TRANSCRIPT:
Wow! Let us take it down a notch, and I will have my right of reply. It is my great pleasure to rise to speak on this motion moved by the Leader of the House and give a right of reply to the member for the backbench. I know the Leader of the House is elected to represent the people of Macedon, and I am sure, like my constituents in Euroa, the good people of Macedon electorate would rather see greater investment in regional services than the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) money pit at a time when families are struggling with the cost of living. It is actually worth touching on some of the words of the Auditor-General, who said:
… the high-level problems and benefits articulated in the SRL business case lacked necessary and sufficient supporting evidence …
This quote, to me, is a red flag warning of cost blowouts, something this government has become all too comfortable with. The Department of Treasury and Finance, using their objective guidelines, found the project had a benefit–cost ratio of 51 cents to every $1 invested. This is significantly less than the pie in the sky $1.70 quoted by the government.
We know numbers are not their strong point, though. What we do know is that this government has serious issues when it comes to accepting unbiased advice, as an investigation by the Ombudsman into the politicisation of the public service would suggest, as well as their continual efforts to dodge scrutiny. Not only are there serious issues with transparency and accountability across the government but also a strong record of cost blowouts and economic mismanagement, as we heard earlier. Victoria’s projected debt is set to total more than New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland combined, and yet we are being sold the virtues of a project that is projected by the impartial Department of Treasury and Finance to lose 49 cents in every $1. Let us not talk about money without talking about the impact that has on our Victorian lives. What we were told in 2018 was this whole project would cost up to $50 billion. Now the Parliamentary Budget Office, where these sorts of projects should be costed, something which this government may have forgotten, has put the cost at $200 billion, a quadrupling of what was originally promised, and it has not even commenced.
This motion states that Victorians resoundingly supported for the second time the Suburban Rail Loop, but I beg to differ with a little thing called facts. This might come as a shock to those opposite, but not all Victorians – I am shocked myself; I cannot speak – are Melburnians. And regional Victorians certainly could not be described as resoundingly supporting the SRL. This is a great opportunity for me to talk about newly elected members in this chamber – the member for Shepparton and the member for Mildura. Across northern Victoria the vote for the coalition increased by nearly 4 per cent while shrinking by 3 per cent for the Labor Party. We have added the wonderful Gaelle Broad as a member for Northern Victoria in the upper house thanks to this strong result. In Eastern Victoria, where we have the member for Gippsland South, the member for Morwell and the member for Gippsland East as well as Melina Bath in the upper house, the change is even more stark, with the Labor Party losing 7 per cent of their vote. Not once have I been contacted by anyone in my electorate asking me to throw my support behind this project that the government does not want to admit the full costs of – or the complete lack of return on investment that will come from it. But what people in my electorate have contacted me about is the dire state of the health system, run down by the government with $2 billion cut from Department of Health outputs in the last budget. These included cuts to emergency services, aged support services, drug treatment and rehabilitation services and mental health support services. It is an incredible slap in the face to our region when $200 billion is being set aside for a rail loop regional Victorians may never use.
Right across our region we have elective surgery waitlists through the roof, remaining stubbornly high, and the Australian Medical Association doubting the accuracy of the total waitlists. For people in my region their elective surgeries are usually completed at the Northern Hospital, Goulburn Valley Health, Bendigo Health and Northeast Health. The Northern Hospital’s category 1 waitlist is now nearly double what it was a year ago, and GV Health’s waitlist has increased by 166 individuals over the last quarter. You want to talk about caring for people; this is caring for people. We have seen the amount of people waiting over a year for essential surgery blow out, and the percentage of people not being treated within clinically recommended times is concerning. Rather than making Victorian health care the number one priority of the government, they have sent $30 billion down the drain on city infrastructure cost blowouts and will continue to lose vital taxpayer money because of this government’s incompetency to accurately estimate a project. We have a 000 system where ambulances are now arriving on average more than 3 minutes later in a code 1 emergency than in 2014.
This is people’s lives. We talk about you caring for individuals; manage your money so that you can care for individuals and address the health system crisis. Fixing these issues should be the absolute number one priority of the government, and yet they continually fail to understand that people in regional Victoria just want them to get back to basics. Back to basics means caring for all Victorians, making sure our communities can get the health care they need when they need it and making sure an ambulance actually arrives and, even better, arrives on time. These are bread-and-butter issues for state governments, fundamental KPIs that this government repeatedly fails to deliver.
We have got a community-owned hospital in Euroa Health that is fighting tooth and nail to secure its future. They are asking for an incredibly small sum of public recurrent funding to secure their long-term future, keep serving the people of the Euroa region and keep taking strain off GV Health, yet rather than getting a drop in the ocean in budgetary terms the people of Euroa are expected to be content with a rail project they will unlikely ever need. But safe and adequate health services are unquestionably something we all need.
In terms of rail infrastructure, what I have been regularly contacted about is the overcrowding of trains on the Seymour and north-east lines. With changes to the V/Line fare structure I hope the Victorian government has completed some modelling on the projected patronage increase that may occur as a result of reduced fares. Given recent budget outcomes and the lack of economic credibility this government has, I hope they are able to come to terms with supply and demand and that quality of service is not sacrificed, crowding is alleviated and investment in rolling stock is made to support growth in demand.
What I will outline is some essential regional infrastructure my electorate did vote for, because this motion is about election outcomes and the important issues that drove those votes. First and foremost in the southern end of the Euroa electorate is the Kilmore bypass. This project has stalled for eight years. Only two plots of land have been acquired, no full costings have been completed and no business case has been undertaken. Yet in that same period this government has planned and has begun the West Gate Tunnel – not without significant difficulties, mind you, and poor budgeting again – and dreamed up the Suburban Rail Loop project, with farcical costings during a cost-of-living crisis for Victorians. The Kilmore bypass is essential to the future of the town, and the government have sat on their hands purely through a complete lack of willpower. The people of Kilmore are absolutely not stopping me in the street asking for an update on a Metro rail loop, they are asking me for the bare minimum in regional infrastructure to protect the livability of the town. They are asking about removing B-double trucks from the main street of their town and improving the health and safety of the community.
We have schools in our region like Broadford Secondary and Seymour College that need funding to increase capacity or finish work that should have been done years ago. In Kilmore we have one of the largest towns in the state without a public secondary school, and I note that Mooroopna in the neighbouring electorate of Shepparton is probably another one of those towns. However, the government decided to shut their secondary school as well.
The last two years have seen cuts to road asset management in the state budget. While those opposite would talk about their post-floods roads investment, this is not betterment money, this is just funding to return the network to a below-average condition. In a future where all budget considerations need to bow before the Suburban Rail Loop, there is concern our road network will continue to fail country Victorians.
What continually frustrates people in regional communities is the complete failure of this government to do the simple things. People across the regions voted for policies like the Nationals regional infrastructure guarantee, which would have doubled new capital funding in regional Victoria thanks to a 25 per cent cut of all new capital funding. If members of the government think in the current climate people are desperate for a railway line that is decades in the future rather than receiving the bare minimum to improve the lives of Victorians, they are incredibly out of touch. The government’s priorities are clear. Funding the Suburban Rail Loop means either less money for health, education and basic state services or more record debt that will burden future generations of Victorians. The Andrews government does not govern for all Victorians. Rather than building these poorly costed projects, we need to see this government leave the metro boundaries and invest money in our regions and make decisions based on logic and need. This is what people want in country Victoria. This government believes its legacy will be the Big Build, but we can see that this government’s legacy will be its severe neglect of regional Victoria.