A focus on quality, skills and a business focused state government key to prosperity

Bigger isn’t better unless Melbourne also gets smarter. Maybe we should start with swapping our premier for NSW’s.

Melbourne’s lockdowns drove people out of the state for the first time this century. Picture: David Geraghty

Bigger is NOT better. Bigger AND smarter is.

The idea that we can just go back to a pre-Covid 2019 future of ever more people flooding into Melbourne and that will deliver growth and prosperity is a fantasy.

At best it would be a recipe for living in, and driving and public transporting through, permanent construction sites. Pouring ever more concrete endlessly is not smart.

The idea that simply getting more people in Melbourne than in Sydney will see business and, in particular big business, flock south, bringing jobs and money, is delusional.

Is it even going to happen?

Melbourne (and Sydney’s) population growth has been driven by immigration. Yes, the prime minister’s reopening the door – but let’s see how many come through it, and what happens with Covid.

Further, Melbourne’s world-record long lockdowns actually started driving people out of the state. For the first time this century we lost people to other states.

Are they going to come back? When the Andrews Labor government wants to have even more power concentrated in the hands of the Premier and the health minister, so they could go back to a future of even more punitive lockdowns?

The industrial manslaughter laws are a serious DIS-invitation to business to move to Victoria, or indeed even stay in Victoria.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announcing more money for Suburban Rail Loop. Picture: Sarah Matray

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is seen as more business focused and friendly. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Yes, workers need strong laws to protect them.

But like so much that we’ve seen from the authoritarian Andrews government, these laws are punitively way over the top. And, as we are seeing with the Covid disaster in aged care that killed 800, it’s one punitive law for business and a free pass for those in the public sector.

Then there’s our state debt. It’s heading for $156bn and rocketing higher. NSW’s will hit $100bn, and start falling.

When interest rates go up, and they will, the cost of servicing that debt will mean higher taxes on business in Victoria, not lower.

These are big hills to climb. But they can be if – but only if – we get smart.

Maybe the :smartest” thing we could do is orchestrate a straight swap of Daniel Andrews for NSW’s Dominic Perrottet. That would be very effective “push-pull” – pushing business out of Sydney and pulling it into Melbourne.

Absent that we need to get smart, and quickly.

That means focusing on quality and skills with people not quantity.

That means business-friendly 21st century focused taxes and policies.

That means a business-focused business-friendly public sector.

With all of this aimed at building the real tomorrow digital economy not the 20th-century one of concrete.