Victoria is broke, busted, delusional but pretending everything is OK
A sign at the base of the busted Melbourne Star observation wheel in Docklands has come to be a symbol of the direction the once great state of Victoria is going in as the debt train rolls on.
Opinion
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If there was one symbol of the direction our once great state of Victoria is headed it just must be the sign at the base of the busted Melbourne Star observation wheel in Docklands.
The sign is advertising something that no longer works, operated by a company that can’t work out what to do with it, promising things it can’t deliver. Broke, busted and delusional but pretending everything is OK.
It’s Victoria in a nutshell.
Walking past that sign this week on a long weekend Monday through a largely empty precinct – Docklands – I was amazed that someone, anyone, from the state government or dysfunctional Melbourne City Council hadn’t suggested the “flights of discovery” sign might need to come down. As I observed puzzled tourists wondering why this giant Ferris wheel wasn’t turning it came for me to symbolise the broken state of Victoria.
The sign talks of the “new perspectives, “flights every day” and “unique functions”. All promises they can’t possibly keep – sound familiar!
Sadly, all Victorians are now living in a state that is broke.
Just last Saturday this newspaper reported the Big Build program has blown out by another $1.2 billion in a Budget update.
Disgracefully – unbelievably – that figure included the news we are flushing $67 million down the drain to mothball the long-promised Airport Rail Link.
A major city on track to be Australia’s biggest in a few years can’t connect its domestic and international airports to the city with a train. Not only that, but we are also tearing up taxpayer’s dollars not to build it. If this wasn’t so tragic it would be a comedy show.
It’s time to declare a State of fiscal Emergency. We simply can’t keep going along as if this is all somehow going to fix itself with some magical Labor Party pudding. If we were a horse, we would have put down long ago.
Am I exaggerating? I don’t think so, and day by day hard working Victorian taxpayers are finding out exactly what it’s like to be broke.
Then just this week we learn that Malaysia has been offered $194 million upfront by the Commonwealth Games Federation to stage the Games Victoria dumped. Where do you think the cash for that hand-out came from? It came from you, the Victorian taxpayer, out of the cheque former Premier Daniel Andrews wrote for $380 million as a penalty for dumping those same Games.
Hardworking Victorians who are already the most highly taxed Australians handing money to Malaysia to stage something we couldn’t afford.
That’s what it feels like to be broke.
The Allan Government doesn’t seem to care about, or doesn’t understand, basic economics. How else can you explain the latest update on the money-pit that is the Suburban Rail Loop.
The Parliamentary Budget Office has predicted the first two stages will cost $16 billion more to build and operate than forecast back in 2022. So that’s just two years ago and includes a $9 billion blowout in construction and maintenance blamed on rising costs and supply chain shortages.
I’ll give you another reason for the blowout … inflated union wage deals demanded by the Labor party’s major donors the Construction Unions. This Rail Loop to nowhere will it’s predicted by these public servants- at this stage – to cost $134 billion dollars. What does our Premier Jacinta Allan say about this project she claims, “we can’t afford not to build it.” Is she seriously going to burden Victorians with something costing in today’s dollar terms a hundred and thirty-four thousand million dollars.
That’s the question you need to ask when you are broke.
Victoria has been here before under previous Labor Governments – who could forget Joan Kirner – but it’s going to get a lot worse this time around.
With no obvious successor to Premier Allan and an Opposition Coalition more interested in fighting themselves, the debt train is going to keep rolling for a few more years yet.
The Australian Financial Review had a great example this week of how this state-smashing debt and a desperate Government is impacting on Victorian businesses. A company employing 250 people in Melbourne’s southeast making plastic corflutes – the things used during election campaigns ironically – would leave Victoria if they could.
Their managing director Simon Whitely revealed his land tax bill alone has doubled this year, going up threefold in four years. Add to that his Workcover premiums have jumped by 85 per cent at the same time.
An industry lobby group in southeastern Melbourne that represents firms employing 270,000 people says multiple businesses had considered fleeing the state.
That’s what happens when you are broke.
This is history repeating itself and what happens next is a book we have all read before. Basic services start to fall apart, hospitals and schools have no money spent to maintain them, the trains that are already running are dirty because we can’t afford to clean them, Budget after Budget ramps up things like land taxes, workers compensation, payroll taxes, stamp duty and any other State tax and charge Treasurer Tim Pallas can get his hands on.
Political promises like the Future Homes program from 2021 designed to give “more Victorians the security of a house” has not built a single dwelling.
Like the Melbourne Eye renamed the Melbourne Star, Victoria will slowly grind to a painful halt.
LOVE
-Not needing to empty bags before putting them through x-ray machine at Sydney Airport - time the private operators of Tullamarine invested in the same technology.
- Footy back where it belonged at the MCG with the Tigers and Carlton.
- Peter Dutton bravely going where no Coalition Leader has before and really opening the nuclear debate.
- China reportedly dropping insane tariffs on Australian wines, which is good news for companies like Penfolds.
LOATHE
- Footy food and drink prices at the MCG increased with a schooner of draft beer now costing $11.50 and a pint $13.50 plus pies, chips, hotdogs and even water up in price.
- Hypocrite Greens Leader Adam Bandt splashing a million dollars of taxpayer’s money on expenses including private jet flights and limousines.
- Woke airport bus operator Sky Bus and its welcome to country announcements to passengers and painting buses in rainbow colours.
- Federal plans to spend $4 billion on remote housing for indigenous Australians at the cost of $1.4 million a house.
I almost killed someone and it didn’t need to happen
Driving up arguably one of Victoria’s most dangerous roads, a cyclist hit a pothole and lost control. Within a second she was skidding across the bitumen towards my car.
Kennett: Time to stop funding the greatest white elephant of all time
The Suburban Rail Loop is costing us billions of borrowed dollars that is adding to our debt, inflation and interest rates. We want and need governments to spend less and govern better.