The Treasurer’s last budget, handed down as Victoria was emerging from its crippling 111-day lockdown, painted a worst-case scenario for the state.
Economic good fortune generated by a resurgent property market and increased consumer spending has enabled the Andrews government to present a significant turnaround in Victoria’s economic outlook just six months later, and to conveniently attribute massive cost blowouts on major projects to coronavirus.
Last year, Andrews adeptly used his state’s success at defeating its second wave of coronavirus to distract from the fact that but for his government’s failures in hotel quarantine and contact tracing, Victorians would not have had a second wave.
His Treasurer similarly looks likely to be able to use favourable comparisons with budgetary rock bottom to encourage Victorians to overlook the fact that rock bottom should never have been on the cards in the first place.
And while it would be unfair and simplistic to make too many comparisons between the state and federal budgets — particularly given the role JobKeeper has played in keeping Victorian businesses afloat — Pallas’s modest moves towards reining in debt and deficit may appear fiscally responsible in the minds of many voters alongside Josh Frydenberg’s spendathon last week.
It’s no wonder that despite rumours he may consider quitting politics after eight years as Treasurer when next year’s election rolls around, Pallas says he’s not going anywhere, voters willing.
“I‘m going to put myself forward again as a candidate at the next election, and I hope to be the treasurer in a future government,” Pallas tells The Australian.
Not like Eeyore at all, really.
WA Libs vote to scrap welcome-to-country, net-zero targets
The moves pile further pressure on Opposition Leader Sussan Ley as she faces a growing Coalition uprising among the party’s dominant conservative faction.
How old greenies like me got lost in the wilderness
Before it was cool — when they focused on the environment — Chris Kenny was a ‘bit of a greenie’, right down to the ‘no dams’ car sticker. Now, the Greens are lost in a wilderness of ideological causes.
Joking on state budget eve that Daniel Andrews calls him “the Eeyore of the government”, a positive Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas realises his pessimism in November has served him well.