, great question, because we did it then and there are often a lot of questions. I am glad I have got this little folder of facts, because it is very handy when dealing with you boys. By November 2014, compared to when we came into government in November 2010, the net number of sworn full-time equivalent police in Victoria had increased by – do you want to have a guess?

John Berger: Well, you’re telling the story.

Renee HEATH: I am – by 1975. So not only did we set a target, we exceeded it by 275. Then there was a net addition of protective services officers of over a thousand, 1020 – 80 more than we promised. Not only did we set a target, we delivered it and we exceeded it. We did it then, and we will do it again. We are going to increase the force by 3000. We are going to put the PSOs back on stations that the Labor government took them off – 119 stations – in the middle of a crime crisis.

Enver Erdogan interjected.

Renee HEATH: Great question, Mr E. No, we are not taking them out of shopping centres, we are adding an extra 200. That is what we are going to do. We have done it before; we will do it again.

While the Treasurer says in the document that we are talking about today that you should feel safe in your home, crime has absolutely skyrocketed. It has gone through the roof. In that year alone over 3 per cent of the entire population were victims of crime. That is unacceptable. That is why, as well, we are going to reopen over 43 police stations; it was 43 at one stage. Premier Ben Carroll came out when he first took the job and said they would not close a single police station. Well, the next week he did close two: straight after, he did it. You sort of wince at it. You feel awkward, don’t you? You feel awkward because you are like, ‘Oh, why does he have to say these things in public and then go and do the opposite so soon?’ I almost feel rude. It is like I am playing a really good tennis player; I am playing Sam Groth, for instance. There is no way that I am even going to be able to be competitive: he is just going to smash me. Sometimes that is how it feels when the Premier says something so obvious and then demonstrates that it is not true. You should feel safe in your home.

We are going to be tough on offenders, but we are going to be smart on prevention. I am so excited about the plan for that. How are we going to do that? First of all, our adult time for adult crime policy is going to have teeth. We are going to have 25 crimes in that, unlike Labor’s version, which does not even have rape and does not have arson; it does not have these things in adult time for violent crime. And when it was tested, all charges were dropped. But we are going to make sure that has teeth.

We are also going to invest $100 million into a safer communities plan, which will rehabilitate kids and give them off-ramps, something that I am so passionate about. There is nothing better than when you sit down with somebody who has turned their life around – who was walking down a path of destruction, yet they have turned it around. It is going to happen more and more in this state, because at the moment, according to this – this is a staggering number, and there is a lot that could be said about this – there are almost 27,000 alleged youth offenders currently in Victoria, 26,977 alleged youth offenders. The fact that that is happening and the fact that when these kids start being disconnected from school and nothing is done and then they go and they commit petty crimes and nothing is done and it is like they just build up and trade up their crimes until all of a sudden you see these kids locked up is devastating. You have got to begin to let kids know that they are worthy of more than that, and that starts at school. That starts with giving families proper supports, and we are going to do that.

I wish I had more time, because some people in here will say, ‘Well, how are you going to do that?’ Well, you can read our plan online, if you like. We are going to stop the revolving door of bail. We are going to introduce one strike and that is it. There are certain crimes that, when committed, if those people are on bail – you break bail, you will go to jail. None of this ‘Oh, well, let’s consider it.’

Enver Erdogan: What if they’re later found to be innocent – the presumption of innocence?

Renee HEATH: No. There are certain things, because community safety comes first. I am very excited that Frank Schiefler in Hastings has worked so hard to secure a commitment to have a 24-hour police station there. I am so excited about that. But it is not about me, it is about the people there that he is representing. It is incredible, because it was not long ago, and I raised it in this place, that in Hastings there was a particular criminal that was locked up that was targeting kids with disabilities. I could not believe it. That was completely egregious to me. Parents, people, community members in Hastings, were saying, ‘This guy’s getting out, and we are scared.’ We are going to restore that feeling of community safety and security, and one of the things that we are going to do towards that – there is much more; you can look at our website, Mr Berger, if you like – is make sure that there is a police presence, that there is somewhere you can go where you will not rush there and meet a locked door. No, you can go there and you can find a place of safety.

The next thing that the then Treasurer went on to say is that you should be able to find a secure job. I agree you should, and that is exactly why we are going to invest in people. In Victoria skill shortages are holding us back. That is the truth. We will equip Victoria for the future with advanced jobs in manufacturing and technology. We are going to make sure that the best opportunities for training can be found here. We are going to back small business. In this state 350 small businesses close every single day. One of the messages, a very strong message, if we are blessed to take government will be ‘Victoria, we are back open for business.’

Another thing that the Treasurer then said was that you should have access to good schools, good hospitals and emergency services when you need them. I agree you should. Do you know what would have helped that? The government delivering on its promise to Warragul for the West Gippsland Hospital and not breaking its promise to Wonthaggi for the upgrades. There was recently a fascinating article entitled ‘Show us the money: minister called out on $290M Wonthaggi Hospital promise’. It was so good. This is the subheading:

Two months out from the November 2022 … election, former Premier Daniel Andrews pulled off a masterstroke in the campaign for the highly marginal electorate of Bass that almost certainly won … the seat.

But then it goes on to say:

However, given the … state of the government’s finances today, doubt is being cast over the ability of the Allan Government to deliver on that key election promise.

John Berger: Where are you reading that from?

Renee HEATH: The newspaper. You should read it some time. What we are going to do is restore – (Time expired)

Motion agreed to.