Just six days ago the Victorian Treasurer issued yet another of his self-serving and selective media releases that we have come to know only too well. The release was issued following extremely disappointing labour force figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The Treasurer’s hyperbole created the totally false impression that Victoria was in the midst of an economic boom. The fact is nothing could be further from the truth, and that is borne out

I must say I thought the representative of the boating capital of Victoria, the member for Essendon, might have got his pilots confused when he was doing his research, but he got to the right sort eventually. As the explanatory memorandum notes, this bill makes a range of changes to the ports and marine legislation and to a number of other acts. The government claims in the explanatory memorandum that the bill will result in

From Hansard, the member for Bendigo East, now Leader of the House, on 24 October 2012: Doing the right thing would be paying back the money … Doing the right thing would be the Premier standing aside the member for Frankston while these investigations are under way … Doing the right thing would be making sure that the member … is held absolutely accountable for his actions. From the member for Mulgrave, now the Premier,

This is a bill with only one purpose, and that purpose is to lock successive governments into the Premier’s profligate public sector wages policy, to lock them in for government after government after government. The sad thing is if only members opposite could realise that if they actually stick up for the public interest and for ordinary Victorians, instead of their mates, those people who they owe a debt to for getting them onto the