Meanwhile, in Victoria: Andrews stumps for Pride centre, squatters in East-West homes

Daniel Andrews stumps for Australia’s first Pride Centre; squatters invade East-West link homes; world sporting capital named.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, centre, is making a pitch for the pink dollar by funding the nation’s first Pride Centre.

Daniel Andrews is tipping $15 million of taxpayers’ hard earned cash into what the government is describing as Australia’s first Pride Centre.

It would be bigger than San Francisco’s LGBTI Community Centre and showcase art and history as well as health and support networks.

The policy will be seen by Labor’s critics as another example of the state lurching to the Left.

But don’t be fooled.

This $15m is all about the government trying to head off the Greens.

The SL in particular is under pressure in key inner city seats and Andrews is doing his best to help several colleagues.

Two of which include ministers Dick Wynne and Jane Garrett.

The Greens, whether Labor or the Liberal parties like it or not, are on the march in inner Melbourne in a way that will transform Victorian politics.

Ironically, Andrews is positioning himself to the Left of the Greens’ national leadership.

While the Greens are trying to paint themselves as a lighter shade of green, Andrews is going the whole hog, embracing watermelon politics. i.e. green on the outside but red internally.

It must be seriously entertaining for the more conservative members of his government to watch.

Not that a Pride Centre is a bad idea.

There is money to be made out of the pink dollar and there are social benefits to be had by making people of all creeds welcome.

Maybe if the government is truly courageous, it will have a look at a safe injecting facility to help treat the alarming number of heroin and ice addicts on the inner city streets.

The users just happen to be injecting in the seats Labor is trying to keep from the Greens.

East West farce

First the Andrews government threw away more than $1 billion when it stopped construction of the much needed East West Link.

Part of the taxpayer burden lies in the inner city homes that were bought by the previous government to build the road system.

Now, in the ultimate waste of resources, squatters have taken hold of at least one of these assets in inner city Collingwood.

The government has said the homes bought under the Coalition era strategy will go to the genuinely homeless.

But the government has been so lazy and slow to recover and secure the assets and to ensure an orderly transfer to the homeless, they have been taken over by people planning a street party in Bendigo Street on Sunday.

Melbourne named world sporting capital

Victoria has been named the sporting capital of the world for the past decade.

The SportBusiness Ultimate Sport City of the Decade crown was handed to the state in Switzerland overnight.

It was based on a broad sweep of events ranging from soccer to athletics to cricket and swimming.

The award is a good thing but Auckland defeated Melbourne as the city with the best major events strategy.

Only a whinger would complain about the facilities — sport, arts, food, natural — that grace Melbourne and Victoria.

Don’t mess with the fire services

Daniel Andrews is reported to be preparing to do a deal with the United Firefighters Union on pay and conditions.

For interstate readers, the UFU is more vocal than the much-maligned CFMEU, its secretary Peter Marshall being a painful thorn in the government’s side.

The UFU wants a pay rise of 19 per cent over the life of its agreement — who wouldn’t want that? — plus a deal that would give its members greater input in fighting fires under the control of the Country Fire Authority.

Labor will have to tread very carefully on this, given the sensitivity over fire services in a state still recovering from the Black Saturday disaster.