Wednesday, 12 August 2026

 Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (16:46): I rise during this grievance debate to address an issue of profound concern to my constituents in Mulgrave, to the people of Melbourne’s south-east and to every community across the state of Victoria. My grievance is with the reckless and destructive economic plan put forward by the Liberal and National opposition, backed by their ideological partners in One Nation. The opposition has announced a plan to tear $40 billion out of the Victorian budget. Let us call this for what it is: the Liberals have no solutions, they just have cuts. You simply cannot make $40 billion in cuts without cutting hospitals, schools and essential frontline services. Destroying our public services like this will collapse frontline services, reduce jobs and shrink our state’s economy. That is not responsible fiscal policy; it is ruthless and reckless.

Members interjecting.

Eden FOSTER: Clearly I am hitting a nerve when there is noise on that side of the chamber.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Narre Warren North, Berwick – warned.

Eden FOSTER: Part of their plan involves slashing one in seven public service jobs across 46 ‍government departments and agencies.

Belinda Wilson interjected.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Narre Warren North can leave the chamber for 10 ‍minutes.

Member for Narre Warren North withdrew from chamber.

Eden FOSTER: That includes the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, who carry out critical child protection work, and the Department of Transport and Planning and the Department of Education, who run our precious schools. They have plans to cut health workers, disability support workers and child protection workers, and we all know they will not stop there. Nothing and no-one is off the table.

As someone who has worked for years as a psychologist, working directly in the alcohol and other drug sector in Greater Dandenong, and inside our school system, supporting young people and their families, I know what sector support means on the ground. I saw my co-workers at Centrelink lose their livelihoods in 2013 after Tony Abbott won the federal election that year. Even as the lines grew longer, the Liberals continued to rip through one government service after another, destroying families and households in the process. These are not nameless bureaucratic positions to be erased from a spreadsheet. These are frontline workers and their families, and they are healthcare professionals and support networks that keep our community together. I do not want to see families in my electorate devastated when they realise their child’s teacher has been sacked or their school is closed, or when their local hospital has had wards closed and nurses let go. And I speak from personal experience in the 1990s, when my mum had a number of health issues, going through the Alfred Hospital, as an example, and seeing the wards dark and empty and gloomy. That was as a result of the Kennett era. There were schools that were closing down because of the Kennett era. That led to some of my friends being without a school and having to move schools and make new friendships. These things have consequences – big, big consequences.

The philosophy driving these cuts was laid bare by the member for Kew herself when she admitted:

Current spending is simply not sustainable … That means we’re going to have to make cuts when it comes to our health services. Schools aren’t going to be built or even fixed.

A member interjected.

Eden FOSTER: That is true. Are they going to bring guns into health services that they did not consult with? You raise a very good point there – through you, Chair. Cuts to hospitals, cuts to schools and cuts to frontline services all have consequences. In her first speech to this Parliament the member for Kew claimed, ‘It is business that creates jobs, not government,’ but government funds our nurses, our teachers, our paramedics, our police, our firies and our child protection workers. It also provides the conditions for business to function in the form of education and training for workers and the amazing work that Victoria Police does to keep our community safe. Those are real jobs delivering real, essential services that will be destroyed under a Liberal coalition plan. Independent economists have made it clear that the full economic plan of those opposite would require radical cuts, because they simply cannot make up their $40 billion promise without cutting even further.

Let me take a closer look at what this ideological obsession with cuts means for those in my electorate of Mulgrave. When you reduce healthcare funding, you do not magically reduce illness. You simply delay treatment until a patient presents to an emergency department in acute crisis. My constituents rely directly on our healthcare system in the south-east. They rely on Monash Medical Centre, Dandenong Hospital and the Victorian Heart Hospital, along with the Monash community health centre in Springvale. When conservative governments strip away early intervention and allied health funding, they do not save money; they shift the burden onto what becomes overworked emergency departments and under-resourced community health hubs.

When they were last in government, those opposite proved exactly where their priorities lie. They cut over a billion dollars from health, went to war with our hardworking nurses and paramedics and failed to deliver hundreds of promised hospital beds. Think about that failure. Across four whole years in office they managed to open just two alcohol and other drugs beds across the entire state of Victoria. In my former work in AOD services, I saw how catastrophic that lack of capacity was for local families in the south-east seeking help. They defunded 25 community mental health providers, shut down the state’s only 24-hour mental health advice hotline and actively voted against the mental health levy. That is their record. They left vulnerable Victorians completely stranded when they needed support the most. The Liberal Party would rather line the pockets of the biggest businesses in this state, making for those who make a massive profit a tax cut, than ensure that our young people have the life-saving mental health care that they need and deserve. This is completely out of touch with what communities want from our government.

Let us take a look at the public education sector. Education is the greatest equaliser we have in a fair multicultural community like mine of Mulgrave. It gives every child, regardless of whether they grow up in Springvale, Noble Park or Mulgrave itself, the opportunity to realise their full potential. Yet under the previous Liberal administration education was treated as nothing more than a line item to be trimmed. They ripped more than a billion dollars out of TAFE, closed 22 campuses, sacked over 3000 ‍skilled staff and brought our vocational education sector to the brink of collapse. They cut more than a billion dollars directly from our public schools. They slashed the education maintenance allowance, a vital lifeline for low-income families in our multicultural communities trying to afford basics like uniforms, textbooks and school excursions. They cut speech pathologists, student psychologists and social workers – the very specialists who support children in our local state schools with developmental delays, complex learning needs or mental health challenges. We all know the consequences of cutting such important allied health supports for young people. To make matters worse, they even went so far as cutting Fresh Fruit Friday in primary schools. Nothing was too small or too essential to escape their chopping block. Now they tell us they want to do it all over again, but on an unprecedented $40 billion scale. Under their logic, local projects like the $6 million overhaul of facilities at Mulgrave Primary School or upgrades at Wellington Secondary College that have occurred in my electorate simply would not happen under their leadership. Their cuts strike at the core safety and security of our communities. During their last tenure they cut $130 million from Victoria Police and slashed $66 million from our fire services.

On public transport, public infrastructure spending was gutted by more than 66 per cent. They ripped $70 million out of V/Line, planned sweeping staff cuts and failed to deliver a single regional rail project. Today they promise to cancel the Suburban Rail Loop. Let us speak plainly about what cancelling the SRL means for the Mulgrave electorate. It means cancelling a game-changing rail connection for our community at Monash, throwing 24,000 Victorian workers out of a job, denying 7000 families a home, stranding suburban commuters in gridlock traffic and leaving Melbourne’s south-east behind while our population grows. That also includes your electorate, Deputy Speaker. Residents in the east will be deprived of such an important rail network for growing communities.

Now let us look at energy and housing. The opposition have stated clearly that the SEC is gone if they win. We know Jeff Kennett sold off the SEC in the 1990s, driving up costs for everyday households. Labor brought the SEC back to power our state with renewable energy. The Liberals want to abolish it again, pause the renewable energy transition and hand power back to foreign-owned energy corporations, guaranteeing higher electricity bills for working families across my electorate of Mulgrave. In housing, they have guaranteed to rip up activity centre planning reforms. That means cutting over 300,000 planned new homes, pushing the dream of home ownership further out of reach for young people in Springvale and Noble Park and forcing up rent prices across the state. Our reforms have made Melbourne the most affordable capital city for young renters and homebuyers, yet the Liberals are determined to unwind that progress. The business community in my electorate have made it incredibly clear that they support the activity centre designations, they support the additional investment that this will create in my community and they support us enabling more young people to live close to family. And what is the Liberal alternative? More sprawl further out, with no mention of new schools, no new hospitals and no new rail lines or any alternatives to attract investment in lower socio-economic status communities like mine.

Who knows what else the Liberals will go after. Last election they wanted to privatise sewerage networks. Maybe this time they will sell off V/Line. All we know is that the Liberals will gut and sell the state if they get into power this November. Now we see them locking arms with One Nation, because cuts are in their shared political DNA. One Nation’s policy agenda calls for $90 billion in annual federal budget cuts. They want to abolish the Therapeutic Goods Administration and review $3 billion worth of life-saving medicines approved on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. They want to review federal health and education, wind back the NDIS for people with disability, abolish climate change programs and slash funding for multicultural initiatives – initiatives that support local social enterprises, diverse community groups and migrant families across the Mulgrave electorate. This will affect our nation. These are federal policies. Who knows what they would do to our hospitals, our schools or our public transport across our state.

The Liberals and Nationals are more than happy to go along with One Nation’s plans. In fact I am sure that some of those opposite – some of them are smirking at me right now – wish they could openly call for this level of cuts in our state. That is because, in the end, all conservative parties sing from the same hymn book: cuts to public services, pain to communities like mine that need the support that the state can offer, and generosity to the biggest corporations in the country. The smirk on the member for Narracan’s face is putting me off, but I will continue. It is a very contagious smirk. I will continue.

My electorate is home to an immense range of different cultures, faiths and languages. When we talk about Australian multiculturalism, we are talking about communities like mine, where people have come here seeking a better life and opportunity for themselves and their family, often fleeing violence and war. By working with One Nation, the Liberal Party is showing its true colours, saying that communities like mine do not belong in this state or this country. They are saying that the Vietnamese or Cambodian migrants who fled civil war should not have come here. They are saying to our more recent Burmese and Rohingya refugees that they should have stayed in Myanmar. When One Nation talks about monoculturalism, I want to hear those opposite counter that. I want to hear them fight for multicultural communities, and I have not heard that.