Steve Price: Naive comment that exposed Victorian Treasurer Jaclyn Symes

The woman running Victoria’s finances into the ground recently told the media she felt “a sense of doom for America” before claiming Victoria “offered stability and opportunity”. For God’s sake Jaclyn, who are you kidding?

Forty-six-year-old Jaclyn Symes, a law graduate from Deakin University, is now running Victoria’s finances.

Treasurer Symes made a recent quick visit to New York to plead our case to financial ratings agencies to not downgrade the state’s credit rating again.

Since December 2020 one of those New York based agencies – Standard & Poor’s – has dropped us two notches from AAA to AA+ and then AA, giving us the lowest credit rating of any state in Australia.

Begging bowl in hand, Symes returned this week with the news that we will stay at the lowest credit rating of any state in Australia. Great! Break out the champagne.

Victoria’s debt is now headed for $194bn by 2028 and is costing you and me about $1m an hour, every day of every week of every year into the foreseeable future. And it will likely get worse.

Have a guess though what this financial whiz-kid said she felt about America after a five-day flying visit to New York City, that any sensible person knows does not mirror the USA at all.

Symes told the media she felt “a sense of doom for America” and then claimed Victoria “offered stability and opportunity”.

Jaclyn Symes met with ratings agencies in New York. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

For God’s sake, Jaclyn, please take a walk around any suburb in Melbourne or even a country towns like your birthplace of Benalla, and open your eyes.

Homeless people littering the footpaths, boarded up empty shops, abandoned pubs and drug-affected zombies committing crimes, often violently. Stability and opportunity? Who are you kidding. And you reckon America is suffering from a sense of doom.

I won’t bore you with the other political spin she put on her trip but clearly, she was told by these money experts, with our financial future in their hands, to get her act together along with her boss Jacinta Allan.

Symes has now promised – well pledged (there is a subtle difference) – to “cut thousands of public sector jobs”.

Well, we all know that won’t happen because Victoria and it’s Labor government are run by the unions.

She also made the meaningless promise to cut future infrastructure spending and you wonder if the man from S&P asked about the Suburban Rail Loop – we will never know.

Symes has promised to cut thousands of public sector jobs. Picture: Eamon Gallagher

Symes’ trip and her naive, leftie university graduate comment about America being a nation of doom could be ignored if it was a one off, but Symes is symptomatic of the career Labor union/adviser types running our state and country.

She is a perfect example of out of touch professional politicians who are underqualified and overpaid for the job they are doing.

Just this week we had more examples of people out of their depth and taking ordinary Australians for fools.

Have we ever seen a more blatant shoving of your nose in the dirt than a Melbourne CBD lunch last Wednesday, featuring Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and ex-premier Daniel Andrews at Melbourne’s power dining venue Gimlet at Cavendish House in Russell St.

Now I don’t have a problem with a good business lunch having had plenty myself over the years – normally, I might add, footing the bill – but this was such a bad look given the cost-of-living crisis Australians are going through and the disregard many Victorians have for Andrews especially.

Naively the pair must have thought no-one would notice them and out of respect would not use their mobile phones to post pictures online of the pair guzzling a Wednesday lunchtime wine.

Pretty dumb if they thought that – or maybe they don’t give a stuff what you think. Probably the latter.

Prime Minster Anthony Albanese dines with Daniel Andrews at Gimlet in Melbourne. Picture: Supplied

At the end of the lunch, eyewitnesses claim, the PM was ushered out through a concealed side entrance by his security detail and it seems the former premier was left to pick up the lunch bill.

No need for too much sympathy here given Andrews retired in September 2023 on a tax-free pension of $300,000 a year for life and appears to still be working in some form or another, including reports he schooled the PM on debate appearances during the May election campaign.

Even so, a quick check of Gimlet’s winter menu sees a whole chicken priced at $120, or if you prefer a half rock lobster with saffron rice at a steal for $320, or maybe a steak, say a 300g cut of beef tenderloin with pepper sauce — a bargain at $140.

Maybe the PM picked up the tab in celebration of his recent pay rise that now sees him paid more than the President of the United States Donald Trump who this week seemed to forget he was supposed to have a meeting with Albanese in the Canadian Rockies.

Lunch with Andrews might seem like a minor thing given what’s happening in the world right now but the salary pay rise for all federal MP’s and senior public servants and judges is just the sort of arrogant ignorance that annoys everyday Australians.

Sure, the pay rise decision was made by the independent renumeration tribunal but that doesn’t make it right at a time when thousands and thousands of Australians are being made redundant as the economy slides along in a per-capita recession.

Dan picked up the bill. Picture: Supplied

True leadership from any side of politics – the Coalition included – would have seen the political elite reject the idea that they deserved a 2.4 per cent annual pay rise that kicks in from July 1 this year.

It gets worse since July 2022 federal politicians have been gifted in those three years 12.65 per cent in wage increases plus of course their generous taxpayer funded superannuation schemes.

How many hardworking average Australians have had that sort of wage increase – of course the answer is not many.

A refreshing response from a recently re-elected PM would have been, ‘look, we know there is a cost of living and housing crisis and even finding a place to rent is hard so we will put a freeze on politicians’ pay rises for the term of this Labor government’.

Can you imagine how such a small gesture like that would mean to ordinary Aussies.

It would have, in my view, cemented Albanese’s reputation as a leader, as someone who understands how tough things truly are in 2025.

Instead, we have a tone-deaf man sitting down with the most despised politician of our generation, supping wine and eating some of the most expensive food in Australia.

Plus, an underqualified Treasurer in Symes calling America doomed after a pit-stop in New York to beg for financial support for a broke state.

On both counts I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

FOOTNOTE – Just in case anyone sees me eating at Gimlet soon, I was given a gift-voucher for my 70th birthday by generous ex-3AW breakfast legend John Burns.

Likes

– Legendary Melbourne bookshop Hill of Content survives building sale by moving to a new venue on Bourke St.

– Final confirmation James Cook’s renamed ship HMS Endeavour found after 250 years off Newport Rhode Island.

– Speculation AC/DC’s flat-bed truck video down Swanston St could be re-enacted this November.

– Bicycle riders angry the Melbourne City Council might see sense and stop building more bike lanes.

Dislikes

– Not content with the Richmond drug injecting room, Melbourne now to get a pill testing centre on Brunswick St Fitzroy.

– Silly road rule change by Stonnington Council turning Chapel St into a 30 km/h zone – what about fixing the homeless problem instead.

– Treasurer Jim Chalmers waiting until after the federal election to admit his budget is not sustainable.

– Rugby League’s jewel in the crown State of Origin being played in Perth – why?

Originally published as Steve Price: Naive comment that exposed Victorian Treasurer Jaclyn Symes