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Question:
With the demise of manufacturing, what is your plan to bring jobs to Bendigo and keep young people here once they finish school?
Debate:
Michael Belardinelli (Independent)
Get rid of the pokies.
Research shows that if you spend $1 million on pokies, three jobs. If you spend it on food and bills, 20 jobs.
I want to shove them back to the casino and have none for country Victoria from 2020, they’re no good for anybody.
That would be a huge job creator. Instead of people spending their money at the pokies every day, they go down to the shops in Bendigo and buy stuff.
Gaelle Broad (Nationals)
Jobs is a really big issue for our region. We currently have unemployment over 7 per cent, that’s much higher than the state average and our youth unemployment in the region has climbed to over 16 per cent.
Again, much much higher than over areas. We really need to be encouraging business, encouraging investment, and certainly the Liberal-Nationals have announced a 1 per cent payroll tax, reducing that to encourage more businesses to come to our region.
We also want to see the fast rail link to see trains come from Melbourne to Bendigo, Bendigo to Melbourne in just 70 minutes. That’s a huge saving of time, 33 minutes each way.
That will bring more jobs, more people to the region, and that will be a real positive for employment in our area.
The plan has been put out there. The $19 billion project, that is to see fast rail developed across several different rail links. It’s not just the Bendigo line.
And that is the real difference I see at this state election. We’ve got Labor who is very focused on Melbourne, and Melbourne is continuing to grow an incredible amount. And yet regional areas are not experiencing that amount of growth.
Under the Liberal-Nationals we are keen to see regional areas prosper and govern for the whole of the state, not just Melbourne.
Jacinta Allan (Labor)
Investing in rail, providing good quality public transport is a really important priority.
That’s why from the very first time I was elected we’ve had a focus on improving services on the Bendigo rail line.
There is a hell of a lot more that needs to be done.
When I first became public transport minister, my very first meeting with the heads of V/Line, they walked in and said ‘here minister, here’s the budget cuts from the former government’. The former government had $120 million taken out the organisation which we had to put a stop to and we had to rebuild.
There is more to be done.
This is a key difference between the parties at this election, the notion that the Liberal-National parties are putting forward about this 70-minute train to Melbourne.
This is a line on a map that’s drawn between Bendigo and Melbourne. They’ve put the number 70 next to it. There’s no dollar allocated to it, there’s no sense of when it will be delivered, there’s no sense of how it will be delivered.
To me, in my experience, that’s a hoax, It’s not telling the community how a project like that - they claim it’s important, they claim it’s their centrepiece - how will this be delivered?
There is absolutely no detail that sits under this.
In contrast what you have under a Labor government is a very honest conversation about how we need to invest in a rail network between Bendigo and Melbourne.
We’ll build dedicated tracks between Sunshine and Melbourne as part of our airport to regional rail link. We want to connect Bendigo to the airport by having the airport hub through Sunshine and we want to increase the line capacity between Bendigo and Kyneton, we’ve already committed to the planning for the delivery of that work.
We’re not going to put a pretend line on a map and not give any detail that backs up how a project like that will be delivered.
Ian Ellis (Liberal)
In relation to the Bendigo line, had the dual lines been left down many years ago, rather than being pulled up, it would not have needed as much work to improve the lines that we need now.
Now we’ve virtually got to start again between Bendigo and Kyneton. As far as hoaxes, $50 billion for the ring rail around Melbourne - where’s the money coming from for that?
Is that coming from China?
Jacinta Allan
We will invest $300 million for a business case, the federal Labor Party is matching that - a $600 million business case that would provide the full costing, the full timeline of delivery and you know what? It took decades to do the ring road, and that’s the same approach.
You’ve got to start these big projects somewhere. We’re not saying it’ll happen overnight. We’re not saying it’ll happen within three years. You’ve got to take a staged approach to these big projects.
The final thing about the ripping up of the dual track. You know why that had to be ripped up? It was clapped out, because the former Kennett government hadn’t invested in the line, and if we’d left it there, as the Liberal Party is now suggesting, that would have left Bendigo with an absolutely second-rate track so we had to do the work to invest in the track, invest in the new train, to have that investment in our regional track that we’re now seeing.
Helen Leach (DLP)
The dual lines were ripped up, as far as investing in new lines, I don’t think Jacinta can claim anything happening there until just recently - just before the election.
What I wanted to talk about was why we don’t have enough local jobs. It’s because of the manufacturing industries have gone out the window because of the price of power.
That is also due to Labor.
I would start by encouraging whoever comes in to build a coal-powered station, or nuclear, as well as gas, and of course with a renewable mix in there, but by the time everybody has put solar panels on I’m sure that’ll be quite enough.
But what you need is power. You need reliable power which is cheap enough for industry to be able to operate and hire people. They’ve not only got higher wages to pay, they’ve also got monumental power bills.
As Gaelle said, businesses are going out of business and that’s where all the jobs are going.
Nakita Thomson (Greens)
I support that both major parties are speaking out about needs for improvement in public transport.
I would say that the previous Liberal government did leave the Labor government with a lot to do. There’s more that the Labor government could do, but there’s definitely more investment.
The Greens want to see more inter-connectivity between regional areas. So we want to reinstate the Mildura passenger train that was shut down during the Kennett era.
Other than public transport, because I support both policies (of major parties) - they’re both needed - I am sceptical of the costings of the Liberal government’s because I haven’t really seen the detail of how it would be implemented.
I think there’s a great need for the city loop due to how much Melbourne is growing.
We have a detailed rural and regional policy on our website if you want to read it.
One thing we haven’t spoken about is gifted young people, educated young people, moving to the city and not going back into the regions.
We have seen cuts in university funding - this is more of a federal issue - but we have seen cuts in university funding that has disproportionately affected our regional universities.
I myself go to La Trobe, and those cuts are going to devastate the teaching staff and devastate what they can give to the students.
The way manufacturing is going, it’s becoming automated so more jobs are going. I grew up in Shepparton so I saw this happen with SPC and also foreign industries coming in and buying.
Automation is definitely part of youth unemployment and it needs to be addressed. University funding is key and we need skilled people in the regions.
Michael Belardinelli
Public transport is a priority because in Australia, and all over the world, new roads and hew highways are built, and 10 years later they’re all out of date.
Public transport needs to be number one.
