All Australians will pay for Victoria’s Commonwealth Games disaster

Victoria reneging on the Commonwealth Games is utterly humiliating for Chairman Dan and now all Australians will be picking up their share of the state’s financial woes.

Oh dear. Is there even enough lipstick in the – formerly – great state of Victoria to smear on Chairman Dan’s pig?

There he was trying to dress it up as an exercise in fiscal discipline, while ‘still delivering’ the so-called ‘legacy benefits’ for regional Victoria.

And was fooling exactly no-one.

The Victoria Government’s reneging on the Commonwealth Games is utterly humiliating for the government, the premier, the state and indeed all its citizens.

Bluntly, Victoria can’t afford to keep its promises.

Does it announce the state is broke?

No. But it’s not exactly a good look, coming from a state with a debt of $150bn, heading for $200bn and who knows where after that.

It’s effectively an ‘official’ announcement of stunning financial incompetence.

Whoops, a $2.6bn cost has just gone to $7bn – and, the premier can’t even be confident that’s where the meter would stop.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews on site earlier this month at Croydon railway station which is to be rebuilt. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

But what does that immediately say about the costs of the Victorian government’s so-called ‘Big Build’ – pour a lot of concrete into the ground and pump a truck-load of CO2 into the atmosphere – program?

One very – huge – one in particular: the utterly pointless suburban rail loop that is costing $30bn going on $120bn and heading for $200bn and who knows how much higher?

And is in a ‘race’ with former PM Malcolm Turnbull’s equally utterly useless – and cost-exploding – Snowy Two to be the first into actually carrying passengers/water?

Indeed, the rail loop is sort of like Chairman Dan’s personal tribute to the net zero lunacy.

We, as in Victoria, can also spend tens if not hundreds of billions to match the federal spend of well more than a trillion, to equally achieve four-fifths of five-eighths of copulating all.

Walking away from the Games and from regional Victoria is a stunning betrayal of the 1.5 million Victorians who live outside Melbourne.

And it’s not too flash for the 5.3 million who do, and who are picking up the bulk of the bill for the Andrews’s government’s massive financial mismanagement, with the Games fiasco ripping another few hundred (?) million from the all-but deplenished bucket.

That’s also, please not, picking up the bill, pretty much, forever.

The other near-20 million Australians who live north of the Murray and west of Kaniva and, oh yes, south of Wilson’s Prom, shouldn’t feel too smug.

The way our federation (mis)works, they’ll also be picking up ‘their share’ of Victoria’s financial woes.

And that’s on top of the cost of the mad, bad and dangerous to live with ‘destroy-our-electricity system’ climate change insanity that is costing and only just starting to cost all Australians plenty.

The minutes of the Reserve Bank’s last meeting, released almost as Andrews was speaking – was he trying to steal Philip Lowe’s thunder, or trying to hide behind the usual media interest rate frenzy? – should have provided a very sobering backdrop.

Michele Bullock’s appointment has been well – and appropriately – received.

But there’s more than a hint of ‘it might mean the end of the Lowe hard rate times’.

Sorry, the minutes should bury that. We are only at the start of a tough, tough journey with inflation, and rates; it ain’t going to be ‘softened’ by the new guv and the new RBA.

Originally published as All Australians will pay for Victoria’s Commonwealth Games disaster