Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I will call him by his correct name. The Premier says that, whatever it is, he'll pay for it; that's fine. The Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated that the first two stages might blow out to as much as $125 billion. That would make it the most expensive infrastructure project in Australia's history, and this is despite the fact that the Victorian Auditor-General has said it will only return just over 50 cents in every dollar spent.

This is a project that does not stack up; it's a vanity project. It's an exercise in ego, but we have a Premier in Victoria who refuses to change his mind. Matt Guy, on the other hand, has committed to end this waste by shelving the Cheltenham to Box Hill rail line and diverting every dollar available from this project to fix Victoria's health crisis. Ambulances are ramping, surgery waitlists remain at stagnant record highs and children needing vital chemotherapy treatment are being turned away from hospitals. The new Guy government will fix this crisis. The Liberals have committed to provide an additional 50,000 surgeries, halving elective surgery time waitlists and dental waitlists; to train an additional 40,000 nurses; to build or upgrade 20 hospitals; and to fix the triple 0 line so that when you're ill or injured, somebody comes to help. These are real solutions that will put an end to Labor's healthcare crisis.

Daniel Andrews has been in charge—sorry, the Premier has been in charge—of Victoria's health system as minister or Premier for the last 11 of 15 years and, as much as he tries to wriggle out of it, he cannot escape responsibility for this crisis. Victoria has a Premier who deplores accountability, but Matt Guy and the Victorian Liberals have a plan to restore integrity and accountability in Victoria, with more funding for the Victorian anti-corruption commission, more funding for the ombudsman and more funding and powers for the Parliamentary Budget Office. And they have future pandemic plans to keep schools open and for no vaccine mandates.

Of course, no Victorian will ever be allowed to forget those lockdowns and the impact they had on hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. I've been on the ground in Victoria, and everywhere I go Victorians are sick of this sick government and its distorted priorities. They are sick of the stonewalling and sick of the lack of accountability. But I've had the extraordinary pleasure of being with some outstanding candidates across Victoria who will deliver real change for Victorians. These are candidates like John Pesutto in Hawthorn, who is a dear friend of mine. He has lived in the area for 25 years and he continues to demonstrate a boundless energy to support the people of Hawthorn inside and outside parliament. There is Jess Wilson in Kew, who brings such a brilliant policy brain and a real understanding of what matters to the people in Kew. Matthew Lucas in Prahran; Debbie Taylor-Haynes in Bentleigh, Lucas Moon in Richmond and Nicole Ta-Ei Werner in Box Hill are outstanding candidates who have been recruited for all that they love and all they can contribute to my great state of Victoria. They demonstrate the kind of talent that Victoria needs in its parliament, to see it through what are going to be a number of challenging years ahead.

They'll join other members of Matt Guy's excellent parliamentary team, like Michael O'Brien, the shadow Attorney-General, who of course is also my friend and local MP, and a tireless advocate for his community. David Southwick, the member for Caulfield, understands small business and how it has been impacted by the pandemic. He has been truly instrumental in coming up with the positive policies that will revitalise small business across Victoria. And Brad Rowswell, the member for Sandringham and deputy chair of the Integrity and Oversight Committee, has been holding the Andrews government to account wherever he possibly can—wherever this government has allowed him to do so.

These are just a few of the very talented team that Matt Guy has assembled. He and his team have a comprehensive plan that delivers real solutions to the issues facing Victorians. Their real solutions plan demonstrates that they are safe, that they are sensible, that they are mainstream and that they are ready to govern. But Victorians need to understand one thing: there is only one way to get rid of this bad Dan-Andrews-led government. There is only one way to do that, and that is to vote Liberal and National on Saturday, not for anybody else. You cannot vote for anybody else and guarantee that you will get rid of Dan Andrews and this bad, this terrible and this damaging state government. That is why it's so important on this Saturday in my state of Victoria that Victorians step up, that they get out, that they vote and that they think long and hard about what these last few years have meant for them: what it has meant to have their children taken out of school for 186 days; what it has meant to be separated from their elderly parents for so many months, who have been stuck in aged care, unable to be visited by family and by friends; what it has meant to have their freedoms and their liberties taken away; and what it has meant to be spoken down to by a contemptuous, by an arrogant, by a self-centred government and a leader that simply must go.