Michael Sukkar MP

Grievance Debate – Victorian Labor Government

In tonight’s grievance debate I’m going to outline the biggest grievance that I and many other Victorians have, and that is the way in which the Labor Party—both the Labor Party at a state level under the Andrews government and their very close allies here in Canberra—have in many respects ensured that Victoria is behind every other state in our country.

Today I was reminded of this fact when I saw reports of the presentation of James Hardie’s quarterly forecast and results. They were speaking about plans that they had had to set up a new facility in Victoria, a greenfield site that would employ 200 people. In their quarterly report and forecast today, they outlined that they would no longer be proceeding with that new greenfield site, that new manufacturing capability in Victoria, but instead would continue with a site that they had planned to close in New South Wales. It was very clear the reason that they were doing that is that Victoria is no place to do business. The Labor government, with its succession of taxes and charges and its inability to understand the economy and what it takes to make a state budget work, has meant that that large business would not be creating 200 jobs in Victoria. Instead those jobs will go to New South Wales. The truth is that those decisions are being made by businesses large and small every day. Every day, businesses are making the decision that Victoria is not a good place to do business because of the entrenched decisions of the Labor government.

The reality is: the Labor government in Victoria and the Labor government here in Canberra are joined at the hip. They are one and the same. The Labor members who sit in this caucus are closely aligned, factionally and otherwise, with every single member of that state government, and, for what Victorians are facing in Victoria, they can quite rightly blame this federal Labor government as much as they would the state government.

We have seen very little from the federal government in the way of taking responsibility for decisions that Victorians are now suffering for because of their close allies, their fellow party members in the Victorian Labor Party, who, in many respects, are running the economy and the budget in Victoria into the ground. We didn’t hear much from the Labor government up here when Daniel Andrews and the Labor government cancelled the Commonwealth Games. They went to the election saying they would do the games. They bid for them. They snuck in there, saying they were going to do them. They said they would deliver them. And now it looks like Victorian taxpayers will be slugged, potentially, billions, in order to pay compensation for the decision of the Labor government to cancel the Commonwealth Games—the games that they went out and went after. We hear nothing from the federal Labor government. They support them, obviously. We’ve seen no criticism from the federal Labor Party. Perhaps it’s because the Prime Minister and the Premier in Victoria are former housemates, very good friends and very close allies—Socialist Left allies. The Socialist Left is large and in charge of the Labor Party. The mainstream Australian Labor Party is long gone now. The Socialist Left has taken over, and we’ve seen that today with their decision—the activists’ decision—around Israel. God knows what else they will come up with at their national convention. But the Commonwealth Games are something Victorians are paying billions for.

In the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, we’re very accustomed to suffering under decisions of the Labor government. We, in the east, all remember the $1.3 billion that Victorians were forced to pay not to build a road. That’s not $1.3 billion to build a road; it’s $1.3 billion to cancel the East West Link. And now we suffer crippling traffic every single day on the Eastern Freeway, thanks to that decision from the Victorian Labor Party, supported by their federal Labor colleagues—supported by the Albanese Labor government.

Now we see the latest instalment of the Socialist Left being large and in charge, and that is: they are banning gas connections to new homes. It’s just a precursor, I presume, to banning gas in total. So no new homes will have gas connections. Now, at a time when they’ve run our electricity grid into the ground, when power prices and gas prices are going through the roof, they’re going to make Victorians more reliant on the ever-expensive electricity—and that’s before we even get into the heat of summer, when I think many are suggesting that blackouts, or brownouts at the very least, are likely to be the fate of Victorians. Again, Victorians are suffering because of decisions of the Victorian Labor Party—that’s the Victorian Labor Party in the state government, and the Victorian Labor Party sitting up here in Canberra in Anthony Albanese’s caucus.

Where are those colleagues here in Canberra who backed the decision of the state government to cancel gas connections? So that’s no gas heating, no gas cooking and no barbecues and the caucus up here presumably, support very strongly the decision of the state Labor Party to ban gas connections, making families ever more reliant on expensive electricity. They can’t run away from this. They can’t hide. The Labor members that sit up here in the caucus are Labor members who, in many cases, are supported in their preselection by the Socialist Left, which is controlled by Daniel Andrews in the Labor Party in Victoria. He is omnipresent in the Victorian Labor Party. He runs the place. I suspect many of the Labor members who sit in the caucus up here are only here because they’re very close allies of Daniel Andrews or his radical Socialist Left members in the Victorian government.

Why did the Victorian government cancel the Commonwealth Games? Because they’re broke. They’ve run out of money. For the older Victorians and Australians out there it would be no surprise that a Labor government has come in and spent all the money, and now there’s no more money. At some point debt starts to control you. I don’t think anyone believes that Daniel Andrews and the Labor Party wanted to cancel the Commonwealth Games. They had to. Why? Because the debt’s now controlling them. Debt in Victoria is higher than in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and, I think, South Australia combined. That’s just one state. That is debt that will be borne by generations of Victorians, thanks to Victorian Labor and their caucus members that sit up here in Anthony Albanese’s government. I don’t really know how anybody could be proud of that record. Sadly, what Victorians are now facing, thanks to Labor, is a state that will have fewer job opportunities, because businesses are leaving. They’ll have higher debts. Their children will inherit higher debt, and that’s a tax on the next generation being facilitated by the Albanese government. We will have higher electricity prices. We will have an electricity grid that is probably the weakest in the nation, thanks to the policies of Victorian Labor.

No matter how much the Victorian Labor members up here try to disassociate themselves, or distance themselves, from Daniel Andrews and his government, they are shoulder to shoulder with him. They are members of the same party. They are, in many cases, members of the same faction. And many of them are only in parliament because of the support that Daniel Andrews provides them.

Every single Victorian knows that the issues they’re facing are thanks to the mismanagement and the destructive nature of this Labor government, being fully supported by the federal Labor government. 

Click here for a PDF copy of the Hansard extract for this speech.