Matter of Public Importance
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:41): I am very conscious of the rules and traditions around this house and that you are not allowed to use a certain word that suggests untruths. I wonder how an entire MPI can be put forward by the member for Mordialloc that is based on a complete untruth. Seriously, this is just Labor Party fantasy put into an MPI and then used to try and attack the opposition. I mean, where is the $40 billion? Can someone on the opposition side, please, in their contribution provide the independent advice that shows that there is a $40 billion proposal by the opposition? It will not be there. I am disappointed that the Minister for Regional Development has gone, but it is like the Minister for Regional Development’s media release a couple of weeks ago on this very issue where she said ‘independent economists have said’ but did not name who they were. She did not provide any evidence as to who these independent economists were. It just goes to show this government has got nothing better to say. After 12 years of being lectured by this government about all the wonderful things they were doing, here we are, five months to the election: what have they got? They are talking about us. It is just emblematic of a government that has run out of ideas; a government that, I might add, is running scared; a government that is not even sure that its Premier is going to be its Premier tomorrow, let alone next week; and a government that is embarrassed about its legacy.
I am disappointed in the member for Mordialloc. I thought he had a bit more spunk to be able to get up and say something wonderful about what this government is doing. But, no, here we are five months from an election, with Victorians wanting to hear what the big plan from the Labor government is and what we are going to hear from them for the next four years. What they have for us is a big scare campaign, talking about One Nation. Who is worried about One Nation? I know who it is: it is those guys over there. It is that mob over there. I will tell you, member for Mordialloc, I back every one of my colleagues every day, and I am very confident that they will all be back here on 29 November. There are some up there who have not been doorknocking, some who have not been –
The SPEAKER: Leader of the Nationals, through the Chair.
Danny O’BRIEN: I am through the Chair. There are a lot of them. Were you on the list, Brooksy? The minister at the table was not on the list, thankfully. There were 23 of them, I believe, who have not been doing it. The member for Laverton is having a good laugh, but you are on the list, member for Laverton. That is a bit of a concern too.
The SPEAKER: Leader of the Nationals, through the Chair.
Danny O’BRIEN: I apologise, Speaker. I keep getting excited. This is what we see from the Labor government. When they are under pressure, they do a big ‘look over there’. They just say, ‘Don’t look at what we are doing, we’re going to talk to you about something else.’
That is what they are doing here. I was reminded by the member for Evelyn just before I got up that when it comes to the so-called cuts there is only one party in this chamber who has been doing cuts recently. I was reminded of that wonderful video clip from a press conference a few weeks ago where the Channel 7 journalist said, ‘You’re saying that the cuts are coming from the opposition, but didn’t you just cut some public servants?’, and the Premier said, ‘Yes, we did’. He said, ‘How many? Was it hundreds?’, and the Premier said, ‘No, thousands.’ So thousands of public servants cut by Labor – that is okay. No problem at all, Victorians. When the Labor Party does it, it is all good. But when the opposition proposes something very reasonable, then that is bad. When I say ‘very reasonable’, what our policy is –
Danny Pearson interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: And look, feather dusters should not be speaking at the moment, when they have been part of the problem. Feather dusters who were yesterday’s heroes should not be speaking. They should not be piping up right now, because they have got a pretty bad record to look back on, when there have been thousands of cuts. The opposition, the Nationals and the Liberals, have got a 10-year plan to actually get our budget back under control after this mob has left it with $200 billion of debt – $11 billion of interest we are heading for every year. That is more than what this mob spends on police, on ambulance services and on kindergartens – $11 billion. Imagine what that could do. Imagine what that could do for your community, what it could do for the member for Morwell’s electorate, for the member for Lowan’s electorate. You could get a train, member for Lowan. The member for Ovens Valley could get dialysis at Cobram – half promised by the government but never actually delivered. The member for Evelyn could get the roads sealed – the ones that were funded by the former coalition government federally and then taken away by the current Labor government. Those are things that could be done if we did not have to spend $11 billion on interest.
That is why the Nationals and the Liberals have got a 10-year plan, and it is a very simple plan to save some money, which this government, naturally enough, has tried to turn into some horrendous thing. It is a freeze on the back office for the Victorian public service. Anyone who has got a job there now will continue to have a job, but we will not be putting on more, and that will save the budget bottom line $22 billion. That is not a cut. It is not a cut; it is just arresting the massive growth that has happened under this mob, including the former minister, the member for Essendon, and all of those who have been involved over the years who like to turn up for the cutting of the ribbon but take no responsibility for the fiscal mess that they have left this state in. We will do that. That will save us significant money. It will allow us to send a signal to the business community and investors that we are open for business in Victoria, by introducing changes to payroll tax – increasing the thresholds and reducing the rate – and by increasing the thresholds for land tax back to what they used to be before Tim Pallas said we had to have a COVID recovery debt plan.
It was interesting that Tim Pallas had a COVID debt recovery plan but he did not have anything for the other $150 billion of debt that he created. There was no plan for that. So we will give relief on land tax. We will give relief on payroll tax. We will introduce a real-time budget tracker, because this mob have never even had a budget tracker at all, let alone a real-time one. The budget tracker for them is ‘How much can we just keep spending?’ That is how this mob has worked. So we will introduce that. We will do five tax reductions, including the emergency services tax – and this is where the Labor Party just make stuff up again. They look at our policy, which is to go back to the fire services property levy, but they just completely ignore that and say, ‘Oh, they’re cutting $1.6 billion.’ No, we are not. Again, the Labor government is trying to mislead Victorians on this stuff.
Another area where they have failed completely is on crime. There are 1500 vacancies as we speak. I bet you there are some in Point Cook, member for Point Cook. I bet you there are vacancies in Point Cook too. I know there are in the west. I know there are in Werribee, although the member for Werribee does not think there is a crime problem in Werribee. He thinks there is not an issue at all. We beg to differ. We know that in every corner of this state crime is a problem, and we know that the 1500 vacancies need to be filled and that we need more police on the beat. That is why we have committed to 3000 new police to tackle crime and why we have committed to ‘break bail, face jail’ to send a signal to the crooks that if you do the wrong thing and you are on bail, you will go to jail. We have heard the Premier say time and again we have got the toughest bail laws in the nation. Actually they are not even as tough as they were when you weakened them two years ago. That is just a fact.
We absolutely need to be tackling these issues. Most particularly from a Nationals perspective, we need to show some love to regional Victoria, because under this mob you would not think regional Victoria existed. We are getting 12 per cent; per cent of the infrastructure spend of the state government goes to regional Victoria. We are 25 per cent of the population, and that is why we have committed to the fair share guarantee – that we will give a minimum 25 per cent of our state’s infrastructure to –
Mathew Hilakari interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: Currently it is at 12 per cent, member for Point Cook. I know you might like to think so, but you are not regional Victoria. You would not have a clue about regional Victoria. This government just makes it up. They have to make it up because they have got such a terrible performance on the board for the last 12 years. Victorians have had enough. They are seeing through the spin. In fact they are not even listening to Labor anymore, and we will change the government on 28 November this year.