Budgets define Governments.

And they are much more than mere exercises in accounting.

They are more than the Treasurer’s opportunity to test out the latest corporate buzzwords.

Budgets tell us where a Government’s heart lies.

They tell us about a Government’s beliefs.

What a Government burns for.

A budget is when we get to see the personality of an administration. To understand it.

But if you looked at this budget, you’d be none the wiser. And that’s the problem.

I’ve never seen a document more forlorn and confused.

It’s a budget that demands billions in new taxes and revenue and a makes a billion in new cuts.

A budget that will see Victorians paying more in fines, fees and charges than ever before.

A budget with an insatiable appetite for taxpayer funds.

A budget that funds its toll roads by the inch.

The extra revenue, the extra taxes, the extra cuts – what does it give us?

Only a miniscule increase in jobs growth, throwing us further down the league table.

This is what we get from this low rent, low achieving, high taxing, debt tripling Government.

And if you exclude the procurement plan for East West – that expensive piece of paper – this budget gives us an infrastructure spend that’s even less than last year.

This budget gives us no real insight into this Government’s vision and identity. It doesn’t give us a blueprint for our state.

It doesn’t give us a coherent plan. It doesn’t have a clear purpose.

This budget is an unguided missile, from a Government that has failed to launch.

There is no driving belief in it – no clarity – no direction.

I can tell you, on this side of the House, there is no such confusion.

We believe in a reliable health system.

We believe in an education system that answers the hopes of our children.

We believe in a state that grows together.

This Government doesn’t, this budget doesn’t, but the Treasurer all hopes we’ll judge his book by his cover.

Emblazoned across the cover of the budget is the word ‘building’.

You know, we did a bit of that.

Those opposite know all about it. They’ve spent the last two years cutting Labor’s ribbons.

The Treasurer’s budget speech was a nice homage to Jeff Kennett, but Labor in Government spent three times more on capital upgrades – on building – than the Kennett Government.

And we did all that while bringing down the debt in real terms, and reversing Kennett’s cuts.

It’s a legacy to be proud of.

It’s a legacy this Premier and this Treasurer ignore with effortless arrogance.

But it’s nevertheless a legacy they try to imitate.

I’m sure they tried their best to bring down the debt and keep on building. But they failed.

They’re growing the debt, they’re expanding the cuts, and they are building absolutely nothing.

It’s the only budget I’ve heard of that borrows more to make more cuts and build less.

And it’s the only budget I’ve heard of that claims, as its centrepiece, 3.6 per cent of a toll road.

Money that even this Government admits will go towards more planning and the hazy promise of procurement.

Let me tell you something – you can’t drive to work on a procurement plan.

And that’s all this is. That’s the big con in this heartless budget.

At the rate the East West Link is being funded, Victorians won’t be able to drive to work on it until the year 2067.

That’s five years after The Jetsons perfected flying cars.

And that’s just Stage One!

It’s a vortex, and it even sucks in the money that doesn’t exist yet.

It’s like infrastructure roulette – everything on red. One project, one shot. Forget the infrastructure deficits in our growth areas. This is the one.

It’s not building for growth, it’s going for broke.

And while you’re watching the roulette wheel spin, they’ve deployed their agents on the casino floor – picking your pockets for increased fees and charges and confiscating all your essential services.

It’s clever politics, but it isn’t building.

The plan is, literally, just what the Government says it is in the Budget: TBC.

And it’s even more of a gamble when you remember this Government doesn’t actually have a plan for East West, and hasn’t sent a business case to InfrastructureAustralia.

For a party that prides itself on fiscal acumen, it’s a shocker.

Infrastructure must be planned, prioritised and professionally delivered.

This isn’t an impression of Little Britain, where the Treasurer can point at his favourite artists’ impression and say, ‘I want that one’.

This Government doesn’t support integrated transport planning. In fact, they cut that by 35 per cent in this budget.

This Government doesn’t believe in new roads, better roads, for the outer suburbs, for the interface.

It believes in building an 8 billion dollar toll road with 300 million dollars.

It believes in fooling the people of the East and ignoring the people of the West.

This Government has reduced spending on real projects, real roads – actual roads.

Not the procurement plans, but the bitumen things that people drive on.

And what are we left with? A wasteland of projects, unfunded and unplanned.

Not a sky line, but a headline.

And this Treasurer calls himself a builder!

Well, this is not a Government of builders and this is not a budget of blueprints.

This is a bare minimum budget.

This is a heartless budget, an aimless budget.

This is a document that deceives. This is a document that cuts.

And as the Treasurer said in this place two days ago, this budget is a document that only a Coalition Government could deliver.

They are his very words. And he’s right.

I think he meant it as a boast, but it’s an admission of guilt.

Only a Coalition Government could deliver a budget so modest of vision and faint of pulse.

Only a Coalition Government could deliver a budget this confused.

And only a Coalition Government, faced with the biggest health crisis in a generation, would cut another 209 million dollars out of health.

That’s another multi-million dollar cut to fix another self-inflicted crisis.

That’s 826 million dollars siphoned from the health budget since the election of this Government.

That’s enough money to fund 165,000 elective surgery procedures. Enough money to clear the elective surgery waiting list three times over.

But the waiting list is still there, still growing, by 125 names a week. By June, it will be the longest on record.

And don’t let the name fool you. Elective surgeries aren’t the sort of procedures you undertake lightly.

Heart surgery is classified as ‘elective’. So are organ transplants, hip replacements, and knee reconstructions.

These are the procedures people need to go back to work, to look after their kids, and sometimes, to stay alive.

Daniel Montesin needs a hernia operation. He can’t start his new job until he’s had the surgery.

He’s been on the waiting list for over seven months.

Brioney Coutts is 15 and she needs her tonsils out. She can’t sleep, play sport or study properly in her current condition.

She’s been on the waiting list for over six months.

Stories like these are common.

6000 patients admitted for surgery in 2011-12 had to wait a year or more for their procedure.

Some have waited three years.

And soon, patients just like Daniel and Brioney will be waiting even longer.

Premier, this is what a crisis looks like.

Queues of ambulances banked up outside emergency departments that are too full to take patients. This is what a crisis looks like.

Fewer hospital beds now than when you were elected. This is what a crisis looks like.

And where’s the funding? Not in a document that only a Coalition Government could deliver.

Not a single cent in this document for any of the 800 new hospital beds this Government promised.

And what about nurses and health workers – the men and women this Government hung out to dry for so long?

This document confirms a 30 million dollar cut for the training and accreditation of health workers.

The working men and women of the health sector do not deserve to feel the brunt of this crisis. They don’t deserve to wear the blame.

This Government does.

This Government, which offers a trivial 4 million dollars in new hospital funding while the Commonwealth provides 43 times that.

This Government, which has abandoned regionalVictoria, giving the nod to only three health projects outside ofMelbourne.

This Government, which has let ambulance response times grow at every single metropolitan ambulance branch.

Which watches idly as ambulances spend thousands of hours banked up outside emergency departments.

In the gallery today are Sue Copland and Danny Hill.

They’re Ambos from out West, inGeelongand Werribee, where ambulance ramping hours have doubled in two years.

Ask them what happens when they arrive with sirens blaring at an emergency department that is too full to take new patients.

They have to wait in a queue. With that patient.

They can’t get the patient inside to have immediate treatment.

They can’t head out to the next call.

Ambulances strung up like horses outside a Western saloon, just waiting.

At Frankston Hospital, ambulances are spending 1,323 hours a month just waiting.

This is life under a Liberal Government.

We all expect our health system to work properly when people need it the most – when the difference between life and death is a matter of minutes.

But our health system was not designed to work properly with 826 million dollars taken out of it.

Our health system was not designed to function in crisis.

And our health system will only go backwards with this Budget.

So will education.

This document cuts 69 million dollars from the education system – a document that only a Coalition Government could deliver.

That means one simple thing: Gonski is goneski.

The Gonski reforms would help disadvantaged schools, and underperforming schools, get a leg up.

To sign up to the Gonski school reforms,Victoriahad to pledge no more education cuts.

Now that pledge is broken, Gonski reforms can’t possibly be a reality inVictoria.

Neither will the School Focused Youth Service.

That was a Labor funded program designed to help kids stay in school, stay safe, and stay learning.

It was a program that helped prevent problems like truancy, homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness and suicide.

When the Government cut the program, they promised to replace it. But you won’t find any evidence of that here, in this document.

How can members of this Government sell a message like that?

How can they spruik this budget at the school gate?

How can they tell parents that they’ve dumped the very program designed to keep their kids on the right track?

The previous Labor Government spent an average of $469 million a year modernising schools – heaving them into the future. This Government is spending less than half that.

And what are members of this Government supposed to tell the thousands of families – the thousands of students, skilled workers and businesses – who were hit last year with biggest cut to TAFE in the history of Victoria?

They have to tell them the truth. They’re being hit again.

This Budget cuts the Apprenticeship Trade Bonus.

Why does a Treasurer who claims to invest in skills – who refers to our ‘highly skilled workforce’ in the opening lines of his Budget Speech – want to discourage young people from entering that workforce?

Over 125,000 Victorian apprentices have benefited from this bonus since the Labor Government introduced it in 2006. Now it’s gone.

Of course, the Government claims they have reversed the TAFE cuts. But they haven’t.

They’ve fashioned something called a Structural Adjustment Fund – money to induce campuses to merge, to downsize.

And it’s only a fifth of the money they took out of the system. And even then, only five million dollars will go out the door this year into capital projects.

How will that help the campuses that are closing as we speak – in Lilydale, in Kyneton, in Greensborough.

How will that help the 2000 staff across dozens of TAFE campuses who are losing their jobs?

How will this help students like Bibiana?

She is undertaking a Diploma of Visual Arts (Illustration) part time at Chisholm. Her fees have gone up from 600 dollars in 2009 to five and a half thousand today.

$1.2 billion in TAFE cuts, and now the Apprenticeship Trade Bonus – what does this Government have againstVictoria’s skilled economy?

And what does it have against families?

Why do its education cuts always appear precisely engineered to hurt those families, and those students, from suburbs or regional cities, who just want a practical education, who just want a trade – who just want a job?

It’s the Government’s responsibility to help them, to encourage them. Because skills are the key to our future.

And if you cut funds from skills and you cut funds from education then you cut Victorian growth.

And I can promise you this – you’re not going to make it any better by only investing in prisons.

What a wretched illustration of this Government’s priorities – its Corrections Minister spruiks a record investment in prison beds, while its Health Minister conceals zero investment in hospital beds.

This document has let down students and patients, and it’s also let down commuters.

Ten million dollars, the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel received in this budget.

And not a cent towards its delivery. No wonder the Minister says this project isn’t ready.

It’s the project favoured by InfrastructureAustralia. The project this Government has a business case for. The project the Minister said was the most crucial piece of public transport infrastructure for the state ofVictoria.

Ten million dollars, from this Government. It won’t even dig you a hole.

It’s one thing to blow off the Melbourne Metro completely, but it’s an insult to spend $10 million pretending otherwise.

It’s the world’s most expensive Dear John letter.

And it’s the same thing with the so-called ‘blitz’ on level crossing upgrades.

We heard the Minister yesterday claim credit for Labor’s grade separations. We heard him say Labor only delivered two in our term of office, when we delivered 14.

When this Government actually had the opportunity to do something substantial aboutMelbourne’s worst level crossing, inSt Albans, what did they do?

The Commonwealth offered the Government 90 million dollars to take the train line offMain Rd.

This Government said no.

This Government didn’t want to do anything about a level crossing that has taken lives. They didn’t even want to accept the cheque.

What would they prefer to do instead?

Well, they didn’t spend anything on trams in this budget, and they project fewer passengers on their buses.

They cut a third out of the budget for rail maintenance – you know, that obscure thing for making sure the trains can actually run on the tracks.

They promised big upgrades on the Frankston Line but there’s not a word of it in this document.

It’s all bricks and no mortar. All cuts and no contribution.

And there is no greater an example of this than the Government’s decision to rip the heart out of community sport.

Community sporting clubs are the soul of our suburbs, of our rural cities and towns.

They are where your son took his first contested mark; where your daughter’s team won the title.

It’s family, it’s health, it’s leisure, it’s community, but now, it’s under threat.

One third of the sports budget is missing.

They cut it.

They cut funds for soccer.

They cut funds for the Sporting Code of Conduct.

They cut funds for state wide facilities.

I have to ask: What kind of Government cuts funding for sport in the sporting capital of the world?

Everyone inVictoria has a connection with community sport and leisure.

Everyone knows an under-14s coach, a volunteer referee, an amateur cricketer.

Everyone knows that sport is the best thing to improve a child’s health and development; a great way for them to make friends and feel a part of their community.

Everyone knows how important these facilities are.

And everyone with the right priorities would do all they can to support them.

Everyone, except those opposite.

Because they don’t have the right priorities. They never have and they never will.

They prioritise prison beds over hospital beds.

Debt and cuts over growth and services.

These are Liberal priorities, but they aren’tVictoria’s.

This is not a budget for families.

This is not a budget for students.

This is not a budget for patients.

This is not a budget for the outer suburbs, for the inner suburbs, for any suburb – exceptBrighton.

This is not a budget for rural and regional communities.

This is not a budget for car owners or commuters.

This is scarcely a budget for anyone.

And in that sense, it certainly is a document that only a Coalition Government could deliver.

A Coalition Government and its confused Treasurer.

A man who spent his entire public life telling us thatVictoriahad too much tax and too much debt.

A man whose first public utterance in this place was to demand thatVictoriastopped playing the blame game.

The same man who just handed down the highest taxing Budget inVictoria’s history – while cutting services and tripling debt.

The same Treasurer who signed off on a three-fold increase of net debt since his Government came to office.

The same Treasurer who will make Victorians pay more in taxes and fines than at any time in the past.

Under this Treasurer, speed camera fines will increase by $38 million.

Stamp duty will go up by $288 million.

Vehicle registration fees will go up by $56 million.

All this extra revenue – these extra fees and charges, the extra taxes – and all the extra debt.

And what is it funding?

A billion dollars’ worth of cuts.

A billion dollars’ worth of cuts to Government services, imposed on Departments still reeling from the last two years.

Departments that have had to shed ten per cent of their workforce.

All while this state is in a recession.

While investment in the state has fallen five per cent over the last three quarters – levels not seen since the recession a quarter of a century ago.

This was the new Premier’s opportunity, the new Treasurer’s opportunity, to turn things around.

This was their opportunity to make up for the 30,000 people who have become unemployed inVictoriasince the Government came to office.

But they’ve squandered that opportunity.

And they can no longer blame anyone else but themselves.

This Government has made a habit of pointing the finger at the Commonwealth for all their problems.

But in this Budget, by this Government’s own admission, the blame game is over.

This Treasurer admits that GST revenue from the Commonwealth will increase 6.5 per cent over the next few years.

More revenue so this Government can afford more cuts. The Malvern Doctrine.

This is what happens to a Government when it doesn’t have a plan – for jobs, for growth.

It turns in on itself.

It speaks in numeric tongues. More debt, more revenue, more cuts.

Two years we waited for this Government’s plan. Two Premiers and two Treasurers later, we’re still waiting.

We need a plan for our state – a set of objectives that will create jobs. And Labor’s Plans for Jobs and Growth will do just that.

With our export industries under pressure and our construction sector on the slide, our state needs clear focus.

Labor’s plan to establish InfrastructureVictoriawill give a new sense of direction to the vital construction we need.

Our plan to establish Projects Victoria will put major projects under one roof and see that they are delivered in full, on time and on budget.

And Labor will guarantee that government procurement processes put Victorian jobs and businesses at the front of the line.

These things can be achieved if you believe in building the state. And we’ll do it all within a strict fiscal policy that keeps the budget in the black.

All of this is step one in how to actually be a stable Government that delivers for Victorians – having a plan, having a vision, and being proud of it. Sticking to it. Honouring our promises.

That’s an important step this Government missed. All those promises – turns out they weren’t vital instruments of trust after all. They were just words.

Words like ‘infrastructure projects’ and ‘service delivery’, quote, ‘without pushing up debt and without increasing taxes’.

But debt has increased threefold since they came to office. Charges and fees are growing like prickly pear.

They promised to keep our economy strong, but it’s in recession. They promised to create 55,000 new jobs a year, but they haven’t come close.

They promised to protect jobs but they slashed four and a half thousand.

They promised the highest paid teachers inAustralia, but we all know how that ended.

They promised safer streets, but we got the first crime increase in a decade.

They promised 800 new hospital beds, but we haven’t seen a single one. In fact – we’ve seen less than we started with.

They promised fewer secrets, less spin, less instability, and we’ve been given the most secretive, the most scandalous, and the most unstable Government in living memory.

Everything this Government says – it’s like George Costanza’s law of opposites. They act counter to their pledges, to their instincts, to their common sense.

It’s the only way you can reconcile more debt, more revenue and more cuts, all in the same fiscal statement.

This is just like one big episode of Seinfeld – a show about nothing, a Government about nothing – replete with Costanza’s hare-brained scheme that falls apart at the end.

With this Government, that scheme will fall apart at the next election, around the time when it starts to make promises again.

Because the Victorian people already know what to make of those promises. They’ve learnt this lesson. Teaches and nurses have learnt it.

Students have learnt it. Families, workers, apprentices, public servants, commuters, car owners, patients – they know what will happen.

The Victorian people are arriving at an unshakable conclusion.

After two years of cuts, two years of inaction, instability and broken promises, they realise that this is a Government you simply cannot trust.

They realise that it’s not in the Liberals’ DNA to deliver for men and women in the suburbs, for men and women in our rural cities and towns.

They realise that it’s not in the Nationals’ playbook to stand up to the Liberals.

This Government can’t be trusted with more revenue and more borrowing – they still can’t help themselves, they still need to cut.

This Government can’t be trusted to give us anything more on infrastructure than the demented kaleidoscope we see here.

This Government can’t be trusted to give us anything more than 3.6 per cent of a toll road.

This Government can’t be trusted around procurement plans, lest they attempt to drive on them.

This Government can’t be trusted to work for the community at large. They are only interested in working for their constituency of one – the Member for Frankston.

Can you trust this Government to fix the health crisis? No

Can you trust this Government to support schools and TAFEs? No.

Can you trust this Government to produce a jobs plan? No.

The truth is, you can’t even trust this Government to support your child’s sporting facilities in the sporting capital of the world.

That’s the Liberal worldview, and this Government cannot ever escape it.

They cannot ever deliver for families, for workers, for suburbs, for regionalVictoria.

They simply cannot be trusted.

And for this budget, let us remember its lasting will and testament.

Let us remember the kiss of death for any fiscal statement.

The surest sign that the content within lacks a purpose, and a plan, and a pulse.

The one thing the Treasurer said that I can agree with:

This is a document that only a Coalition Government could deliver.