Mr PALLAS (Treasurer) — I rise to update the house about the actions of the government to promote and support regional Victoria as a place to live and of course to conduct business. As part of the 2017–18 budget we announced a 25 per cent cut to the payroll tax rates for regional businesses and a doubling of the regional first home owners grant. These initiatives are so popular it seems that the opposition want to include them in their own election platform, which produces the ugly spectacle of those opposite simultaneously talking up regional tax cuts for businesses and home buyers and then voting against them in Parliament. These are initiatives that will come into effect from 1 July… For every $1 those opposite cut from business, we have cut $2. We did it in two years; it took you four years. That is how hopeless and useless you were.

These are initiatives that will come into effect from 1 July. They will deliver to regional businesses the lowest payroll tax rate in the nation, by a country mile. In contrast, of course, what we saw from those opposite when they had the opportunity with the regional first home buyer bonus is that they cut it.

…It is the Andrews government that is making it easier for Victorians to get a job, and it is the Andrews government that is making it easier for Victorians to buy a home, easier to get work and of course easier to get a great education in regional Victoria. The last original idea those opposite had for regional Victoria was from the member for Murray Plains, who decided to have a great big cat hunt in Gippsland. Or was it the search for Perrier in the Office of Living Better than Victorians? These are Labor policies; they come from a Labor government.