Mr PALLAS (Tarneit) — Budgets define governments. They are much more than simply 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 where we get to see the personality of an administration, to understand it.

However, if you looked at this budget you would be none the wiser, and that is its problem. I have never seen a document more forlorn and confused. It is a budget that demands billions in new taxes and revenue and 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 taxpayers funds and a budget that funds its toll roads by the inch.

With the extra revenue, the extra taxes and the extra cuts, what does this budget give us? It gives us only a minuscule 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. If you exclude the procurement plan for the east-west link, that expensive piece of paper, this budget gives us an infrastructure spend that is even less than last year.

This budget gives us no real insight into this government’s vision and its identity; it does not give us a blueprint for our state, does not give us a coherent plan and does not 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 and no direction.

On this side of the house there is no 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 does not, this budget does not, but the Treasurer hopes we will judge his book by its cover. Emblazoned across the cover of this budget is the word ‘Building’. We on this side did a bit of that; those opposite know all about it. They have spent the past two and a half years cutting Labor projects and cutting Labor 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 it did all that while bringing down the debt in real terms and reversing the Kennett cuts. It is a legacy to be proud of. It is a legacy this Premier and this Treasurer ignore with effortless arrogance, but nevertheless it is a legacy that they tried to imitate. I am sure they have tried their best to bring down the debt and to keep on building, but they have failed. They are growing the debt, expanding the cuts and building absolutely nothing. It is the only budget I have heard of that borrows more to make more cuts and to build less. It is the only budget I have heard of that claims as its centrepiece 3.2 per cent of a toll road, money that even this government admits — —

An honourable member — Three point two per cent?

Mr PALLAS — It is 3.6 per cent, sorry; I have done them a grave disservice. This is money that even this government admits will go towards more planning and the hazy promise of procurement.

Let me tell members something: you do not drive to work on a procurement plan, and that is all this is. That is the big con in this heartless budget. At the rate the east-west link is being funded, Victorians will not be able to drive to work on it until the year 2067 — five years after the Jetsons will perfect flying cars — and that is just stage 1. It is a vortex, and it even sucks in the money that does not exist yet. It is like infrastructure roulette, with everything on the red — one project, one shot. Forget the infrastructure deficits in our growth areas; this is the one. It is not building for growth, it is going for broke.

While we are watching the roulette wheel spin, government members have deployed their agents on the casino floor, picking Victorians’ pockets for increased fees and charges and confiscating all of their essential services. It is clever politics, but it is not building.

The plan is literally just what the government says it is in the budget — to be confirmed. It is even more of a gamble when you remember that this government does not actually have a plan for the east-west link and has not sent a business case for it to Infrastructure Australia. For a party that prides itself on fiscal acumen, it is a shocker. Infrastructure must be planned, prioritised and professionally delivered. This is not an impression of Little Britain, where the Treasurer can point to his favourite artist’s impression and say, ‘I want that one’.

This government does not support integrated transport planning; in fact it was cut by 35 per cent in this budget. This government does not believe in new roads, better roads, for the outer suburbs, for the interface. It believes in building an $8 billion toll road with $300 million. 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. What are we left with? We are left with a wasteland of projects, unfunded and unplanned; not a skyline but a headline. And this Treasurer calls himself a builder! This is not a government of builders and this is not a budget of blueprints.

This is a bare minimum budget. It is a heartless and an aimless budget. This is a document that deceives and a document that cuts. As the Treasurer said in this place two days ago, this is a budget document ‘that only a coalition government could deliver’. They were the Treasurer’s words. He said it, and he is right.

I think he meant it as a boast, but clearly it is 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 out of health. That is another multibillion-dollar cut to fix another self-inflicted crisis. That is $826 million siphoned from the health budget since the election of this government. That is enough money to fund 165 000 elective surgery procedures; enough money to clear the elective surgery waiting lists three times over. But the waiting list is still there, it is still growing by 125 names a week, and by June it will be the longest on record.

Do not let the name fool you. Elective surgeries are not the sort of procedures you undertake lightly — heart surgery is classified as elective.

Organ transplants, hip replacements and knee reconstructions are some of the procedures people need to have if they are to go back to work, to look after their kids and sometimes to stay alive. Daniel Montesin needs a hernia operation; he cannot start his new job until he has had that surgery. He has been on the waiting list for over seven months. Briony Coutts is 15, and she needs her tonsils removed. She cannot sleep, play sport or study properly in her current condition. She has been on the waiting list for over six months. Stories like this are commonplace. A total of 6000 patients admitted for surgery in 2011-12 had to wait a year or more for their procedures, and some have waited for three years. Soon patients just like Daniel and Briony will be waiting even longer.

I say to the Premier that 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 this government was elected — this is what a hospital crisis looks like. Where is the funding? It is not in a document that only a coalition government could deliver! There is 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 cut to 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 do not deserve to wear the blame. This government does. This government offers a trivial $4 million in new hospital funding while the commonwealth provides 43 times that. This government has abandoned regional Victoria, giving the nod to only three health projects outside Melbourne. This government has let ambulance response times grow at every single metropolitan ambulance branch and watches idly as ambulances spend thousands of hours banked up outside emergency departments. I believe in the gallery today there are two members of the ambulance services. Yes, they are here today. It is great to have them with us.

The SPEAKER — Order! I ask the member for Tarneit not to refer to the gallery or to anybody who is in it.

Mr PALLAS — In the gallery today, Speaker — —

The SPEAKER — Order! I ask the member for Tarneit not to refer to the gallery.

Mr PALLAS — We have ambulance members right across Victoria, including ambulance members from the west — from Geelong and 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 patients. They have to wait in a queue with that patient. They cannot get the patient inside to have immediate treatment. They cannot head out to the next call. Ambulances are strung out like horses outside a western saloon, just waiting. At Frankston Hospital ambulances are spending 1323 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. Our health system was not designed to work properly with $826 million taken out of it. Our health system was not designed to function in crisis.

Our health system will only go backwards under this budget, and so will education. This document cuts $69 million from the education system. It is 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 to get a leg up. To sign up to the Gonski school reforms Victoria had to pledge no more education cuts. That pledge is broken.

Gonski reforms cannot possibly be a reality in Victoria and neither can the School Focused Youth Service. That was a Labor 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 it promised to replace it, but you will not find any evidence of that 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 the government tell parents that it has 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 on modernising schools — heaving them into the future. This government is spending less than half that.

What are the members of this government supposed to tell the thousands of families, students, skilled workers and businesses that were hit last year with the biggest cuts to TAFE in the history of Victoria? The government has to tell them the truth: they are being hit again. This budget cuts the apprenticeship completion bonus. Why does a Treasurer who claims to invest in skills and 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 a Labor government introduced it in 2006. Now it is gone.

The government claims it has reversed the TAFE cuts, but it has not. It has fashioned something called a ‘structural adjustment fund’ — when it comes to euphemisms, you have got to go a long way to beat this government — which is money to induce campuses to merge and to downsize. It is only one-fifth of the money the government took out of the system, and even then only $5 million will go out of the door this year into capital projects. How will that help the campuses that are closing as we speak — in Lilydale, in Kyneton and in Greensborough? How will that help the 2000 staff across dozens of TAFE campuses who are losing their jobs? How will it help students like Bibiana? She is undertaking a diploma of visual arts in illustration part-time at the Chisholm Institute of TAFE. Her fees have gone up from $600 in 2009 to $5500 today.

There have been TAFE cuts of $1.2 billion, and now the apprenticeship completion bonus has been cut. What does this government have against Victoria’s skilled economy, and what does it have against families?

Why do education cuts always appear to be 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 and who just want a job? It is the government’s responsibility to help them and to encourage them, because skills are the key to our future, and if you cut funds from skills training and you cut funds from education, then you cut Victorian growth.

I can promise the government this: it is not going to make it any better by only investing in prisons. What a wretched illustration of this government’s priorities. Its Minister for Corrections spruiks a record investment in prison beds while its Minister for Health conceals zero investment in hospital beds.

The budget has let down students and patients, and it has also let down commuters. The Melbourne Metro rail tunnel received $10 million in this budget, and there is not 1 cent towards its delivery. No wonder the minister says this project is not ready; it is because the government has done nothing to make it so. It is the project that is favoured by Infrastructure Australia, the project this government has a business case for and the project the minister said was the most crucial piece of public transport infrastructure for the state of Victoria. There is $10 million for this project from this government. That would not even dig the hole that government members should bury themselves in shame in.

It is one thing to blow off the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel completely, but it is an insult to spend $10 million to pretend to do otherwise. It is the world’s most expensive ‘Dear John’ letter.

It is 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 that Labor delivered only two in its term of office, when it actually delivered 14 — but let us not be too picky.

An honourable member interjected.

Mr PALLAS — I will. When this government had the opportunity to do something substantial about Melbourne’s worst level crossing, in St Albans, what did it do? The commonwealth government offered this government $90 million to take the train line off the main road, and what did it say? It said no.

This government did not want to do anything about a level crossing that has taken lives; it did not even want to accept the cheque. What would it prefer to do instead? What are its competing priorities? It will not spend anything on trams in this budget, and it projects fewer passengers on its buses. It has cut one-third out of the budget for rail maintenance — that obscure little thing for making sure that trains actually run on tracks. The government promised big upgrades on the Frankston line, but there is not a word about that in this document. It is all bricks and no mortar; all cuts and no contribution.

There is no greater 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, our rural cities and our towns. They are where your son took his first contested mark and where your daughter’s team won the title. It is family, it is health, it is leisure and it is community, but now it is under threat. One-third of the sports budget is missing; the government has cut it.

It has cut funds for soccer, it has cut funds for the sporting code of conduct and it has cut funds for statewide facilities. What kind of government cuts funding for sport in the sporting capital of the world? Everyone in Victoria has a connection to community sport and leisure. Everyone knows an under-14s coach, a volunteer referee or an amateur cricketer; we know each and every one of them. Somewhere those contributions are being made. Everyone knows that sport is the best thing to do to improve a child’s health and development. It is a great way for them to make friends and to feel a part of their community.

Everyone knows how important these facilities are, and everyone with the right priorities would do all they could to support them — everyone except those opposite, because they do not have the right priorities. They never have, and they never will. The government prioritises prison beds over hospital beds, debt and cuts over growth and services. These are Liberal priorities, but they are not Victoria’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 or for the inner suburbs or for any suburb — except maybe Brighton. 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. In that sense it is a document that only a coalition government could deliver — a coalition government and its confused Treasurer.

He is a man who has spent his entire public life telling us that Victoria had too much tax and too much debt. He is a man whose first public utterance in this place was to demand that Victoria stop playing the blame game. He is the same man who just handed down the highest taxing budget in Victoria’s history, while pulling off the trifecta: the highest taxing budget, cuts to services and tripling of debt. You would have to search far and wide to find that level of incompetence. The search must have been enormous on the front bench.

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

Under this Treasurer revenue from speed fines will increase by $38.3 million, revenue from stamp duty will go up by $290 million and vehicle registration revenue will go up by $60 million. We will have all of this extra revenue from these extra fees and charges, extra taxes and we will have all the extra debt, but what will the government be funding? We could probably make a case that if the extra revenue was being put to a good purpose, there would be value to the government’s actions. The government is funding its budget with a billion dollars worth of cuts to government services imposed on departments still reeling from the last two years, departments that have had to shred 10 per cent of their workforce; and make no mistake, when you shred your workforce by 10 per cent you shred services to regional and rural Victoria. Meanwhile, investment in the state has fallen by 5 per cent over the last three-quarters; this is a level that has not been seen since the recession a quarter of a century ago.

This was an opportunity for the new Premier and Treasurer to turn things around. This was their opportunity to make up for the 30 000 people who have become unemployed in Victoria since this government came to office, but they squandered that opportunity and they can no longer blame anyone else but themselves. This is all their own work.

The government has made a habit of pointing the finger at the commonwealth for all its problems, but in this budget, by this government’s own admission, the blame game is over. This government admits that GST revenue from the commonwealth will increase by 6.5 per cent over the next few years. There will be more revenue, so this government can afford more cuts — brilliant economics! We are calling it the Malvern doctrine. This is what happens to a government when it does not have a plan for jobs and does not have a plan for growth. It turns in on itself. It turns on its communities and it turns on those who depend upon responsible, reliable, practical government. It speaks in numeric tongues: more debt, more revenue, more cuts. We have waited two years for this government’s plan; two Premiers and two Treasurers later and we are still waiting.

We need a plan for our state — that is, 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 Infrastructure Victoria will 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 will do it, and we will do it within a strict fiscal policy that keeps the budget in the black. All of this is step one in how to actually become a stable government that delivers for Victorians by having a plan, having a vision and being proud of it; by sticking to it and honouring your promises. That is an important step this government has missed.

It turns out that all those promises were not vital instruments of trust after all.

They were just words — words like ‘infrastructure projects’ and ‘service delivery’, ‘without pushing up debt’ and ‘without increasing taxes’. Words, words and more words, but no heart, no commitment and no honesty. Debt has increased threefold since this government came to office; charges and fees are growing like prickly pears. Government members promised to keep our economy strong, but it is in recession. They promised to create 55 000 new jobs a year, but they have not come close. They promised to protect jobs, but they slashed 4500 of them. They promised the highest paid teachers in Australia, 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 have not seen a single one. In fact we have seen less than we started with — maybe the figure of 800 beds was negative 800 beds. They promised fewer secrets, less spin, less instability, and yet we have been given the most secretive, most scandalous and most unstable government in living memory.

Everything this government says is like George Costanza’s law of opposites. Government members act counter to their pledges, to their instincts and to their common sense. It is the only way they can reconcile more debt, more revenue and more cuts all in the same fiscal statement. It is the trifecta that only the Malvern doctrine could establish. This is just like one big episode of Seinfeld: a show about nothing. This is a government about nothing, replete with Costanza’s harebrained 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.

The Victorian people already know what to make of those promises; they have learnt this lesson. Teachers and nurses have learnt their lesson. Students have learnt it. Families, workers, apprentices, public servants, commuters, car owners and patients know what will happen.

The Victorian people are arriving at an unshakable conclusion: after two years of cuts, inaction, instability and broken promises, they realise that this is a government you simply cannot trust. They realise that it is not in the DNA of the Liberals to deliver for men and women in the suburbs and in our rural cities and towns. They realise that it is not in the playbook of The Nationals to stand up to the Liberals.

Members of this government cannot be trusted with more revenue and more borrowing — they cannot help themselves, they still need to cut. It is part of the government’s standard operating procedure to say, ‘We have a surplus, let’s cut. We have got a deficit, let’s cut harder’. This government cannot be trusted to give us anything more on infrastructure than this demented kaleidoscope we see here. This government cannot be trusted to give us anything more than 3.6 per cent of a toll road. Members of this government cannot be trusted around procurement plans lest they attempt to drive on them. This government cannot be trusted to work for the community at large. It is only interested in working for its 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 cannot even trust this government to support your child’s sporting facilities in the sporting capital of the world.

That is the Liberal world view, and this government cannot ever escape it. It cannot ever deliver for families, for workers, for suburbs or for regional Victoria. It simply cannot be trusted. As for this budget, let us remember its lasting will and testament, let us remember the kiss of death for any fiscal statement and the surest sign that the content within lacks a purpose, a plan and a pulse. It is the one thing the Treasurer said that I can agree with — that is, that this is a document that only a coalition government could deliver.

See Tim’s speech in Hansard here.