Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (18:16): I rise to speak in support of the 2024–25 Labor state budget. It is a budget that has Labor values at its core, values that as a government we have always stood by and always will stand by: camaraderie, helping each other out, not leaving anyone behind and backing one another – backing one another to drive progress and prosperity in our state.
Our budget, just like the one before it, continues to address the challenges that Victorians right across the state and indeed Australia are facing: cost of living and workforce shortages. It continues to take responsible, sensible steps to strengthen our economy and ensure that not only are we supporting Victorians at a time of great need but that we are taking the necessary steps to set our state up for the future.
We know that families and households are under pressure right now. Across our communities, across the country and indeed the globe, people are facing cost-of-living pressures that feel much more acute than they have in a long time. Whether it is the power bill we find in our mailbox, the rates notice, the rent due, the mortgage repayments, the tally of your bag of groceries at the checkout, the kids needing a new school uniform or the car needing another tank of petrol, it is all adding up and it is causing people right across our suburbs to have to make difficult decisions – decisions that perhaps they did not ever think they would have to make. That is why front and centre of this budget is unashamedly a plan to ease the cost of living, to support more Victorians into secure homes, to back our health and education systems and to invest in the workforces we absolutely need to deliver the care, services and infrastructure that make life easier and safer for Victorians.
I will not have time to outline every single one of the initiatives that will save Victorian household budgets, but I would like to make mention of a few of them. We know that growing a family increases household budgets dramatically. Raising kids costs money – simple as that. They are little humans and they require many different things to survive and to thrive. That is why a substantial part of our cost-of-living support is directed towards alleviating some of these rising costs for families.
This budget delivers a one-off $400 school saving bonus that families can use to cover the cost of uniforms, camps, excursions and other extracurricular activities through the year. It is available for every child at a government school as well as eligible concession card holders at non-government schools. On top of this, we are also tripling our Glasses for Kids program, benefiting an extra 74,000 young Victorians, providing free vision testing and prescription glasses for prep to year 3 students.
For the first time ever, we are expanding the school breakfast clubs program to every government school. That means an additional 150 schools will be invited to join the program, providing healthy breakfasts for students right across our communities. Breakfast clubs have already been such a huge success, giving students that nutritional boost to set them up for their day of learning, and expanding this to more students is immensely valuable.
These are tangible cost-of-living measures which not only create savings in the family budget but deliver equity into our education system for children who might otherwise feel on the outer simply by virtue of their circumstances. No child should go to school hungry, no child should miss out on sports and excursions, and no child should have to put off getting the extra care they need to learn. I know these measures will make a real difference to families across my community and to students sense of wellbeing and their confidence.
Indeed just last month my heart was bursting full visiting Thornbury High with the Minister for Multicultural Affairs and the member for Cranbourne, where we got to see students participating in a homework club after hours at the school as part of the Victorian African Communities Action Plan. This program has been funded with another $17 million in the budget to continue to deliver hands-on tutoring and support and has already helped over 1350 students in the last three years. I can say the students at Thornbury are absolutely thriving, and it was a joy to see their enthusiasm for learning.
Sticking with schools for a moment, I want to mention that this budget also makes some very important investments into health care and social support within schools. We are investing a further $21.8 million for psychologists, speech pathologists and social workers, $6.3 million for the primary school nursing program and $13.9 million to deliver mental health care in our schools – that is critically important.
Of course I cannot speak to education without sharing the incredibly exciting news that Thornbury Primary School in my electorate has secured $17.6 million in this budget for a major modernisation – an election promise I was proud to take to my community in 2022. It was an absolute delight to share this news with principal David Wells, with the school and with the many families who have worked closely with me over the last two years to bring that vision to life. In last year’s budget we secured critical funding to undertake the initial planning and design work, and this phase saw close collaboration and consultation with the whole school community, including with students, to embed their needs and values directly into the design. The results speak for themselves, and the designs are absolutely spectacular. With the rest of the funding allocated we can move ahead and get construction going, and I was very happy to have the Minister for Education drop in last week to congratulate the school in person.
I have spoken many times in my role as the member for Northcote about schools and my mission to upgrade our local schools across the inner north. In recent months across our suburbs in the inner north am very proud to say that we have seen Westgarth Primary turn the sod on its major upgrade, Northcote High has almost finished work on a new STEM centre and Bell Primary will soon open its new gym, building on the recently completed projects at Croxton School, Thornbury High and Preston South Primary. There is certainly more to do; we have some pretty old infrastructure in Northcote. But I am committed to keeping the momentum going, and this announcement for Thornbury Primary is part of that whole-of-community work to uplift our suburbs and set them up for the future.
Another aspect of the state budget I want to highlight today is what we are doing to help Victorians into safe and secure housing. This is something I will always fight for. I will always back in local housing projects in the inner north and our Labor government’s work to build more social and affordable homes to support first home buyers and to make renting fairer. I am pleased to say this budget continues to deliver on our landmark reforms in housing, with our $5.3 billion Big Housing Build. The budget continues that with $700 million to extend the Victorian Homebuyer Fund, another $107 million to progress our ambitious housing agenda and a further $19 million to improve response times for repairs and maintenance in public housing.
On the ground in Northcote we are realising the tangible benefits of the government’s investment into social and affordable homes. Just last month I joined the Premier and the Minister for Housing to open 99 new social homes on Oakover Road in Preston, which will house up to 140 people in the heart of the inner north. The project has replaced 26 single-storey dwellings that were no longer fit for purpose with 296 homes in total, which includes the social homes, affordable Nightingale homes and market homes which were made available to first home buyers in an exclusive access period. These homes are exactly what Victoria needs right now, minutes away from the Mernda train line and the number 11 tramline straight to the CBD and close to shops, schools and parks.
The new homes meet the gold livable housing design standards. They are all electric, with 5-star Green Star and 7-star average nationwide house energy rating scheme ratings, making the homes more efficient to keep cool in summer and warm in winter. There is a rooftop terrace and a community gallery, and there are open spaces.
I am proud to have supported this project despite the petty and misguided opposition from Darebin council during the planning stages, which actually delayed the construction significantly. The Greens do like to talk a big game about housing, but they sure as heck continue to do everything in their power to prevent it from being built. It is hypocrisy of the highest order as they try to continuously gaslight Victorians about their values. The truth is that they do not have a skerrick of empathy for people doing it tough. Instead they will use some of the most disadvantaged members of our community for their political gain, and they would rather keep people in miserable states of being to stand atop their misery so that they can have a pedestal to sing from rather than do the actual work to lift people up. It is not just woeful, it is sinister. But it will not deter us from getting on with our work to build more homes and offer Victorians the dignity they deserve and the stable foundation they need for opportunity and aspiration, because we back Victorians. We do not wallow in pessimism and cynicism and hatred like so many of those opposite do; we get on and do the work, and we back Victorians in.
We heard a lot of catastrophising from the other side during the budget speeches, but I think it is important to recall the facts are not the rhetoric. In 2014 the newly elected Labor government inherited the highest unemployment on mainland Australia. Unemployment had risen to 6.8 per cent, robbing far too many Victorians of the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to their state and economy. In contrast, since Labor came into government, we have created more than 800,000 new jobs, 560,000 of them in the last four years. Compare this to the four years of the Liberal–National coalition. When they sat on those government benches between 2010 and 2014, only 39,000 new jobs were created in Victoria – a dismal amount. Despite every attempt they make to skew the narrative, the facts are clear: Victoria’s economy is doing well. Businesses want to be here, jobs growth is strong and debt is going down. There is no doubt that our state budget absorbed the blow of the pandemic in order to save lives, protect jobs and businesses and support communities. We did that because it was the right thing to do and the only thing to do, and God knows how many families, households and businesses would have suffered had those opposite been making those decisions between debt and lives.
I want to move on to talk a little bit about the investments made in health, and in particular women’s health, which is my role as parliamentary secretary. Our Labor government has truly hit the ground running when it comes to driving health equity and addressing the gaps in knowledge and care that have for far too long marginalised and trivialised women and girls in the health system. Earlier this year I joined the Premier and the Minister for Health at the Northern Hospital to announce the first five of our network of women’s health clinics. These clinics will ultimately expand to 20 and remove the barriers women face in trying to access specialist care, and they will allow women that safe affirming space to see specialists like gynaecologists, urologists, specialist nurses and allied health nurses. They will cover a whole gamut of conditions, like endometriosis, pelvic pain, polycystic ovary syndrome, perimenopause and menopause. At the same time our inquiry into women’s pain is having a ripple effect through communities. At forums right across the state I am hearing from women about the importance of that work and how much it will mean to women’s lives – our daily lives. What comes out of those conversations, alongside the sense of relief and hope and determination, is the inextricable link between health equity and gender equity, which is why I am immensely pleased to see that this budget also delivers $18 million to our 12 outstanding women’s health organisations to continue their vital work. These organisations, including Women's Health in the North in my electorate, empower women to take charge of their own health. They provide a range of services to promote gender equality, women’s rights and the prevention of violence, and they build capacity across our communities.
This initiative is just one pinpoint in our broader work to help to keep women safe and deliver a world-class health system. On the former I must mention that this budget also delivers an additional $269 million to prevent family violence and support women’s safety, and that is something that is at the forefront of many conversations in my own community.
On the broader health system, I am immensely pleased to see that our budget invests a record $13 billion in our public health system, so all Victorians can get the right care in the right place at the right time. That includes upgrades to our busiest hospitals, the Austin and the Northern, both of which service constituents in my electorate of Northcote. At the Austin this investment will refurbish the existing emergency department, expand its capacity and make things more comfortable for both patients and staff.
Closer to home there is a very important but perhaps less well-known service called the trans and gender-diverse health program run by Your Community Health, which has also received funding for an additional four years. Our community legal services, who do an incredible job, have also received a combined $28.8 million to continue their services, including the Fitzroy Legal Service in the inner north.
Unfortunately I am running out of time, but from big projects to small projects this budget is delivering tangible impact to our communities, and it continues our momentum to deliver real action for all Victorians. I do commend it to the house.
