Vic Treasurer Jaclyn Symes has yet to gain the air of confidence her predecessor Tim Pallas had, writes James Campbell

Halting as she delivered her budget speech and at times sounding like a teacher trying to get down with the kids by using words like “cool”, Victoria’s new Treasurer Jaclyn has a lot to learn.

Treasurer Tim Pallas announces his retirement. Picture: Aaron Francis

Whether Victoria’s new treasurer has mastered the intricacies of the Victorian budget is, on the evidence of the past two days, still an open question.

What is without doubt is Jaclyn Symes has yet to acquire that air of confidence – however misplaced – that her predecessor was so good at projecting when faced with a room of stakeholders.

Former state treasurer Tim Pallas would have been there early and mingled with the crowd.

He would not have arrived after everyone was seated and been seen marking-up his speech on the way into the room as Ms Symes did.

Victorian Treasurer Jaclyn Symes delivers her first budget speech. Picture: Getty

It wasn’t just the halting way she delivered her speech either – nor the fact that at one point she appeared to lose her place – that caused one to wonder if she has yet to get her head around the job.

Nor is it even the way she occasionally sounds like a high school teacher trying to get down with the kids – asking the assembled leaders of the state’s business community if any of them had any “cool assets” that she could come and have look at, like data centres she’s looking forward to visiting because “apparently they’re cool”.

No, the worrying thing is Ms Symes has clearly yet to learn what she should and shouldn’t be saying out loud.

Blind Freddy could have seen the real audience for Ms Symes’ first budget is not the people of Victoria or even her caucus colleagues but the ratings agencies in New York who will decide how much the state pays to borrow our enormous – and growing – debt.

Mr Pallas would not have arrived after everyone was seated and been seen marking-up his speech on the way into the room as Ms Symes did. Picture: Aaron Francis

To that end you never want to admit that Victoria’s rating is in anything other than the most robust of health.

What you do not want to be doing is telling the crowd at Crown Palladium that the benign response of the ratings agencies to the budget had been “a little bit of a relief”.

Not that the audience was in any mood to get into her about the state of Victoria’s finances.

A hostile reception might have made sense in a world in which Victoria’s business community held out any hope of a time in which Labor doesn’t occupy 1 Treasury Place.

But the thrashings Daniel Andrews handed the state Liberals in 2018 and 2022 followed up by the thrashing Albo handed their federal colleagues earlier this month have made it clear it would be a very brave stakeholder indeed who was prepared to make an enemy of this government.

In other words it doesn’t matter how underwhelming Jaclyn Symes is, the crowd at VECCI has reached a collective conclusion that she and her boss Jacinta Allan ain’t going anywhere.

It was left to Heidi Murphy to ask the killer question, one which momentarily seemed to leave Ms Symes speechless: “Is this the best you can do?”