Steve Price: Labor has turned our state into a laughing stock

The sheer arrogance of the Andrews/Pallas pickpockets and the twisted logic of an injecting room in the CBD is an embarrassment.

If two Victorian State Government decisions taken this week are anything to go by the Hume Highway heading north is going to get very crowded.

Not since Joan Kirner and a previous Labor administration turned the State into a laughing- stock, and made us known as the rust bucket state, have there been so many reasons to get out.

First, someone in Spring St aided by the Melbourne City Council — more on that crowd in a moment — thought it a good idea to establish a drug shooting-up shop in Flinders St.

After its failed and dangerous experiment in North Richmond by putting a drug honey pot next to a primary school you would have thought these people might have learned their lesson.

Instead, near one of the busiest but much-maligned crossroads in a city struggling to attract crowds back, someone thinks a disused charity building should be opened as a shooting gallery for not just heroin but drugs like ice, or meth as it’s known.

Originally planned to wreck the amenity of the Queen Victoria Market it could now sit opposite the exit of one of the busiest train stations in Australia.

As eager footy fans gather on a Friday night to tram down to the MCG they will need to fight for footpath space with not just the homeless and drug addicted, but the dealers peddling this deadly stuff.

The former Yooralla building on Flinders Street is the proposed site of a new safe injecting facility. Picture: Mark Stewart

Anyone thought about an ICE addict emerging from the drug shop and reacting badly because there are too many mums and dads crowded around with their kids waiting for a tram?

And what about the desperate traders of trendy Degraves Street who were never even canvassed by their own city council about their reaction to such a dumb idea?

Likewise, Victoria Police found out about the plan by reading the Herald Sun and I bet the CBD-based uniformed officers are just beside themselves.

Then along comes the State Budget and Treasurer Tim Pallas who thinks it’s a great idea for the government led by Dan Andrews — remember him? — to spend $3.8 billion extra on mental health.

Rather than fund this worthy program from Victorian taxpayers — who they are already gouging — Pallas and his cronies decide big business can pay for it with a wages levy. Why?

If Victoria has experienced a surge in mental health problems with people losing their jobs or their businesses going broke or families failing to cope with months of home schooling or people unable to pay their mortgages — guess whose fault that is.

It’s the fault of a State Government who couldn’t run hotel quarantine and let the virus escape, killing more than 800 people and creating one of the longest COVID lockdowns in the world.

The sheer arrogance of Victorian Labor to think they can levy businesses 0.5 per cent for every dollar of wages they pay over $10 million and one per cent for every dollar a business pays over $100 million is breathtaking.

Treasurer Pallas made it worse by saying it was “only fair” that big business covered the cost, with many seeing substantial financial benefits throughout the pandemic.

What twisted logic is that?

Labor in Victoria is going to fund its mental health black hole, in part caused by their incompetence, with a tax on Bunnings and Harvey Norman.

Businesses that kept employing people through a pandemic are going to be punished for providing locked-up Victorians with something to do or watch.

This is the Socialist Left gone mad.

The provision of mental health services is a core responsibility of any government — state or federal — but suggesting, as Pallas has, that big business should pay for it is outrageous.

The businesses he is targeting already pay property taxes, payroll tax, GST and company taxes and if those billions of dollars were spent properly a busted administration like the Andrews/Pallas pickpockets wouldn’t need to raid them again.

Labor’s sheer arrogance and management is making Victoria a rust bucket state. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Just as stupid, the levy will only apply to those companies paying wages of Victorian employees. Sorry Tim, what do you think that will mean when these big outfits want to expand their workforce in future? Do you seriously think they will go on a recruiting drive in Victoria? Workers will be offered positions in every state and region except Victoria.

Victorians and Melburnians deserve so much better than this. They spent 2020 as the pariah state locked away from the rest of the world and just as people are starting to feel normal again you get these half-arsed ideas.

You just wonder if state and local governments think we are stupid and will just roll over and accept anti-business tax decisions and anti-social plans to fight drug abuse.

But I wouldn’t hold your breath if you run a business in the CBD of Melbourne waiting for your Melbourne City Council to come to the rescue.

Puzzled by their silence — aside from Lord Mayor Sally Capp on Twitter — I decided to check out the backgrounds of your councillors and boy, what a shock.

Of the 11 — including Sally Capp — here are a few examples: You have Nicholas Reece - a former advisor to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Councillor Olivia Ball - who has a PHD in human rights, lawyer Roshena Campbell, and also former CFMEU organiser Elizabeth Mary Doidge - who counts union boss John Setka as a mentor.

There’s Jamal Hakim who also sits on a board, and claims the Morrison Government is racist, and Greens councillor Rohan Leppert who worked as an adviser to Federal Greens leader Adam Bandt.

Anyone seriously think that room is voting against a Flinders Street drug shooting gallery — not likely.

No wonder Premier Dan Andrews doesn’t want to come back from sick leave.

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