Terry McCrann: All the pain in budget doesn’t even start to pay down debt
Just six months ago Victorians voted for four more years of Dan Andrews — now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Opinion
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Just six months ago Victorians voted for four more years of Dan Andrews and they are now going to get their reward, and get it good and hard.
Whether they will be getting the next four years of hard, very hard, Labor from chairman Dan, though, is a very different and interesting question.
What are the odds now on the premier bailing, in the time-honoured Labor tradition of the male premier handing the – thoroughly – poisoned chalice to the female deputy.
Think Brian Burke and Carmen Lawrence in WA; Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh in Queensland; and indeed, our very own John Cain and Joan Kirner, back in the ‘Guilty Party’ days of 1990.
Now, I have to say, you’ve got to be impressed by treasurer Tim Pallas’s skill in applying oodles of lipstick on a fiscal pig.
Why, you might even begin to believe the looming $170bn of state debt — that’s over $25,000 for every single Victorian, more than $100k for a family of four — is all-but already paid-off.
No way. All the pain in the budget – mostly, in higher taxes; there was precious little attempt to haul in spending and the bloated Victorian public sector – only serves to SLOW the rise and rise in the debt.
The idea – the idea that Chairman Dan and Treasurer Tim would like you to believe – that the cutely named ’Covid Levy’ will actually start to REPAY the debt is a fantasy.
Net debt goes from $117bn now to $171bn in mid-2027. That’s an increase of nearly 50 per cent.
And note; that’s on the most optimistic assumptions about the Victorian and national economies.
That despite all those Reserve Bank rate rises, which chairman and treasurer blame for Victoria’s woes – that nasty Phil Lowe ‘made us do it’; borrow all the billions – the state and national economies will just keep whirring along.
That’s to say, we will get back to budget balance by 2026-27; and then and only then will we start to make very small repayments on the debt.
Dream on; deceive on. Victoria is in and will stay in a deep, deep, fiscal and debt hole.
And if you ‘blame Covid’ – as chairman and treasurer desperately try – you are blaming yourselves; because it was Victoria’s way over the top lockdowns that gave us so much more debt than, most directly, NSW.
The big underlying story in the state budget is the way premier and treasurer have desperately doubled down on their Big Build and Big Melbourne hopes.
That is, if they keep pouring more and more concrete, they keep pouring more and more people into Melbourne, that will at least generate enough revenues to paper over the yawning, spreading cracks in Victoria’s economic and fiscal state.
The method chosen is to attack property owners and especially owners of rental properties.
Gee, that’s smart. Melbourne already has a rental crisis; so we will further discourage people from owning and building rental properties.
I guess Chairman’s Dan’s personal calculus is that particular chicken will come home to roost under Premier Jacinta.
Sure, land is always a popular target of government taxation and de facto expropriation. On the basis you can’t take it away.
No, but you can certainly ‘encourage’ people to go away.
This is a budget which screams to Victorian go-getters – the creators of businesses and jobs – go north, and quickly, young man and woman.
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