Rita Panahi: Jaclyn Symes is proving to be just as inept as her predecessor

The economically illiterate Treasurer’s shortsighted decision to hit landlords with another tax shows she’s on track to be just as incompetent as her uniquely terrible predecessor Tim Pallas.

Victoria cannot afford to have an economically illiterate treasurer but sadly that’s precisely what we have in Jaclyn Symes.

The decision to impose yet another tax on property investors is shortsighted, counter-productive and deeply ideological.

Fresh from mismanaging the Emergency Services portfolio, Symes is set to cause considerable fiscal pain in a state that can ill-afford further economic incompetence.

Symes was not treasurer when the state was plunged into record debt, the highest in the country, but she’s proving to be just as inept and out of touch as her predecessor. And, that’s saying something given how uniquely terrible Tim Pallas was as treasurer; this is the man who left Victoria with a forecast net debt of $187.8bn and saw fit to spend more than $72,000 of taxpayers’ money on a European junket just two months before he retired.

It was under Pallas that the Victorian government declared war on property investors with soaring land tax bills, a costly and ever expanding list of minimum standards and a raft of reforms that diminished property owners’ rights.

Victoria cannot afford to have an economically illiterate treasurer like Jaclyn Symes. Picture: David Caird

This week another tax burden was revealed for mum and dad property investors with the Herald Sun reporting that the Jacinta Allan government plans to charge landlords a higher rate than owner occupiers under its new levy to fund Victoria’s emergency services. And, to add insult to injury the new treasurer was dismissive of the latest impost claiming that landlords “can afford to pay more.”

If Symes had any business nous or experience in a role outside of being a political staffer or a politician, she’d know that the additional cost will be passed on to renters or add further pressure on property investors to sell their asset which will shrink the pool of rental properties and lead to higher rents.

Either way rents will increase and mum and dad investors will be under increased financial pressure. It is another lose lose situation, a specialty of state Labor.

And, it comes at a time when experts warn rents are about to soar further across Melbourne with hikes of up to $200 a week forecast by Suburb Advice.

All of this appears to be lost on Treasurer Symes who is so out of her depth in the portfolio that staff communicating with her were reportedly told to avoid using economic lingo.

As the Herald Sun reported last month, staff were instructed to “stop using economic terms and phrases in all communications (emails etc) with the treasurer” as “she doesn’t have a clue what they are all talking about.”

It’s one thing for the Victorian Treasurer to be ignorant of economic terms, but she also appears to be profoundly ignorant of basic economic concepts.