Andrews vows to deliver election commitments but will ‘make the difficult decisions’ in budget

The Premier has warned the upcoming budget will look ‘very different’ as Labor juggles paying off massive debts and delivering on ‘every single’ election promise.

Daniel Andrews has vowed to deliver on “every single” election commitment despite fears of a horror budget.

The Premier on Thursday said the 2023/24 budget will look “very different” to previous years after the government was forced to “borrow money to get through” the pandemic.

“Let’s be very clear about this – the budget is not the budget that was delivered five years ago – we will deliver all of our election commitments, every single one of them, because that’s what we do, but we had a Covid emergency and we had to go and borrow money to get through,” Mr Andrews said.

“That money now has to be paid back and I’m not going to have a situation where we simply ignore the reality that interest rates have gone up – they’ve gone up for ordinary, hardworking Victorians across the state and they’ve gone up for the government too – and we will cut our costs accordingly.”

The Premier said there would have to be savings made in the upcoming budget. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Mr Andrews said the government “will make the difficult decisions” to ensure the state’s whopping debt does not affect future projects.

“People are free to have a view … but there’s going to have to be a very different budget delivered – all of our commitments will be on it – but we’re going to have to make sure that our spending aligns with our priorities,” he said.

“There will have to be savings made, otherwise those extraordinary borrowings that we simply had to enter into to get through a one in 100 year pandemic, they’ll hold us back and they’ll prevent us from the next big wave of reform – growth in hospitals, growth in schools, all of those things – and we are not going to compromise students and patients, workers and families, by not making the difficult decisions. We will make the difficult decisions.”

Victoria’s net debt is projected to reach $116bn by June this year and grow to $165.9bn by June 2026, according to the pre-election budget update released in November last year.

Government infrastructure investment is also expected to average $21.6bn per year.