But before I begin I would like to refer to a few of the things raised by the member for Murray Plains and remind him that Labor is the party of regional Victoria. Not only do we have strong MPs in Bass, Bellarine, Bendigo East, Bendigo West, Buninyong, Lara, Macedon, Melton and Yan Yean and great members in the other place representing western, northern and eastern regions, further our Premier proudly comes from Wangaratta and six members of the cabinet represent regional seats—six members of the Victorian cabinet, strong voices for regional Victoria.

What we do know is that we understand the issues of regional Victoria and we make sure that the voices of regional Victoria are heard in all of our decision-making.

What is really interesting to note is that with the Liberals and Nationals more interested in themselves it is no wonder we have Independent members for Morwell, for Shepparton and for Mildura—because you are out of touch. You do not represent regional Victoria. You do not have the numbers. People do not vote for you. And that is what we are going to talk about today: just how out of touch you are.

So my grievance today is that I grieve at the risk to regional Victoria if a Liberal-National government were to be elected next year. I am distressed at the potential risk the election of the Victorian Liberal-National parties poses to my community and our whole state, for they are out of touch and consumed with self-interest rather than public interest.

What we are seeing and hearing from the Leader of the Opposition, your opposition leader, is a desire to align themselves with former Premier Jeff Kennett. The opposition leader sets the tone for the party room, and the tone being set by the member for Bulleen is that he wants to follow in the footsteps of Jeff Kennett, the same Premier who brought great destruction and despair to regional communities across Victoria—the Premier for Melbourne, the Premier for big business, the Premier for property developers and the Premier for Crown Casino.

Famously, and you will remember this, it was Premier Kennett who described regional Victorians as ‘the toenails’ of Victoria—the toenails of Victoria, right? He was not the Premier for teachers, he was not the Premier for nurses, he was not the Premier for students and he was not the Premier for workers. We were all cannon fodder for Kennett.

Let me remind you of the impact of the Kennett Liberal government and the impact on Victoria: 326 schools closed, 800 police cut and 3500 nurses cut. The Kennett government privatised essential services, public transport, electricity, gas, water distribution and even the state-owned gambling group, the TAB.

Instead of looking forward, the Leader of the Opposition continues to look backward, despite the claimed need to focus on the game ahead. He said he was going to focus on the game ahead following his defeat in the 2018 election. In his concession speech on election night in 2018, following the Danslide, the Liberal leader at the time and now leader again said:

In the next parliament, we need to stick together, we need to stay united, we need to stay focused on our opponents and the game ahead, not on ourselves.

The member for Bulleen has not done this. Rather he has spent three years undermining the member for Malvern, plotting his triumphant return with the now absent member for Kew. Perhaps with less than a year until the next state election and his party in a state of civil war—

Mr Walsh interjected.

Ms ADDISON: We know that you supported O’Brien. It must be difficult for you. I understand. And the party is in a state of civil war, after it overthrew the member for Malvern and punished those who were loyal to the former leader.

Mr Rowswell: On a point of order, Speaker, the member knows that she must use correct titles in this place and at the moment she is not.

Ms ADDISON: I will correct that: the member for Murray Plains was very disappointed that the member for Malvern was no longer the leader of the Liberal Party.

The SPEAKER: I just remind members to use correct titles.

Ms ADDISON: Thank you very much, member for Sandringham, for that correction. I appreciate it.

Perhaps with less than a year to the state election—I was talking about the Liberal Party being in a state of civil war, before I was supported by the member for Sandringham, and people being punished for their loyalty to the former leader—might I suggest that the member for Bulleen follows his own advice. The Liberal and National parties of today have lost their way—and Victorians know it.

Unlike the opposition, we are a government that has its focus on the people of Victoria, their future, their children’s future and their grandchildren’s future. We are looking forward with an unparalleled infrastructure program that will set Victoria up for a strong and prosperous future: huge transformative projects like the West Gate Tunnel, the Suburban Rail Loop, airport rail and the Metro Tunnel, which will benefit not only Melburnians but regional Victorians.

We have already delivered the $500 million Ballarat line upgrade, which created 400 full-time jobs, providing opportunities to a huge range of workers, including 60 engineering cadets, apprentices and trainees, who gained invaluable experience on the project.

Our statewide projects just on transport infrastructure have created 18 000 direct jobs and 50 000 indirect jobs. I am so proud that we are building world-class, congestion-busting infrastructure and creating thousands of jobs. Victoria is working.

I really want to talk about job creation in Victoria because good governments create jobs. Before COVID, Victoria led the nation’s jobs growth, with almost 520 000 new jobs created since November 2014. We all know what happened in November 2014: the Andrews Labor government got elected. Seven years later, 520 000 jobs were created. When the COVID pandemic hit, employment fell by almost 200 000 in two months and the unemployment rate increased from 5.2 per cent in March to a peak of 7.3 per cent in June.

In our jobs plan budget delivered in November 2020, we announced a target of creating 400 000 new jobs by 2025, with half to be created by 2022. That same jobs plan budget also put in place measures to get Victorians back in work. We put in stimulus measures to restart the economy and we invested in infrastructure—shovel-ready projects—to help Victorians get to work, to help them work more productively.

We also supported jobs programs to help people who were struggling to find work, to get them back in paid employment. My brother was a part of that Jobs Victoria program and he really appreciated it at the time, after losing his job. I thank the Minister for Employment for the work that she did, an amazing mountain of work.

The subsequent very strong rebound in employment meant that we surpassed this interim target of creating 200 000 jobs by early 2021, even though we had set 2022 as our target. Whilst the delta variant has meant that we have seen some difficult job numbers recently, since September last year Victoria still added 112 000 new jobs. We always want to talk about New South Wales. In comparison New South Wales have lost 70 000 jobs over the same period.

Leading indicators of employment, such as job vacancies and job advertisements, have remained strong despite health restrictions, pointing to another strong rebound in jobs as restrictions ease. The positive job numbers are already starting to come in. Payroll job numbers increased by 4 per cent in Victoria in the month to 30 October. Jobs grew steadily over the month in anticipation of the economy reopening and once restrictions eased on 22 October. Indeed, payroll jobs are now 1.6 per cent higher than they were in March 2020, so we are 1.6 per cent higher than before the pandemic.

This is a credit to the resilience of Victorian businesses and workers. It also shows that our government have made the right decisions to support the Victorian economy and we have never lost sight of our objective to create jobs across the state.

As a representative for the electorate of Wendouree I particularly want to highlight the positive employment numbers in regional Victoria. The regional unemployment rate that we inherited from the Baillieu-Napthine Liberal-Nationals governments was 6.6 per cent, and the latest figure is 3.3 per cent. This is from recent ABS data which shows a drop in regional Victorian unemployment during the three months to October of 0.3 percentage points, and 1.9 percentage points over the year.

With a 3.3 per cent unemployment rate we are sitting well below the national regional average of 4.2 per cent unemployment despite the COVID pandemic, which has had huge social, economic and financial impacts around the world for the last two years. This is a strong result for communities across regional Victoria. In percentage terms it is half of what it was in 2014 when those opposite lost the government benches.

We are delivering on our promises to voters in a way that the opposition has proven that they cannot. I refer to a former Treasurer, the member for Rowville. In 2011 he promised that they would create 55 000 jobs every year for four years, which should have equated to 220 000 jobs. But those in opposition barely created 130 000 jobs during their time, and they drove unemployment up by 1.9 per cent according to ABS data.

I am incredibly proud of the growth in employment in our state since 2014, and I am even prouder to note that my community in Ballarat is one of the state’s strongest performers, with a decline in unemployment of 1.2 per cent over three months. Ballarat’s unemployment rate is now 2.7 per cent, which is testament to the drive of my local community. That has significantly dropped.

These numbers are not just figures. They represent people, and over 84 000 regional Victorians have gained jobs since 2014. They represent community members, regional families and regional businesses who have been able to innovate and thrive. They represent the promise and the performance of our regional economy and they represent a government which is delivering on all our promises and creating jobs for Victorians.

I want to quickly talk about manufacturing, because I know the member for Murray Plains has a real interest in manufacturing, as do I. My home town of Ballarat has a very proud record of building trains, and it is set to continue. The Victorian budget in 2021–22 announced a commitment of $986 million to build 25 brand new X’trapolis trains at Alstom’s Ballarat facility in my electorate of Wendouree.

Trains have been manufactured in Ballarat for over 100 years, which has provided our city with a constant stream of economic activity and provided good jobs for many generations of local workers and their families. This project will enable the gradual retirement of the Comeng electric train fleet, which has been rattling around the metropolitan lines since 1981, and bring in these new fantastic X’trapolis 2.0s. These new, fit-for-purpose trains will be more efficient, provide a more reliable journey and will improve accessibility for passengers.

I am proud to be a part of an Andrews Labor government that continues its commitment to manufacturing jobs in regional Victoria. I am very pleased. We have mentioned Mars today, and I would like to give a shout-out to the Mars factory, which is also in my electorate of Wendouree. They are a great company doing great things and employing a lot of people in Ballarat.

The transformative announcement of building trains in Ballarat will create 150 new jobs to be based at the Alstom facility in Creswick Road. As a former national industrial officer with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the wife of a fitter and turner, I am very happy to see that 15 per cent of these jobs will be for apprentices and 7 per cent of these positions will be reserved for vulnerable and marginalised Victorians, who are often left behind when entering the workforce. This commitment will be underpinned by a requirement for 60 per cent local content in the make-up of these trains.

This means that the X’trapolis 2.0 trains will be designed and manufactured predominantly in Victoria, supporting about 750 local manufacturing and supply chain jobs throughout this fine state. This is a huge win for manufacturing jobs across Victoria, and it builds on a $1.48 billion investment in last year’s budget to design, build and maintain 100 brand new next-generation trams in Victoria, which will improve the state’s transport network for all Victorians and at its peak will be supporting more than 1800 jobs.

I want to thank the Electrical Trades Union, the ETU; the RTBU, the Rail, Tram and Bus Union; my former union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union; and Ballarat Trades Hall for the important advocacy for ongoing manufacturing of trains in our great city of Ballarat. I would also like to shout out to our delegates, AMWU delegate Ashley Mabbitt, RTBU delegate Luke Cornish and ETU delegate Mick Roberts, for their incredible leadership during trying times.

Another important thing I would like to talk about in terms of our job creation is GovHub—$100 million. GovHub is supporting jobs for up to 1000 Victorian government workers. They are all going to be in Ballarat, creating jobs, driving our local economy. It is a really, really exciting time.

We have low unemployment in regional Victoria because this government makes the right decisions. This government uses the levers to decentralise. This government invests in manufacturing in regional Victoria. This government believes in Victorian workers and Victorian businesses, unlike New South Wales. I am so proud of this government, and I would certainly grieve for the people of Victoria if by any chance the Liberal-Nationals were to win the next election.