Steve Price: None of Vic’s leaders are qualified for the job
How qualified are our federal and state leaders to lead Victoria through the simple list of what needs to be tackled this year? The answer is they’re not – neither with life experience, or academically.
Opinion
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ABC TV’s expensive and one-sided view of the Coalition’s most recent time in power in Canberra – Nemesis – has exposed one powerful truth.
We Australians are governed by a bunch of dangerously self- absorbed out of touch ego maniacs motivated by self-interest. Public service and the ambition to make Australia a better place runs a poor second to personal ambition. Doesn’t matter what side of politics.
The three-part series concentrates on the period of Government under Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. It could just as easily have – as it’s done in the past – shone a light on the Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard years. Of that bunch of Prime Minister’s, I believe only Abbott and Gillard can hold their heads high. Julia destroyed her time at the top with her broken carbon tax promise, but post politics has kept her mouth shut.
Tony Abbott was cut down by Turnbull after winning a slab of seats at the 2013 election that Malcolm proceeded to lose. In Nemesis, Turnbull showed his true colours as a rich, entitled, wrecker who had only one interest – himself. To sit on his favourite network the ABC and label current Liberal leader Peter Dutton a thug, as Turnbull did this week – without challenge from the ABC reporter by the way – showed the bitter glass jawed Malcolm hasn’t aged well.
Scott Morrison just came out of Nemesis looking like a conniving, shifty ordinary bloke no-one trusted.
Nemesis – whatever that title means – caused me to reflect on our current State and Federal leadership, or more correctly the LACK of leadership. Australia like the US and UK and much of the Western World is in a rut when it comes to impressive leaders able to inspire their populations. It’s a sad situation when you can’t nominate a world leader that inspires.
To prove the point domestically I went online to check the backgrounds of the four most powerful politicians that will impact your lives in 2024. I chose the two most powerful Federal leaders in Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers and the two most senior Victorians, Premier Jacinta Allan and Treasurer Tim Pallas.
It’s a sobering thing to do and relatively simple. The question I asked myself was how qualified either academically or in life skills like employment background are the BIG FOUR leaders.
Answer – not very.
Given the political issues facing Canberra and Victoria in 2024 that is frightening. A simple list of things that need to be tackled this year, held up as a mirror to whether the big four can solve those issues, provides a simple answer. NO.
Federally I’m talking about climate change, the defence of Australia, tax reform – not broken promises – and national unity post the failed Voice referendum. In Victoria it’s crippling debt, tax grabs, way over Budget infrastructure projects and a housing crisis.
Jacinta Allan and Tim Pallas are in charge here in Victoria and interestingly most Victorians would struggle to name one other Minister post the Daniel Andrews era.
Let’s have a look at the qualifications of those two whose jobs are to dig Victoria out of its rust bucket status, putting us back on top where we used to be.
The Premier turns 51 this year and has spent 25 of those years in state parliament. She is the longest serving female MP in Victoria’s history.
That should give her points for longevity, political smarts and parliamentary experience – until you dig a little deeper. Premier Allan in her time has run transport infrastructure as a Minister making her responsible for things like regional train services. Ask any Victorian how the regional train system is, and you’ll get the same answer – terrible. As for the state of the main train hubs in Melbourne, Flinders St and Southern Cross – compared with Sydney’s brand- new refurbished stations – are grubby, dangerous, dirty and horrible places.
Jacinta was also the Minister for Commonwealth Games Delivery for eight months and we now know how that ended. Her qualifications for the top job in Victoria are a Bachelor of Arts degree from Latrobe University and a part time job bagging groceries at a Coles supermarket. She joined the ALP at age 19, worked as a political staffer and at age 25 was elected to parliament. No need to say anymore.
Tim Pallas is 64 years old and has overseen Victoria’s finances for ten years giving us the biggest debt of any State in the Commonwealth – indeed a combined debt equal to that of NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined. Pallas started working life as a trade union official with the National Union of workers. He traded up to be Assistant Secretary of the ACTU and was Chief of Staff to former Premier Steve Bracks.
Tim had Federal ambitions but lost a preselection battle for the seat of Melbourne Ports. As roads Minister he oversaw improving the Monash Freeway which to this day is a carpark morning and night.
Tim now lives in Williamstown, 20 km away from his seat based in Werribee – a true man of the people. How are your confidence levels going?
Federally the BIG TWO are Chalmers and Albanese.
Jim Chalmers will be 46 this year and did a Bachelor of Arts degree at Griffith University majoring in communications. At ANU he did his PHD on the Paul Keating Government. To prepare for being Treasurer – although we know he really wants to be PM – he was a research officer for former QLD Premier Peter Beattie, spent four years as national research manager for the ALP, two years as a media adviser to Wayne Swan and worked in the office of Kim Beazley and then back to Swan again in the Rudd Government.
His boss Anthony Albanese will be 61 in March. For almost half his life – 28 years – he has been the Labor member for Grayndler in inner west Sydney. Out of high school he did two years in the Commonwealth Bank before going to Sydney University to study economics. He was elected to the Student Council and led a hard left group of Young Labor with links to the Australian Communist Party and People for Nuclear Disarmament. He was then an adviser to veteran Labor figure Tom Uren and former Labor Minister and NSW Premier Bob Carr.
The BIG FOUR – zero business experience big or small and career Labor apparatchiks, with barely a day’s normal work between them.
Fill you with confidence – hardly.
LIKES
– Suburban libraries like South Yarra – what a tremendous free resource.
– Northeast Victoria hosting a round of the National Volleyball championships at Cobram on the Victorian side of the river Murray.
– New way of doing business for the Reserve Bank including a rate update media conference.
– Melbourne back as the first race of the F1 Grand Prix season from 2025.
DISLIKES
– Queensland Premier Steven Miles suggesting the Brisbane Olympics major events could be held at the Gold Coast stadium with a 25,000 seat capacity – what a joke.
– Local councils giving in to history and denying vandals tearing down statues.
– King Charles’ cancer diagnosis and his Aussie trip in doubt.
– Slack bail laws allowing the 16-year-old alleged killer of 70 year-old Vyleen White in Queensland back on the streets.
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Originally published as Steve Price: None of Vic’s leaders are qualified for the job
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