Treasurer Tim Pallas has not ruled out using Treasurers Advance to settle pay dispute with nurses

Tim Pallas may resort to dipping into a secret stash of taxpayer funds to end a long-running pay dispute with Victorian nurses.

Treasurer Tim Pallas has not ruled out dipping into a secret credit card to settle the government’s long running pay dispute with Victorian nurses.

But the state’s money man on Wednesday flagged he has a “few rabbits in my hat” that could help to land a deal with the nurses union who are demanding better wages and conditions for their members.

It comes as he was forced to defend a secret fund – known as the Treasurer’s advance – which has ballooned to more than $12bn, up from $365m ten years ago.

The fund is designed to give the government easy access to cash for urgent, unforeseen circumstances, such as emergencies.

Tim Pallas on Wednesday refused to rule out spending funds from the Treasurers Advance on topping up nurses wages. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

But a final tally of the 2022-23 budget shows the Treasurer’s advance was accessed to pay for schemes like free Royal Melbourne Show and an upgrade of the Kardinia Park scoreboard.

“(They) are examples of decisions that the government had not foreseen that they would make otherwise we would have provisioned for it, and believe me, as Treasurer I want to make sure that we have as robust of a process of assessment of all the competing demands upon the state’s accounts at the time that the budget is acquitted,” he said.

“I believe the scoreboard at Kardinia Park had broken down and needed to be replaced. I wish it had broken down in a budget cycle so it could have been acquitted in those circumstances.”

Mr Pallas didn’t rule out accessing the fund to settle the state’s wage dispute with the nurses union.

Lisa Fitzpatrick, state secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch), is in negotiations with the Allan government. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

But he flagged that it wouldn’t be his first priority and would rather instead use contingency allocations which are commonly used during an enterprise bargaining process.

“I think we can be a lot more imaginative. I’ve got a few rabbits in my hat that I’m working on with the union about how we might be able to fix this and fix it in substantive terms,” he flagged.

Premier Jacinta Allan said the formal negotiation process with the nurses union remain ongoing.

“I’m not going to have that negotiation through the media,” she said.