It gives me great pleasure to rise to update the house on the impact of the budget on Victoria’s credit rating and the reaction of key business groups and the ratings agencies. The 2015–16 budget restores funding to services. It also invests in productivity-enhancing infrastructure, and it secures our AAA credit rating. It is the budget that we were elected to deliver, and we are going about doing it. It is a budget that Victoria needs. Victorians wanted it, they voted for it and they got it. Almost everyone agrees — almost everyone, except those opposite.

Victoria’s AAA credit rating is safe. Standard and Poor’s recently applauded our budget as reinvesting in services while expecting that the ‘government will remain fiscally disciplined’ and said that Victoria’s debt levels are ‘consistent with the AAA rating on the state’. Moody’s applauded the actions of the government, saying our government’s budget shows a ‘solidly balanced position envisioned’. The Victorian Employers Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) applauded the budget.

VECCI said the budget is ‘an economically responsible budget that makes a significant investment in productivity-enhancing, job-creating infrastructure’. Infrastructure Partnerships Australia said the government has ‘delivered a solid infrastructure budget that begins restoring certainty to the long-term pipeline of major projects’, and Professionals Australia said it is ‘an investment in Victoria’s … future’. That is a clear sign that this government has not wasted a minute and is getting on with the job of delivering the services and the infrastructure that Victorians require and that the key stakeholders have endorsed.