Second Reading
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (17:29): I am not even pleased to rise on this. I am here to speak on the Financial Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 and interested in being lectured by those opposite about financial management and transparency.
Members interjecting.
Danny O’BRIEN: I hear some warblings from the member for Mordialloc, who knows full well, as does the member for Yan Yean and others on that side, that I have done my penance of 10 years on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC), and frankly, to have the government on this side talking about financial management, particularly about transparency and accountability, just sticks in my craw somewhat.
As the member for Brighton indicated, there are some positive aspects to this legislation, but we should be aware of the genesis of it too. There are a couple of geneses of this legislation. Firstly, it is in part reflective of a piece of legislation from 2017 that ultimately lapsed after the 2018 election but more recently was announced as part of a review in the 2024–25 budget into the Financial Management Act 1994. I note from the briefing provided to the opposition on this bill that that review has not finished and neither is it to be released, and yet here we have a piece of legislation amending the Financial Management Act.
As I said, there are aspects of this that in principle are laudable and okay, but it is substantially weakened by the removal of some of the accountability measures that the member for Brighton highlighted, particularly through reduced budget reporting in election years, the removal of warrants and expanded discretionary exemptions for declared bodies. Whilst that is not the same as Treasurer’s advances, I note that once again at PAEC just gone the issue of Treasurer’s advances was a significant one as the government continues to use them in a manner that they were not originally intended for and in a way to effectively hide from the scrutiny of the Parliament when it comes to government spending.
I note this is in a situation where the state is now heading for, by 2028–29, $194 billion of debt. That will amount to interest payments of $29 million a day or $1.2 million per hour, and every one of us on this side knows that we could do very useful things with that sort of money if it was not going to interest payments. I hasten to add, debt is not a bad thing in itself. We all understand on this side that governments of all persuasions for all time have always raised debt, and it is not an issue in itself. Most households have debt of some sort, particularly with their mortgage. The issue, though, is when that debt gets out of control, and when our net debt level is at 25 per cent of gross state product – as I said, $194 billion we are heading for – I would suggest that it is in fact out of control. When 10 per cent of government expenditure will be going on interest repayments, that is 10 per cent that could be better spent on hospitals, on nurses, on schools, on teachers, on police, on fixing our roads, on addressing the shortage of fire trucks in the emergency services and on all of those things, those services and that infrastructure, that our state needs and instead is going towards interest repayments, not necessarily for good debt but to pay off blowouts. We see in the budget papers, if anyone cares to have a look at budget paper 4 and compare the original estimated investment on the capital projects versus the expected investment, that there is a $48 billion blowout in those costs. That becomes a very large chunk of that $194 billion of debt, and that is where I say it is that waste and mismanagement that is an issue.
I talk about transparency, and I mentioned the CFA there a moment ago. We saw an example of it in question time just now, which was a follow-up to events of the last couple of weeks in PAEC. We asked a simple question of the Minister for Emergency Services as to what the budget for the CFA is, and we could not get an answer to that simple question. Indeed we asked the question of the minister, in the context of the budget decision to introduce the new emergency services tax and tax Victorians an extra $3 billion over the coming out years: what is the budget then for our emergency services, and specifically the CFA? The minister told us on 15 May that that will be in the budget. That was not in the budget. There was no such figure in the budget. So we tried again today and once again still could not get an answer. We are at 17 June. The financial year starts in two weeks. I would expect that agencies like the CFA, the SES and Fire Rescue Victoria would all like to know what their budgets are.
The context of that is, as I said, that just before the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings began, the Treasurer published a notice in the Government Gazette which outlined the rates for the new emergency services tax and also outlined how much each of the recipients of the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund would get. Now, those figures were there in black and white in the official government paper signed by the Treasurer, and whilst they were only the allocations from the emergency services fund, they also included a column as to how much of the total funding for those agencies was coming from the emergency services fund. So we know that the government said that the CFA and VICSES were getting 95 per cent of their funding from that figure in the column next to them. In the case of the CFA it was $312 million – 95 per cent. That is what the actual gazette said, signed by the Treasurer, so we can very easily, in a simple calculation, work out what the base funding for the CFA is, which was $328 million.
When that was put to the Treasurer and to the minister and to the Premier at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings, each and every one of them said, ‘No, that is wrong.’ The reason they were saying it is wrong is that it is a significant cut. We know also, on figures from the Treasurer’s office, that the 2023–24 budget for the CFA was $370 million, so that is a nearly $42 million cut to the CFA if we take those gazette figures to be accurate. We also know that the Minister for Emergency Services at the time last year, who is now the Treasurer, in fact gave PAEC a figure for what the 2024–25 budget for the CFA would be – and that was $337.6 million. So either way you cut it, in the last two years the CFA has had a cut, and it is getting a cut again next financial year, 2025–26. I sat down after asking the simple question today, ‘How much is the base funding budget for the CFA in 2025–26?’ and I had the Premier yelling away at the table at me, saying, ‘We answered this question.’ No, they have not answered this question. That is the whole point of why we have been asking. And we get again today the Minister for Emergency Services refusing to answer the question. She actually said, believe it or not, ‘The figure will be reported in the annual report.’ Well, that is handy: after the fact. Six or 12 months after the actual end of the financial year the CFA is going to find out what its budget is and the public is going to find out what its budget is. That is laughable.
I say to the Premier and I say to the minister: if the figures that were published in the gazette about the budget for the CFA are wrong, tell us what the actual figure is. Neither the Premier nor the minister today nor the Treasurer in PAEC would tell us. and I think that tells Victorians everything we need to know. It is one thing for the government to say, ‘You’re wrong. There is no cut to the CFA or the SES or Fire Rescue Victoria.’ But if we are wrong, tell us what the true figure is. They have not done that It would be a very simple government political decision to actually tell us.
So we are looking now from 2023–24 to next financial year – 2023–24 being the last figures available: a $115 million cut to Fire Rescue Victoria; a $42 million cut to the CFA, as I said; an $8.5 million cut to VICSES, a $79 million cut to Triple Zero Victoria; and a $30 million cut to Forest Fire Management Victoria. This is the poor financial management of the government. They are taxing Victorians another $3 billion over the out years supposedly for emergency services, and yet our emergency services are actually being cut. The lack of transparency from the government on these issues today and over the past few weeks has been disgraceful.