Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Government performance

Ms STALEY (Ripon) (16:58): Today, my grievance will be in two parts. First, I am going to grieve for Labor’s woeful, totally inadequate and now complete betrayal of the people of Ripon, and then I will move on to some remarks about the government’s corruption. I hope I have time. There are many things to cover.

If I start with my electorate of Ripon, so far the Labor government has not made a single commitment to the people of Ripon beyond this election. They clearly have given the seat away. They are not in any way offering anything up to the people of Ripon. The most recent media release, dated 20 September, I found somewhat amusing. It tells me that works are underway on the new Beaufort station car park. This was a commitment that the government made in 2018. It was clearly one that was dreamed up out of one of the Spring Street offices, because the Beaufort car park, which currently would have about 10 car spaces in it, never sees them filled. They are never filled. They certainly do not need an additional 40 spaces. The money that is being spent on that—there are many other projects in Beaufort alone that would be far more useful to the people of Beaufort and far more welcomed by the people of Beaufort. But no, as they say, they are getting on with it. Well, really they have had four years to get on with a project that nobody wants. They are now providing these 42 car spaces, somewhat to amusement on one side, but on the other side, ‘Really, couldn’t we have had something that we actually wanted?’

By contrast, the Liberal Party is committed to the people of Ripon, and I have had the great pleasure of making a number of announcements which we will implement when we come to government in November. I want to start with the Ballarat link road. This is a significant project—$278 million to finish the Ballarat link road. We will start with the duplication of Dyson Drive. That is between Remembrance Drive and the Ballarat-Carngham Road. That road is totally overwhelmed by the growth in Lucas and the western suburbs of Ballarat. It is the number one project for the City of Ballarat and for the group of Ballarat community organisations who came together to put their priorities to government and to opposition. We are going to deliver that project. The Minister for Roads and Road Safety has already come out and said that is not a priority for the government, so the people of Lucas and the people of Alfredton know they will not be getting a road under the Labor government. We will deliver one for them.

We will also put in buses every half hour from Smythesdale through to Delacombe in the CBD of Ballarat. Currently Smythesdale is really growing quite quickly, and that whole region only has a V/Line bus that goes three times a day. This will create opportunities for young people. It will also allow people to get to the doctor, because the two doctors in Smythesdale are no longer there. Labor has not found a way to replace them. Medical services in that town have now ceased, so at least people will be able to get to medical services.

We will also deliver a new sporting and community hub for Miners Rest. That is again a community that is growing really quickly and needs new sporting facilities and community facilities. We will adopt the town plan for Miners Rest. This is something that the previous Minister for Planning promised he would do. Unfortunately he is no longer the planning minister, and I am not sure that the current one is going to do it, but if it does not occur, we will get on with it.

We will provide $30 million for the St Arnaud hospital redevelopment, $1.9 million for Skipton’s football and netball clubrooms and $1.5 million for Dunolly’s Deledio pavilion. We will finish the $100 million Maryborough hospital. Again the government announced it with great fanfare in 2018 and has not turned a sod on that hospital project. We will finish it.

We will duplicate the highway to Ararat. That project has now been stalled for over eight years. The government is incapable of getting that vital Western Highway link completed. We will reroute the western transmission line and stop Labor’s AusNet towers through prime potato country, and this will secure 1300 jobs at McCain’s. And we will never build a terminal station at Mount Prospect, unlike Labor.

We will also deliver child care for Wedderburn, and that will be co-located at Wedderburn College. This is just the start of where we are going to get the facilities, the things that people need across Ripon, reinvesting in Ripon, which this government has neglected to do over its term. When we come to government, we will get on with these things and we will deliver them for Ripon.

I now turn to two additional pieces of information. I have got many more that are perhaps a bit older, but I am going to start today with an Auditor-General’s report that came out and looked at three projects that I will talk about. One is the Suburban Rail Loop—the Box Hill to Cheltenham rail line. Another is the airport rail link, and then there are two smaller roads projects. They are still substantial projects, though.

What the Auditor-General did was he used the usual ways to assess these projects, the accepted ways, the Department of Treasury and Finance guidelines, the way you should assess these projects—and what did they find? They found that on the Suburban Rail Loop, for every dollar the government spends, they will only get 51 cents back in economic value—only 51 cents back. This is yet another voice saying this project does not stack up for Victorians. It does not stack up. It never stacked up. Everything the government has done to try and make it look as if it stacked up has been underwritten by dodgy assumptions, self-serving assumptions, to try and make this project that was cooked up on the back of a coaster in an airport lounge look as if it was of any benefit to this state, but it is not. It is not a benefit to this state—51 cents returned for every dollar this government wants to waste on it.

We have said that fixing health is more important, and we will put all of the money into fixing Victoria’s health crisis. But that in itself will have a better return for Victorians—they will get a properly functioning health system—than the government putting it into the Box Hill to Cheltenham rail loop, which does not even stack up. It does not stack up. Similarly, the way the government is choosing to build the airport link—now, we support an airport link; we do not support the way they are going about it, though—is 48 cents in the dollar. An airport link should stack up if you build it with a proper cost structure. The reason this is looking so bad is that they have already blown the budget before they started. We know once they do start it will blow out even further. So the Auditor-General yet again has found that the way this government goes about it is not to the benefit of Victorians.

I also want to talk briefly about a perhaps not as well noticed report that came out from IBAC, the anti-corruption commission, and their strategic focus areas. It is in fact linked to what I was just saying about the infrastructure projects. IBAC said:

Major infrastructure projects across state and local government involve significant expenditure and corruption risks exist in the management and control of public funds.

It says, ‘What actions will IBAC take?’. They are going to report on corruption risks associated with major transport infrastructure projects. IBAC is very busy under this government—very busy.

Mr Battin: Just with this government.

Ms STALEY: That is right, member for Gembrook; perfect. It is busy with this government. It has already got multiple inquiries that involve members of this government, members who sit in this Parliament—the Premier—having to appear before corruption hearings by the anti-corruption commission. We also know, by the way, that IBAC is looking into the stacking of the public service via political appointments. They are now saying, ‘We are going to have to have a look at corruption within our major infrastructure projects’. It really is the stink of this government. The rotting carcass of corruption surrounding this government is becoming unbearable, when you have the Premier appearing at least twice that we know of, probably three times, in secret hearings. Some of those are being fought in court to have them made public. They should be public. Of course they should be public. We should absolutely know the level of corruption that has gone on with the property developer, Mr Woodman, and the comments that his associates have made clearly linking him to the government, noting how well they work together. We need to know what that report says. We need to know what the deals were between the Premier and Peter Marshall—Operation Richmond. We need to know what was done there. What was the quid pro quo?

But they are being suppressed. At every stage this government has fought against the sunlight that the integrity agencies want to shine—and we cannot forget what happened with the red shirts rorts. The Premier—very, very usual practice—went out and said, ‘We’ll cooperate. This is what we’re doing’, and then of course nobody cooperates, and then on top of that, ‘We’re going to fight the Ombudsman all the way to the High Court being allowed to investigate’. The High Court found that she could. The government claimed that she had no jurisdiction and that the Council could not set this up. At every point they were very, very certain. When people did comment on it, it was clear that it was wrong, it was an artifice. What they did was wrong. Some might say what they did changed the result of an election.

A member: That’s corruption.

Ms STALEY: And that is corruption. At every level this government, whether it is the way they manage their projects, whether it is the way they stack the public service, whether it is they themselves—the member for Cranbourne has been in front of IBAC. There will be others in this place that have been in front of IBAC; they are keeping it very, very quiet. We would not want to see any of them get re-elected and then it all come out. I think the people of Victoria deserve to see this before the election, but no, it is all being hidden again. At every turn this government thinks that Victorians do not matter. Everything that matters is them. When they say that they are doing the things that matter, they are doing the things that matter for Labor. They are the things that matter for their re-election, certainly not the things that matter to Victorians.

A member: Like the health system.

Ms STALEY: Because what matters to Victorians is having a health system where people do not die when they do not need to. What matters is having ambulances that turn up. What matters in my part of the world and in the member for South-West Coast’s—she is sitting next to me—part of the world is having roads that are not so unsafe that people are damaging their cars. I have yet another one, who has emailed the Minister for Roads and Road Safety today, trying to get the Western Highway fixed again. Basic government services—health, ambulance, roads—that is what Victorians want. And they want their projects managed within a proper budgetary process that means that our debt is not more than that of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania combined. How can that be? We certainly do not have the population of those three states combined. We certainly do not have the economic activity of those three states combined, yet we have debt of more than their debt combined. This government is wasting money at every point. We are not getting the services we need. We are not getting what Victorians have every right to expect, which is a world-class health system that comes to the aid of every Victorian who needs it. That is why we need a change of government in November.