Last week’s State Budget has confirmed regional Victorians will continue to face more pain under Labor, while calls for investment in the Latrobe Valley have been ignored.
The Nationals’ Member for Morwell, Martin Cameron, said the 2025-26 budget proved yet again that Victorians were paying the price for Labor’s financial incompetence, with the state heading towards debt of $192 billion and interest repayments of close to $30 million a day.
“Budget papers show the new emergency services tax will raise an additional $600 million in the next financial year, but money to our emergency services is actually being cut,” Mr Cameron said.
“If Labor was serious about ensuring this revenue goes towards our emergency services, it would have listened to the cries of volunteers and funded a new station for the Hazelwood North CFA, which is not fit-for-purpose.
“Road maintenance funding has been cut again, and the road repair target has been slashed from more than 1 million square metres to just 70,000 square metres – all at a time when our roads network is crumbling.
“The closure of the Yallourn Power Station is just three years away, yet this budget offered nothing in terms of investment in existing or new industries to replace the hundreds of jobs that will be lost in 2028.
“The sham that is the SEC is reduced to a single line item in the budget, being a big battery in Horsham.
“Labor used the SEC as a dangling carrot for the Valley by promising it was “coming back to Morwell”, but there has not been one single investment in the region under the SEC banner.
“The industrial heart of the Valley is in coal-fired power stations, and they’re being shut without a reliable plan to keep the lights on and without a single thought about what this will mean for our local economy.
“The Allan Labor Government cannot continue to ignore the urgency to establish new industries for our highly skilled workforce in which to transition.
“Labor can’t manage money, and Victorians are paying the price.”
