Andrew Bolt: Victoria is a national joke after state budget

Remember Victorians once mocking NSW for being corrupt? Queensland, a state of hicks? Now we’re the national joke thanks to our stupidity with public money.

It’s now a joke to be a Victorian. An embarrassment, that’s been confirmed by this week’s state budget.

Remember Victorians once mocking NSW for being corrupt? Queensland, a state of hicks?

Now we’re the national joke.

We’re not just ultra woke and so slave-like that Melbourne put up with the world’s longest lockdown in the pandemic.

We’re also totally stupid with public money.

The budget has confirmed it – Victoria’s net debt will now top that of NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined.

What’s even more shameful is that it’s caused by catastrophic management by a decade of Labor governments which Victorian’s just kept re-electing, as if believing magic pudding economics could go on forever.

Victoria’s net debt will now top that of NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined. Picture: NCA Newswire / Nicki Connolly

Labor hired massively more public servants than any other state, and made them Labor supporters by bribing them with huge pay rises. The figures are astonishing: 59 per cent more public servants over 15 years, when the population rose only half that. Their wages bill rocketed by 152 per cent.

But Labor was so incompetent that it also lost $600 million by bidding for the Commonwealth Games it couldn’t afford and then cancelling them. Yet voters still re-elected them.

Labor is even building a train line, mostly underground, looping the metropolis, to link suburbs no one wants to visit to other suburbs no one wants to visit. This folly was promised to cost $50 million, but is now estimated at $200 billion.

What major project hasn’t blown out? The North East Link alone is so far $10 billion over budget, but – this being Victoria – the minister in charge, Jacinta Allan, was rewarded by being made Premier.

A renders showing updated designs for the North East Link.

Is that because the state is so woke to gender and other identity politics, that mediocrity is accepted and no feels at home? The Australian Population Research Institute even measured that in a new survey of 3000 Australians, finding Melbourne had the highest proportion of people in any city who didn’t have a strong sense of belonging here: 51 per cent. In Brisbane, it was 41 per cent.

Oh, and if you’re not a Victorian, be warned. This affects you, too.

Victoria’s government this week admitted it was hurtling to a net debt of nearly $190 billion in four years, with little left to sell and electricity and gas running out, thanks to Victoria’s global warming lunacy.

Who’ll be asked to bail it out? Stupidity has a price, and Australians will soon pay it.

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Victoria is a national joke after state budget