Jeff Kennett: Jacinta Allan misses her chance to break from Daniel Andrews’ legacy of crushing debt

Why is Jacinta Allan committing Victorians — especially those in rural areas who will never use the Suburban Rail Loop — to taxes so high that it will change the fabric of life here in our state?

Jacinta Allen had a chance to reset the political agenda after Daniel Andrews’ recognition. Picture: David Geraghty

Last weekend we read in our Sunday papers some truly heartwarming stories about our Premier Jacinta Allan and her family.

Clearly a very well-grounded person in the thing that matters to all of us, our family.

Which makes her decision this week to sign the first major contract to construct the Suburban Rail Loop from Cheltenham to Box Hill all the more maddening.

The SRL project will blow out state debt to levels that are unmanageable for Victorians to reduce for maybe 30 years.

Why is she committing her children and ours to taxes so high that it will change the fabric of life here in Victoria?

Why is she ensuring that Victorians who live in her city of Bendigo, and all regional cities, and rural Victorians who will never use the SRL will have to wear the pain of the extra taxes that have already been imposed, with more to come, not to reduce the debt but to simply meet the daily interest payments of currently $20m a day?

Surely a person grounded in family values can see and would want to ensure that the quality of services the state provides in education, health, law and order and roads are of the highest standard.

Jacinta Allan has locked all Victorians in to paying for the Suburban Rail Loop. Picture: Luis Ascui

And that those who work in those areas would feel rewarded and not ignored, and others would be attracted to enter such essential professions.

Why do some people, family-oriented and sensible at home, abandon prudent management of the state’s finances when they become public figures?

Why, Jacinta, why have you done this?

Signed these contracts that will further condemn Victoria financially and reputationally?

You have signed away the opportunity to define your premiership in your own likeness, aligned to your own family values.

All you have done is indicate you are continuing your predecessor’s mad lurch towards irresponsibility and financial ruin.

You had the opportunity to reset the political agenda, but you chose not to.

You simply put another nail in Victoria’s massive struggle to very slowly turn the ship of state around to firmer ground.

With this decision you have signalled to Victorians that you are simply the puppet of your predecessor, who thought by resigning the premiership that his leadership failures would be forgotten. In fact, in a podcast last week Mr Andrews showed he had learnt nothing.

Worse, he expected Victorians to respect him for the decisions he had made.

For the mountain of debt he has accumulated in our names?

He was crying out that he deserved our respect, but arrogantly forgot that respect had to be earnt, not demanded.

Jacinta Allan inspects works of the Suburban rail loop in Clayton. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Sadly, Daniel Andrews’s legacy will be felt for decades.

Premier Allan, you had the opportunity to show us all that you were your own person, with your own set of values, but you decided not to do that but instead to extend the pain and consequences of Andrews’s financial mismanagement.

You might think, Premier, my comments are politically based.

They are not. I wanted you to be different. To set a new regime of priorities. To give Victorians and your children hope for the future.

You have three years before the next election, so I had hoped for good government and would have been very happy to have supported you in delivering that.

But as one of your predecessors, who was followed by four premiers with differing politics, I can say we know the challenges of your office. We know how important it is to live within the state’s capacity to pay.

I am saddened that you have decided to be the clone of Daniel Andrews, but that is not what the state needed on your assuming office.

Worse, it seems your personal values as outlined in the weekend’s papers are so terribly different from your public values and policies.

I am sorry that your children’s future needs will be very much influenced by the biggest state debt in the country, that you have just added to in a significant way.

In three years when you head to the polls, look back to the decision you made this week and see how that set the course for the political judgment the community will be asked to make.

Except for the very wealthy, the majority of Victorians will have our futures, our services and our opportunities defined by the state’s out-of-control debt.

By signing the Suburban Rail Loop contracts your premiership and Daniel Andrews’ are now one, and your legacies will be the same.

The debt and its consequences that you have decided to grow will be left to our children and now grandchildren as a heavy burden they will have to bear for the rest of their lives.

Tighten your seat belts, we are in for one hell of a bumpy ride.

Jeff Kennett is a former premier
of Victoria