Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

BUDGET PAPERS 2011–12
Tuesday, 31 May 2011 COUNCIL 1579
vacuum. There is a real risk of ad hoc decisions. We
have seen ad hoc decisions and ad hoc development
and the impact that that is likely to have on
communities.
We have seen a number of announcements by the
government in relation to Fishermans Bend but also a
number of other announcements concerning the
opening up of growth areas of land for housing,
whether that is in Moe, Ballarat or Werribee. Yet on not
one occasion has there been any commitment, either in
this budget or elsewhere, to the sort of infrastructure
that you need to deliver a well-planned and a
well-thought-through community. The risk is that you
therefore have no plan and no financial investment to
make sure that those communities thrive. That is a real
concern and deficiency in this budget.
As I said at the start, the budget is a bit underwhelming.
There is a risk for those communities that are not being
planned or provided for in terms of infrastructure and in
terms of buses. I note that there is no funding for
additional buses. But there is a greater challenge which
this government and this budget have failed to live up
to or understand — that is, how do you maintain
Melbourne’s vitality; how do you maintain diversity;
how do you maintain the attractiveness of this city as a
living space, including the suburbs and the regions; and
how do you ensure it is a place that attracts innovation,
that attracts and keeps the best and brightest in the
absence of mineral wealth, but also in circumstances
where in many ways that mineral wealth is acting as a
bit of a drag on the Victorian economy? It is a drag
because of the increases in interest rates and because of
the high Australian dollar.
In the face of those challenges you would have thought
that it was imperative, that alarm bells would be ringing
and that this government would forge a way forward
and make sure we have the sorts of policies that would
deliver a budget that ensured that Victoria stayed
competitive. The interesting contrast is with New South
Wales, where there is a new Premier who, as he says, is
very much committed to making that state no. 1 again.
It is an interesting contrast between that sort of drive
and ambition and the very lacklustre approach we have
seen in this budget — a budget which I think risks
everything and really delivers nothing.
Mr DRUM (Northern Victoria) — It is a great
pleasure to have the opportunity to rise to talk about the
2011 state budget, which was handed down earlier this
month by the Treasurer, Kim Wells. I want to
congratulate him on the work he has done. This budget
will be seen by most observers as the first of many
responsible budgets handed down by the Baillieu-Ryan
government. I am very proud to use the term
‘responsible’, because certainly the group we took over
from acted in a manner that was anything but
responsible, with a whole range of promises and
overblown projects. The former government figured it
could cover up its inadequacies with an overblown
press unit and spin that went on and on. That became a
hallmark of the Bracks and Brumby governments. They
said, ‘We will govern the way we want to govern, and
we will use the media and spin to weasel our way out of
the problems we create’.
This budget takes the interests and the concerns of the
taxpayers as the concerns of the premium people of
interest. In forming this year’s budget we have looked
at the people of Victoria as the people who have given
us the opportunity to form the budget in the first place
and to use revenue as its base. We have used them as
the pillar from which we are now going to look at how
best to disperse the money back to the community. That
is something the previous government failed to do in its
period in office.
I want to talk a little about the Regional Growth Fund,
which is a project worth $1 billion over eight years. It is
the flagship for regional development in the budget. We
took this project and this policy to the election. Six to
eight months out from the election we signalled the
quantum of money we were prepared to put on the table
for regional development. Did the former government
try to match it? No, it did not. It did not even look at the
amount of money we were prepared to put into regional
development, which was approximately two and a half
times the amount of money that the previous
government had on the table for regional development
with its Regional Infrastructure Development Fund
(RIDF).
Over and above the $160 million that Mr Ramsay
spoke about for our 40 smallest councils, there is an
extra $1 million for each of our small councils. That is
over and above the $20 million for our aviation fund,
which the previous government used to sneak inside its
RIDF, and over above the Local Roads to Markets
money, which again the previous government used to
sneak inside the RIDF. All of our aviation funding and
our local roads funding is outside this government’s
Regional Growth Fund. However — —
Mr Barber — What about the rail container
subsidy?
Mr DRUM — The rail container subsidy?
Mr Barber, talk to me about that. In essence, we have
$120 million a year going into regional development.