MR PALLAS (Werribee—Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Industrial Relations) (14:37):

I rise to update the house on the federal government’s crooked GST carve-up. We have known all along how dodgy the deal was that Scott Morrison put together. The federal budget was handed down last week, and it displays clearly the enormous dollars involved and the disadvantage and the devastating consequences that this will have on all states bar one.

Victoria is set to be more than $1 billion worse off every year under the new system once the no-worse-off guarantee expires—that is enough to fund 9000 teachers or 10 000 nurses. The federal government’s self-proclaimed party of economic management, the coalition, is actively borrowing money so that they can pay for their no-worse-off guarantee, and indeed they are paying money to a state that is posting an $8 billion surplus. I was surprised to read in the West Australian a GST ‘forever deal’—published seven times in the headlines—with a quote from Josh Frydenberg, the federal Treasurer. He has assured Western Australians that their hard-won GST fix is here to stay, and in fact he went on to say that the coalition had delivered a ‘fairer deal’. Well, a fairer deal for who?

Victoria deserves better from their federal government, but we continue to be disappointed. This is a government that has delivered a budget that allocated only 6 per cent of infrastructure funds to this state, and it left Melbourne as the only capital without a city deal. And of course when it comes to GST allocations, we know that sad and sorry story. Victorians have been left with the scraps from the Treasurer’s table. They have done the wrong thing over and over again.