Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh has lashed the level of infrastructure spending in regional Victoria in his budget reply speech.
The state Nationals leader said while regional Victoria accounted for 25 per cent of the population, the infrastructure spend in the regions was 11 per cent in 2021-22 and 13 per cent in the 2022-23 budget.
“If you break that down by per capita spend, which is a very good way of looking at it if you are comparing 25 per cent of the population living in regional Victoria and 75 per cent in Melbourne, the capital spend for Melburnians is $15,268 per person,” he said.
“Look at the capital spend for regional Victorians. It is only $7142 — basically half the capital spend on infrastructure in regional Victoria that there is in Melbourne.”
Mr Walsh also attacked cuts to agriculture and trade at a time when agriculture needed more support.
“There are actually nearly more people in Premier and Cabinet than there are in what was the Department of Agriculture, now called AgVic,” he said.
“The food and fibre sector in Victoria is one of our largest export earners, it is one of our largest employers if you look at the whole supply chain from paddock to plate and it is the biggest employer in regional Victoria.”
Mr Walsh said Regional Development Victoria and trade and global engagement had all suffered cuts, and he questioned the opening of a trade office in Paris when one already existed in Frankfurt.
“The cynic would say the Paris office is going to be a nice retirement package for a retiring MP on the government benches over there, so it will be interesting to see who gets the gift of the gig in Paris out of this particular announcement,” he said.
Mr Walsh also criticised the decision not to reinstate the country roads and bridges program, which assisted smaller regional councils, and the removal of $240 million from the road maintenance budget over the past two years.