REGIONAL Victorians are still reeling from a brutal State Budget, with agriculture, roads and health funding all slashed.
Labor is making life tougher and deserves to face the blowtorch.
Yet with so many unanswered questions, Labor remains largely silent, even as the Public Accounts and Estimates Hearing unfolds.
PAEC should be the ideal platform for Victorians to get straight answers to hard questions.
The process is designed to flush out the devil in the detail. Victorians need to hear the reasoning behind budget cuts as they continue to pay for Labor’s incompetence.
It comes less than a fortnight after the Budget is delivered. The timing is ideal to get to the bottom of what is happening to taxpayers’ money.
Instead, a procession of government ministers have dodged questions and wasted time by purposely drifting away from the issues at hand.
Time after time, the responses have lacked detail and substance. The clock runs down in Labor’s game of dodgeball.
It comes as Labor has cut $1 billion from the health system after slashing $2 billion in last year’s budget despite the system being in crisis.
Our roads system is crumbling yet Labor has cut maintenance funding by 45 per cent since 2020 with $260 million slashed this year alone.
And regional development funding has been halved to $106.6 million in the brutal Budget, with funding cut an alarming 80 per cent since 2020.
Labor, sadly, is sticking to type when all we need is answers.
The Nationals have led the fight for transparency via the Member for Gippsland South and PAEC committee member, Danny O’Brien, who has become increasingly frustrated by the process.
Mr O’Brien branded the process “a joke” last week as the government continually shut down questions about the State Budget.
No one is laughing.
There has to be a better way.
It is time Labor faced the heat and provided honest answers.
Peter Walsh
Leader of The Nationals
Member for Murray Plains
