The Nationals leader and Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, says Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has just glossed over “a decade of Labor incompetence, mismanagement, waste and culpability” in a bid to cover up her failure to support regional Victoria.
Mr Walsh says regional Victorians make up a quarter of the state’s population but will be given barely 2 per cent of the budget spend on new initiatives in infrastructure.
He says barely 24 hours after he revealed that fact in a media release, news outlets throughout his electorate were bombarded with demands from the Premier’s office to see his statements about regional infrastructure investment as “misleading”.
“In politics you accept you will be criticised by your opponents, and you move on, but clearly my explanation about how savagely Jacinta Allan is short-changing regional Victorians has hit a very raw nerve,” Mr Walsh says.
“Because not only I am accused of being misleading, but the Premier is also trying to bully media outlets – and I quote – into ‘publishing our comment alongside any of his in the future’,” he added.
“So not only does the Premier want to use media to cover her own tracks, she also expects the same media to become her ongoing PR machine by adding her opinions to anything and everything I might say in the future.
“If that’s not the paranoia of the insecure, of those caught with their hands in the public cookie jar, I don’t know what is.”
Mr Walsh says in his media release he pointed out 25 per cent of the population will receive “barely 2 per cent of the budget spend on new initiatives in infrastructure”.
He says he also reported that 2 per cent was about $2 billion.
“The Premier agrees with me on that figure. Then accuses me of not doing more. Me, personally, from more than 10 years ago,” Mr Walsh explains.
“She claims her government’s (and I’m still quoting) ‘$4.5 billion annual average investment in the regions, $45 billion since 2014, speaks volumes compared to their measly $1.8 billion when Mr Walsh was at the Cabinet table. Our latest budget invests about 28 per cent of place-based expenditure in our regions’,” he adds.
“Let’s examine those somewhat ingenuous, even misleading, claims. If the Liberals Nationals invested $1.8 billion in 2014, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia, that would today be an investment of $2.28 billion. By my basic reckoning that’s $480 million more than Labor is promising for the coming year.
“So as you can see, every year of the past decade Labor has delivered less and less to regional Victoria. Not more. And my release spoke only about spending on new initiatives on new infrastructure whereas the Premier’s aggressive response and big numbers blurs all her figures into ‘place-based expenditure’.
“Do you know what that is? I’m not really sure, but I love the explanation at www.vic.gov.au/place-based-approaches-guide-victorian-public-service/chapter-one-what-are-pba which reads in part – and still quoting – ‘there is no agreed definition of a place-based approach’.
“Seriously? I mean seriously. So I rest my case. Cold hard financial facts, financial reality, not the socialist fantasy land in which the Premier and her gang operate, are dismissed for a concept not even she can fully explain.
“And people wonder why I keep saying Jacinta Allan et al can’t manage money, can’t manage the economy and, clearly, can’t even understand their own spin – and regional Victoria still only ends up with $2 billion while Melbourne’s voters are seduced with $96 billion of your money and mine for a big build that’s built nothing except debt and union bank accounts.”