Formal inquiry needed into Victorian Labor’s debt and spending binge

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan and Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas.

Victorian Labor has been fiscally diabolical but when it comes to political marketing, crudely successful.

When the debt graph is pointing to the roof, the politicians have simply turned the drawing upside down.

Problem sorted?

No matter what spin is put on the numbers in Tuesday’s budget, there will be a stench of doubt about what is delivered.

It was once said the Victorian Treasury was the best in the country; no one can make that argument after years of over-spending in the name of politics.

It’s almost a cliche to suggest that Victoria needs a royal commission into its finances.

It used to be fashionable upon a change of government to have a commission of audit into the finances to work out where to take the budget.

Victoria will need more than that.

It needs a properly independent inquiry overseen by a judge or judges to pick apart spending and decision-making in a manner that transcends politics. No old Tory hack from the bench.

More, a politically bright but independent royal commissioner or commissioners to dig deep into the major project blowouts, pandemic spending and blatant pork barrelling.

A lot of the criticism of Labor during the pandemic was excessive and unsophisticated but the Allan/Andrews governments cannot run from questions about its finances.

The Victorian story has been, for a very long time, sophisticated and nuanced.

Labor has been politically ahead of the demographics and ahead of the curve about what people want.

The tens of billions of dollars thrown at voters (some of it wasted) has had a huge impact on sentiment and explains why the Labor brand has been strong in the southern state.

Yet unless Treasurer Tim Pallas can meaningfully change the way the government functions, then just expect long-term pain for Victorian and national taxpayers.

You can be virtually guaranteed that Labor has held back on budget announcements with the aim of swamping the looming cuts with whatever cost-of-living handouts there look like being.

This is a mis-read.

Most voters know there has been a pandemic and they know the cost-of-living crisis has been cruel to a lot of families.

The Allan government could make cutting its cloth a virtue.

Indeed, it would outflank Coalition attacks if it could re-frame itself as fiscally conservative under Jacinta Allan.

She has definitely shifted her government towards the middle.

But for mine, Victoria feels much like it did after the bank collapses in Victoria and South Australia in the very early 1990s.

Back then, it was obvious that something had gone wrong.

In 2024, consider the spiralling debt, the major projects blowouts, the soaring tax revenue, the failed Commonwealth Games bid, the climbing public wages bill and the pandemic hangover.

Different times but the same underlying sense of budgetary failure.