Matters of public importance
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:42): It is disappointing that the member for Lara finished as she did, because I was going to give her a bit of praise because I thought that she actually spoke a bit about the matter of public importance. It was extraordinary. The member for Pascoe Vale put forward an MPI that talked about how the Allan Labor government was helping working families with the cost of living and then spent 99 per cent of his 15 minutes talking about the Liberal and National opposition.
Members interjecting.
Danny O’BRIEN: Exactly, just the Liberal opposition. You did not talk about us because we never do anything wrong, member for Pascoe Vale; that is right. It was quite extraordinary that here was 15 minutes for a member of the government to get up and talk about how they are helping Victorians with the cost of living, and what do they talk about? They talk about the opposition. They talk about what the opposition is doing. It is extraordinary that this government cannot actually talk about how it is addressing the cost of living –
Bridget Vallence interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: Because it is not – that is right, member for Evelyn. It is not addressing the cost of living. I would like to go through a couple of the things that they have talked about, because I have been around politics long enough to know that when you see a matter like this, you can pretty much read it straight out of the research, can’t you? They have used the words ‘cost of living’, and they have used the words ‘health’, ‘education’, ‘housing’ and ‘transport’. This is exactly what the government’s – well, perhaps the federal government’s – research is telling them. Maybe they just saved a bit on the most recent one given there is a federal election. ‘Hey, Albo, what are the issues we need to talk about?’ ‘Give us a bit of cost of living.’ ‘Righto, we’ll do that. Actually, we won’t do that, we’ll just talk about the opposition for the first 15 minutes.’ Anyway, when you have got nothing to say on cost of living because you have made it worse, that is probably what the member for Pascoe Vale would do.
The SPEAKER: Order! Through the Chair. Use of the word ‘you’ is a reflection on the Chair.
Danny O’BRIEN: Speaker, it was the colloquial use of the word ‘you’.
The SPEAKER: My ruling is my ruling.
Danny O’BRIEN: And I accept that wholeheartedly. I will go through a couple of the things that the government talks about in this matter of public importance, starting with health. Apparently that is going really well.
A member: Except in Albury.
Danny O’BRIEN: Yes, Albury. The people from Albury–Wodonga this afternoon would like to talk to how well the investments in health are going. But I can talk about my own electorate, where for a number of years now we have had the government talking about mergers, then talking about health service network plans, and then ruling out mergers. Indeed the Premier said only six months ago that she did not support mergers of our health system and our hospitals because that would be inconsistent with good patient care. So I was surprised to learn last week that the government was in fact backing a merger – not just of a few regional hospitals but of the Alfred hospital with Peninsula Health and, lo and behold, Bass Coast Health and Gippsland Southern. How is that going to go – Gippsland Southern, little old Leongatha and Korumburra, up against the might of the Alfred? Do you reckon that is going to result in better services for the people of Leongatha and Korumburra? I do not think so. That is one area.
The issues of ambulance ramping have been rampant, I might say, over the last couple of years. People could not get an ambulance when they called for one repeatedly over the last couple of years, and the performance measures, the actual response times for ambulances, have been appalling. On elective surgery, does anyone remember the Minister for Health saying, ‘We are setting a target of 240,000 elective surgeries next year. I won’t accept anything less’? Before they even had the opportunity to try and deliver it, they cut that and dropped their target back to 207,000. They clearly could not do it.
On education, the Minister for Education today talked about the massive amount of funding that they committed for new and upgraded schools at the last election. That included Leongatha Secondary College getting $11 million that no-one asked for. The school did not know what it was for. It had no plans for it. Lo and behold, here we are 2½ years into the term and it has not got any of that money or any upgrade. Sale College likewise are still waiting for funding on that. But more particularly on the cost-of-living issue, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority only a week ago listed the cost of public education across the nation, and was Victoria last? No, Victoria was not last. It did not have the highest. It had the second highest. Victoria has the second most expensive public education in the nation. The member for Pascoe Vale talked about cost of living and education – he did not, but he put it in his MPI – Victoria has the second-highest cost of government education in the nation.
They talk about transport. Let us have a look at the state of our roads. You want to talk about cost of living? How is it when you have got to go out and get new tyres all the time, get the shockers fixed? Two years ago there were more than 2000 claims from Victorians for damage caused by the roads. It was a 414 per cent increase over three years.
Bridget Vallence interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: It does cost them money, member for Evelyn. But the problem is that they do not actually get any money. They put in a claim. I think, of those 2000, one person successfully got a claim. That is transport. That is how they are going.
Housing is the one that I think is most critical, and it is actually a very important one for this place to talk about. There is nowhere better that demonstrates the differences in philosophy between the government and those on this side of the chamber, because we know that supply is critical. We know that when you add a tax as a cost to a particular economic function, that tax will be passed on, and the government does not seem to understand that. We had the former Treasurer two years ago say it is economics 101. I do not think he had actually ever done economics 101, because he certainly did not understand taxes, and we have had 60 new or increased taxes under this government since they came to office. Of those, 30 are on property, and let us go through a few of them: increased fire services property levy; introduction of foreign stamp duty; increased absentee landowner surcharge for foreign property; increased absentee landowner surcharge for foreign property again – a number of these are over and over in the budget; a new so-called vacant home tax; and a new stamp duty on off-the-plan purchases. Remember that one? That one was brought in in 2017, and then the government came out and made a big virtue of a few months ago saying, ‘We’re going to bring it back – for nine months. We’re going to bring back the off-the-plan stamp duty exemption that we took away in the first place.’ And apparently Victorians are going to be grateful for that because it is going to stimulate housing – unbelievable.
There is the new windfall gains tax on rezoned land; another increase in the fire services property levy; expanded land tax on unimproved residential land; the 43 per cent increase to domestic building insurance charges; increased land tax on landholdings above $300,000; introduction of land tax on landholdings between $50,000 and $300,000 as part of the so-called COVID debt recovery plan, which is not even going to deal with the COVID debt; a 53 per cent increase, again, to domestic building insurance charges; and, most recently and coming into Parliament tomorrow in the second-reading speech of the bill, the creation of the expanded Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund tax. This is one of the most egregious tax increases on this list of taxes, because the government are now trying to make a virtue of the fact that they are going to cover the SES with this new expanded volunteers fund. What they are also doing is throwing in Emergency Management Victoria, Forest Fire Management Victoria, Emergency Recovery Victoria and Triple Zero Victoria, all of which are core government services that have always been funded out of consolidated revenue. Now the government is going to try and save some money – because it cannot manage money and it has messed up the budget – and as a result it is going to tax Victorians further, particularly those Victorians with property. So for residential the rate will go from 8.7 cents to 17.3 cents per $1000 of capital improved value, a 100 per cent increase. For non-principal private residences there is also a 100 per cent increase. Non-principal private residences – who is that? That is landlords. That is rental providers. Do you think that they are not going to pass that on to renters? Commercial is going up 100 per cent. Industrial is going up 64 per cent.
Most egregiously, for primary producers it is going up 189 per cent. These are the people, in the main, that are already CFA volunteers and are already putting out the fires, doing it in their own time and supporting their community, and they are going to cop a 189 per cent increase in their fire levy under this government because Labor cannot manage money. That is a disgrace. That is where the distinction is with those of us on this side; we understand that increased taxes like these only get passed back into the community. The government does not seem to understand that. They do not understand that that is where the cost of living comes from.
I have not even got to energy because I have run out of time, and I note that the government did not mention energy. This is a government that does not understand the cost of living.