Mr PALLAS (Tarneit) — It gives me pleasure to rise to speak in regard to  the Appropriation (2012/2013) Bill 2012. There come times in political life when you hear many in the elite of  political opinion  saying that there is no difference between political  sides and  that we are in fact nothing more than a Tweedledee and Tweedledum reflection of each other. This is not one of those times. This is a time when you couldhttp://www.timpallas.com.au/wp-admin/post.php?post=585&action=edit  not pick a more demonstrable difference —  a chasm — in terms of opinion and desire.

  Ms Asher — Financial responsibility and financial irresponsibility.

  Mr  PALLAS  —  We  hear  from the Minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business at the table that it is about financial responsibility. The problem for the  minister of course is that  she  does  not  appreciate  that  the  greatest responsibility that  any  government bears for its community is in regard to its welfare.  That means balancing  the  finances with the  effective requirement to build a future for that very community.

We have heard much about sustainability but very  little  about  welfare and the interests of the community at large. The 2012 budget has revealed the failure of this government to think things through.

This  is an unctuous,  indifferent government, a government  that feigns concern for the wellbeing of Victorians,  but  through  its actions, through its lack of planning, through its lack of conviction and its  basic  beliefs  about  the way that  a  government  should  approach  its  time  in  charge of  a state,  it is effectively doing a great disservice to the people of Victoria.

The government is failing time and again. We have heard speaker after speaker on the other side of this chamber talking about the 11 dark years. They become a glowing light compared to what  we have  had to  endure under  this government.  Of  course  time  is  all relative,  and  you could not get any  more  relative  a  demonstration  of  the disregard  for  the  people  of  this  state than  what we  have seen  from this government.  We  hear  time  and  again that the highest priority for anyone  in Victoria  at the  moment  is  to  make  sure  that  we  do not  see  this  state haemorrhaging  jobs.  We  heard  it  from  those  opposite  when  they  were  in opposition.

At the time  of the 2009-10 budget  we heard from the then  shadow Treasurer and now Treasurer  that the no. 1  thing the government should do  was develop a job strategy  to make sure that  no more jobs fell out  of the Victorian economy. We did that.  We actually produced 200 000 jobs in the 2009-10  financial year.  We led the nation in job creation — 92  per cent of all full-time jobs created  in this country in 2009 were created in Victoria.

We were the jobs capital of the nation.

What we saw replacing that  was a government that lacked not only conviction but effort and vision. Last year the government projected that it would see up to 55 000 jobs created  in Victoria over the 2011-12 year. What an indictment and what a  demonstration  of failure we  saw  from this  government.  Government members demonstrated such over-bloated egotism about what  they could do, and  when they had to look at the  stark  reality  of  their  capacities  against their effort, Victorians came up worse for it.

Indeed there are 16 000 fewer jobs in Victoria now than there were at  the start of the  2011-12 year,  and it  is almost  a mathematical  certainty that we  are unlikely to create 71 000 jobs in the next week to reach that so-called  target. The  government does  not stop  there; its  level  of  failure  in terms  of the workforce has been demonstrated time and again.

There are over 49 000 fewer Victorians in full-time work than  there were at the start  of the last budget year.  Unemployment is up 0.6  per cent since the last budget and the participation rate  in our  economy is  down 0.6  per cent. Under this  failure  to  meet  its  own expectations and its own requirement  of  what constitutes  success,  what we see  is  a government  that  continues to review, revise  and  downgrade its expectations of how poorly it will perform, and  this year it has revised its target down to 7000 jobs.

Last  year  the government  failed  to meet its  job  creation expectations.  It estimated another 50 000 to  55 000 jobs would be created, but of  course we now know that some 15 000  more Victorians are unemployed now than when the Baillieu government  came  to  office. The Treasurer’s failure to mention jobs is a funny thing given his commentary  in  the  2008-09  and  2009-10 budget debates on the performance of the former government, a commentary we would love to see compared to the performance of this government.

We do not hear the word ‘jobs’ often mentioned by this government because it has been an abject failure. It has demonstrated  by its  own efforts  a decided  and deliberate  effort to strangle the life out of the Victorian economy through its efforts  to cast  away jobs in  the public  sector, to  talk down  the Victorian economy as only it could do from government and to identify a litany of excuses, jurisdictions and other things that are at fault.  This  is  a  government  that never loses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

The Treasurer’s failure in his first budget speech to mention the word ‘jobs’ or to  indicate  that  the  government  was thinking about how to maintain the jobs growth that Victoria had been experiencing up until then has been followed up by a commitment  to not  grow jobs  at all  —  an  outstanding  achievement and  a demonstration that  this  government  really does not have a clue about what the principal responsibilities  of its custodianship of  the state are all about. We heard from the Treasurer when he was the shadow Treasurer that jobs were the no.

1 objective  in  the  2008 budget. In  a  speech  he gave to  the  Committee for Economic Development of Australia on 28 April 2009 he said:

  When it comes  to  the  economy,  the  Brumby  state Labor government has been  sitting  on  its hands watching  as  jobs disturbingly  disappear  from across  Victoria on an almost daily basis.

  …

  The government will  be  held  accountable by Victorians on how it handles the  difficult financial and economic times ahead  and  what  it  does  to save and  create Victorian jobs.

  Therefore, a significant focus of the 2009-10 budget must be on protecting and  growing jobs for Victorians.

  …

  …  the state government has a responsibility to encourage and facilitate new  investment and support business to maintain and grow employment.

  To reiterate, jobs must be the highest priority.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.

Sitting continued on motion of Mr McINTOSH (Minister for Corrections).

  Mr  PALLAS  (Tarneit)  —  To reiterate, back then the Treasurer, who was  the shadow Treasurer at the time,  argued  for what he thought the Brumby government ought to do. He said the bottom line for the

2009-10 budget was that the state government’s performance would be assessed  on how it  dealt with the growing jobs crisis. If  that was a crisis, I wonder what it  is  we  are  confronted  with  at  the  moment!  Given  government  members’ performance on this front over the last year, this still seems to be a big task, but apparently instead  of working harder, government members are just  lowering their standards. Instead of saying, ‘We failed to meet our previous  target;  we are going to do  better,  and we are  going  to get there eventually’,  they  in effect lowered the standard. The  standard they  should be looking to is the 198 000  jobs created  in the two years before this government came into office. How do they think their next two years in  office will  compare, with  an additional 600 jobs cut from the public sector?

Before the election, the Premier promised he would not cut a single job. Instead he has sacked 4200 public servants,  and he has cut $3.3 million from employment programs run by the Department of Business and Innovation.

There have been record cuts to employment programs, cuts to TAFE courses and the firing of public  servants. The government has advocated the minimum wage not be raised, especially for the most vulnerable Victorians. The government is keeping public servants’ pay below  inflation rates, in effect providing a real pay cut. The only plan government  members have been able  to  put into place is  to make things harder for Victorian workers.

Despite the  Department of Business and  Innovation and the  obsession  of those opposite  with talking  about  the  impact of  a  variety of federal  government policies on jobs,  there  has been not one  word — not even  one  concession — about  the  impact  that the government’s so-called 50 per cent increase in port charges will have on business. Business  has been prepared to speak out long and loud about it. The stevedoring  industry  has  called  the  port licence fee the final nail in the coffin.

We have heard from Murray Goulburn that not only have jobs been lost but it will be  forced to  pay $600  000 extra each year because  of this  government’s port licence  fee  — a fee that  in this place the  Premier  said had the resounding support of industry. What a farce and what a joke that has proven to be!

When we look at this government’s strategies, whether it is the port licence fee or  its strategy  to provide  infrastructure, what  we see  is  that  this  is a government that has not planned its infrastructure strategies sensibly.  As ACIL Tasman recently identified  in an article  in  the Australian Financial  Review, this is a government  that has failed  to  sensibly identify its  infrastructure investments and  its  priorities.  But  ACIL  Tasman  is  not  the only one; BIS Shrapnel has said exactly the same thing — that is,  increasingly  business  is forming the view that this is a government that lacks a vision and an agenda for creating investment.

We have seen  stunt after  stunt from  this government. We have seen the Premier attend a  geotechnical drill hole for  a project that, conservatively, will cost $12 billion, and not a dollar of real  project has been delivered. We have heard talk of  a prison-led  jobs recovery.  We have  seen the Minister for Energy and Resources talk up the prospect of  creating jobs in the export  of brown coal in circumstances  where demonstration  projects  have not even  started. This is  a government that  grasps at  any straw  as it  drowns in  a sea  of  indifference towards  real  action  that might have a practical and pragmatic effect upon the wellbeing of Victorians.

This is a government that  will never cease to  take  an opportunity to fail  to take an opportunity; what that means is a  government  that  must ultimately put its priorities above the puerile and the immediate. We have seen thought bubbles like super driverless trucks.

We have heard  about the Geelong car trade, we have heard about  ferries on Port Phillip Bay and yesterday we heard about flying boats. If this were not serious, if this were not the business of government, people would have every right to be outraged.

I want to spend just a moment on my own electorate to look  at how the community of Tarneit  in the city of Wyndham, the fastest growing in  the nation, is being dealt  with by  this  government.  What  we  have  seen, if  we look  at general government expenditure, is  that Wyndham, having  a population of about  184 000 people, has received  something in  the vicinity  of $7  per head in new capital expenditure. Applying that across the state of Victoria  we see that the average is $42 per head in  new capital expenditure. If  we were to include the  broader government sector — that is, going beyond government departments — that figure would rise to $97 per head in Wyndham but $465 per head in the rest of Victoria.

We have seen that  writ large.  We have seen the Minister for Planning proposing to put  $20.15  million  into  an interchange only on condition that the federal government will match it, despite the fact that the government is likely to reap a reward  of about $140 million for selling off land in  that same area, putting 2000 houses into my community and spending not  one cent on new roads. This is a government whose  priorities are puerile and  a government that  has  turned its back on those who need the greatest investment and opportunity.

See Tim’s Speech in Hansard here.