Wednesday, 9 September 2026

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (10:02): I move:

That this house:

(1)   notes that:

(a) the Auditor-General’s damning report, Delivering the Suburban Rail Loop, revealed that, from 1 January 2025, the government imposed an unannounced ‘rail improvement charge’, secretly adding 1 per cent a year to metropolitan and regional fares above inflation;

(b) the charge was modelled to raise about $8 billion in net present value terms to 2062, with $4.8 billion allocated to Suburban Rail Loop East;

(c) in November 2024, the government concluded the charge was essential to generate new revenue to service project borrowings, yet approved a communications plan excluding any reference to it;

(d) commuters paid the charge throughout 2025 and 2026 without it being disclosed in fare announcements, or the government’s December 2025 value capture announcement;

(2)   recalls the Premier’s undertaking that ‘integrity will not be optional’, and notes the charge was first approved in August 2021 when he was Minister for Public Transport;

(3)   considers the deliberate concealment of a charge on public transport users irreconcilable with that standard;

(4)   in accordance with standing order 10.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, within 30 days of the house agreeing to this resolution, all documents held by relevant departments, the Suburban Rail Loop Authority and ministerial offices concerning:

(a) approval, modelling and implementation of the charge;

(b) the November 2024 communications plan and decision to exclude the charge from public communications;

(c) the 2025 and 2026 fare announcements; and

(d) advice and costings concerning abolition of the charge.

I rise to speak on this documents motion. This documents motion seeks to retrieve documents from the Auditor-General’s damning report on delivering the Suburban Rail Loop. When I picked up the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office report I saw a few things I expected in that the Suburban Rail Loop costs will exceed what the government had estimated and the timing of it is not likely to be met, but I never in my wildest dreams thought that this Labor government would cook up a secret tax, not announce it and then keep it from the Victorian people. It had already been charging Victorians for two years, so I think it is worth retrieving those documents – not that the government will respond to this documents order; it never does. We saw a slight change in that policy today, but it never releases documents. I hope the Attorney-General will show the same promptness as Minister Symes in regard to this, but we know that Minister Symes has a lot to answer for when it comes to this secret tax. We already see the blame game going on in the corridors of Parliament and through the media, trying to blame other ministers, trying to blame Minister Williams and say that she was meant to announce it at some sort of press conference and trying to blame Tim Pallas and Daniel Andrews. Yes, they cooked it up, but ultimately, when it came time to announce that this new tax was being charged to Victorians, nobody did it. They kept it from Victorians.

When it came to November and December last year, when the government – then Treasurer Symes and the Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop – released their value capture plan for the Suburban Rail Loop, we saw car parking levies, we saw windfall and we saw the use of existing land taxes and stamp duty to cover the value capture. What we did not see in that list was the secret tax they had been charging Victorians for two years. They had been charging Victorians for two years a secret tax, which they estimated at about $8 billion of revenue. It is no wonder S&P has come out and given the government a bit of a warning over this. If you say you are going to raise $8 billion in revenue and all of a sudden you abolish it, then that obviously leaves a big funding hole in the Suburban Rail Loop, and we know through documents leaked from Treasury to the Australian Financial Review the other day that in 2020 the estimated cost of the Suburban Rail Loop East was $37 billion. The government acknowledges construction costs on all major projects have increased by over 20 per cent since then. They have acknowledged that, which means that we are hurtling towards $50 billion for one project from Cheltenham to Box Hill. In order to pay for it this government charged a secret tax on all Victorians – an absolute shame. And who knew about it since 2024? Ben Carroll knew about it. The entire cabinet knew about it. It was in cabinet minutes. They all either did not read their cabinet minutes properly or knew about it and did not say anything.

Ben Carroll can act surprised – he said the way it was come up with was not transparent, and he blamed the people on the budget and finance committee when it was dreamed up. Ben Carroll said, ‘Allan, Andrews, Pallas and Merlino’. Well, who is chair of the Suburban Rail Loop Authority right now and serves at the confidence of the Premier? James Merlino. Is he going to do anything about that? He said the way it was come up with was not transparent and named the now chair of the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, who serves at the confidence of the Premier. What is he going to do about that? Nothing. He said integrity was not optional under his government and that he is different from Jacinta Allan and Daniel Andrews. Well, this secret tax and the fact that he knew about it since 2024 proves that he is the same as Daniel Andrews and he is the same as Jacinta Allan. This is a corrupt government that charges Victorians in secret without telling them that they are being taxed. What other secret taxes have they come up with?

Victorians are angry and they deserve answers. They deserve the government being up-front with the Victorian people. ‘Oh, I’m not going to relitigate the past’ – be honest with Victorians, for once. They all knew about it, and they all kept it from Victorians. It is an absolute disgrace. People are angry, and they want a fresh start. We will deliver a charter of budget honesty so that when governments tax people, they tell them about it. They all knew about it. They are all ashamed of this government. They will not say it, but they are all ashamed of their front bench for not telling anyone they were being taxed in secret.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (10:09): I rise to speak on the documents motion moved by Mr Mulholland today. As is convention, the government will not be opposing it, and I am pleased to say that from the outset. When the Victorian Auditor-General hands down a report, this Parliament and the Victorian public rightly expect it to be treated with respect and taken seriously. The Auditor-General is an independent officer of this Parliament. The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office provides independent assurance to Parliament and the Victorian community about the performance and accountability of the public sector and its services. Its audits examine whether agencies and programs are efficient, effective and economical; how public resources are managed; whether legal and other requirements are met; and whether there is waste or lack of probity. Crucially, VAGO does more than identify problems. It makes recommendations intended to strengthen management, service delivery, accountability and future performance. That independence matters. The Auditor-General does not report to the Parliament and does not write reports to suit the government or the opposition.

The report before us, Delivering the Suburban Rail Loop, is 171 pages long. It is a thorough, substantive work examining four major public entities. They are the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, the Department of Planning and Transport, the Department of Treasury and Finance and the Department of Premier and Cabinet. It gives a candid assessment of the project, identifying clear risks around timing, costs, procurement and funding transparency. At the same time it acknowledges genuine strengths in precinct planning, commercial strategy and interagency governance. Respecting VAGO means engaging honestly with the whole report, not selecting the most dramatic line for a press release and ignoring findings that do not fit a political story. Engaging constructively with an independent integrity report means engaging with the entire document, not just looking through it to find something that you can clip later for social media but actually listening to the findings and taking action. That is what this government did. On the rail improvement charge, that is exactly what happened. The Premier has made it abundantly clear that under our government integrity is not optional, and when something falls short of the transparency Victorians expect, we front up and we fix it. There was simply not enough transparency about how that charge was developed and put in place, and that is why the Premier acted decisively to abolish the charge. It was scrapped, it is gone, which brings us to why we are even having this debate today.

I must say it is quite curious. If you look at the business program, those opposite have already got a substantive motion on the notice paper dealing with the very same VAGO report. They have already dedicated debate time to ventilate their views, read out their press releases or whatever it is that they want to contribute on the topic. But let me just say: instead of being content with that, they have brought this additional documents motion before this place to give us more time to spout the hot air that we are absolutely expecting to come from those opposite and that has already come. You see, when a problem gets fixed – and that is exactly what happened – they do not know how to respond, so what we have seen is a frolic and distractions just to keep the argument going. The problem has been fixed. They are tying up the time in this place to demand reams of paperwork from departments simply to confirm a fact that we already know has been confirmed.

Commuters know all about the charge that has been scrapped. I mean, I could quote what the Premier has said on this – and I have got to tell you, the Premier was pretty clear and emphatic. Can I just say that is very, very clear. While the coalition spends its energy looking in the rear-view mirror, our focus, frankly – let me be real about it – is making every dollar count and delivering the transport, housing and frontline services working families rely on. I have got more to say, but I will leave it to others who I know have further contributions to reinforce our point that this has been scrapped by the Premier.

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:13): I am very pleased to speak in support of Mr Mulholland’s motion. On 26 August the Auditor-General revealed that from 1 January 2025 this government has been adding a secret 1 per cent rail improvement charge to every public transport fare in this state – metropolitan and regional alike – on top of the usual CPI increase every commuter already faces. It was first approved in August 2021 when the now Premier was Minister for Public Transport. It was reconfirmed in December 2023. It was reconfirmed again in November 2024. In the very same month the government approved a communications plan whose purpose was to make sure Victorians never heard about it. Two further full rounds of fare increases came and went in 2025 and in 2026, without a word. This is not an oversight repeated four times over three years. It is a policy, and it makes a mockery of the government’s own rules. The government’s own value creation and capture framework says very clearly:

Value capture is based on the simple principle that those who directly benefit from a project should contribute proportionally to its cost.

Every one of the five mechanisms Labor did announce in December – land tax, the windfall gains tax, developer levies, the car park levy, state-initiated development – taxes people whose land or profits rise because of this tunnel. This levy follows no such principle. It was the single largest of all these so-called value capture measures and the only one never mentioned, because it taxes everyone who buys a ticket, whether they benefit or not. Notice who pays it. This charge falls just as heavily on a pensioner catching a V/Line service from Bairnsdale or Warrnambool as it does on a commuter riding the loop it was invented to build. My colleague Ms Lovell rightly called it ‘a sneaky tax to pay for city projects while regional roads are left to rot’. Regional Victorians were not treated as beneficiaries. They were treated as a revenue stream, good for $1.60 extra a day by 2035 and $12.10 extra a day by 2062 for the same trains that keep getting cut and the same lines that keep getting neglected west of Melbourne.

The Premier’s response has been to discover, quite suddenly, the courage to abolish a charge he approved as minister, watched and reconfirmed as Deputy Premier and never once disclosed as Premier. He will not say when he first knew; his own ministers cannot even keep their stories straight. One says she only learned of the deliberate deception in recent days. Another says he found out when the Auditor-General’s report appeared, like the rest of us. Apparently, nobody in this government knows anything until somebody independent tells them, and nobody has said how Labor proposes to fill the $4.8 billion hole that this begrudged abolition leaves in its own budget for SRL East.

On the very day he was caught, the Premier also announced a $1 billion saving on this same project. The Auditor-General found that saving was largely fiction too. It cut features that were never funded in the first place, already abandoned by the authority months before it claimed the credit for them. That is why this motion requires the Leader of the Government to table within 30 days every document on the approval and modelling of this charge, on the November 2024 plan to hide it, on the fare announcements that concealed it and on what abolishing it will actually cost. If the Premier truly has nothing to hide, this costs him nothing. If he has everything to hide, that is exactly why he will not table the documents. Regional Victoria has waited long enough to see what this government really thinks it owes it. I commend the motion to the house.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:18): I am also happy to rise to speak to this motion. In line with the remarks of my colleague Ms Watt, who spoke very well on this and indeed performs very well as the Parliamentary Secretary for Public and Active Transport, I do affirm that the government will not be opposing this short-form documents motion. Indeed they are always lively debates that we have here on Wednesdays, and it is always enjoyable to get a response from you, Mrs McArthur. But Ms Watt got a response from you in a curious moment actually, because the biggest reaction from you seemed to come when Ms Watt referred to the words ‘rail improvement charge’, which is of course what we are talking about here. But you seemed to get very excited, Mrs McArthur, at this creative language, and it makes me wonder if you have actually read the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office report. If you had read the VAGO report, you would know exactly what the thing we are debating about is called, and you would not be surprised about it in a debate. I am sure Mr Mulholland has read the report. I am not sure if you have read the report, though, Mrs McArthur, but I encourage you to.

If you are going to come into this place and wax lyrical, as you do very well in attacking us, it is perhaps good to engage with the document that you are referring to, because if you are surprised by the name of the actual thing that we are talking about, that does not fill me with great confidence that you have actually read it or engaged with it in any other way. I would caution you against just taking the blind word of Mr Mulholland too. You would want to follow your own advice, Mrs McArthur. You are a fierce, independent person. I am sure you would not want to be –

Richard Welch: On a point of order, President, Mr Galea’s contribution seems to be solely an attack on Mrs McArthur. It has got very little reference to the actual production of documents. It is about whether Mrs McArthur has read a report or not. That is not the topic of debate.

The PRESIDENT: It is a debate, and a member can respond to a previous contribution. But in saying that, I do not know what he is saying because Mrs McArthur keeps yelling at him. I will take it into consideration, Mr Welch.

Michael GALEA: In Mrs McArthur’s defence, she may have been provoked a bit there to interject. There are a few quite simple truths here. The first is that there is nothing inherently radical about public transport fares being used to invest in public transport, which those opposite seem to suggest that there is some great issue with. There is no fundamental inherent issue with public transport fares being used to invest in public transport.

Members interjecting.

Michael GALEA: That being said, there is an issue here, and if you will stop yelling over me, you will hear that I am about to probably actually agree with what you are saying. The issue is that you do not do it in a way that lacks transparency. That is exactly why the new Premier Ben Carroll, upon seeing this in the VAGO report – and as all members of this place are, we are grateful for the work that VAGO does in being that independent auditor and doing analysis of government spending. Having seen this come to light, Ben Carroll has taken swift and decisive action to remove this charge, because as inherently justifiable as it is, it is perfectly appropriate that it should be something that is clearly communicated, and as it was not, the best course of action is to remove the charge, which is exactly what Ben Carroll has done and is exactly what a new direction looks like. We know that Victorians are looking for that new direction, and that is what they are finding in this new Premier. When he goes and says he is different, it is not just words. He then follows through and he shows that with actions, and he has shown that in many ways. He has shown that on integrity issues, which has put the Liberal Party all at sea.

We know that they are so out of touch, this Liberal Party, because their colleagues in the Assembly were so confused by this and so enthralled and excited that they seemed to imply that $60 a week was 1 per cent of a public transport fare. Getting quite confused there shows of course that probably most of them do not actually ever use public transport, because if they did, they would know that it is a fraction of that. And if you did, you would also know that under this government fares are half-price for the remainder of the year. We have had a month and a bit of free travel and the half-price fares, let alone the regional fare cap, which has dramatically cut the cost of V/Line travel on an ongoing and permanent basis, which those opposite are quick to forget when it is convenient for them to do so.

Motion agreed to.