You can take it to the bank that Victoria’s debt will go easily past $200bn

Jacinta Allan is set to inherit a fiscal disaster that makes the ‘sins’ of the Cain-Kirner “guilty party” look like petty cash in comparison.

Cain to Kirner, Dowding to Lawrence, Beattie to Bligh, and now Andrews to Allan.

Once again, a male Labor state premier has handed the poisoned chalice – some would use a more graphic two-word term of which the second is sandwich – to a female successor.

And headed off – in Andrews’s case, he wants us to believe – to play golf and read books.

And handed that chalice/sandwich, also, to a, male, treasurer. Big time.

Although, in this case, not so much ‘handed’; as treasurer Tim Pallas has been there with Andrews, from the start back in 2014.

In his budget in May, Pallas ‘fessed up to a net debt for Victoria of a thumping $171bn by 2027.

Daniel Andrews has handed the poisoned chalice to Jacinta Allan. Picture: Ian Currie

That’s going to be easily the biggest in the country; indeed, it’ll be greater than that of NSW, Queensland AND Tasmania combined.

But in fact, it’s going much higher. You can ‘take it to the bank’ – or perhaps the bankruptcy court – that Victoria’s debt will go easily past $200bn.

And which invites an immediate question: how quickly will Pallas follow Andrews out the door? While there’s still a state Labor government to hand out cosy sinecures to ‘departed mates’?

The fiscal disaster that’s ‘hiding in plain sight’ – the like of which we’ve never seen before not just in Victoria; it makes the ‘sins’ of the Cain-Kirner ‘guilty party’ look like petty cash in comparison; but anywhere, anytime across Australia – is the crazy rail tunnel being built between Cheltenham and Box Hill.

The government – more specifically, the trio of Andrews, Allan and Pallas – has ‘fessed up to it costing $120bn.

There is no way in the world it will come in south of $150bn and – if it was continued to be built – will almost certainly go past $200bn, promising to all-but double the state debt all by itself.

The central question facing the incoming premier – or indeed, her Coalition successor – is how quickly she moves to ditch the tunnel? And so, how many more billions will be wasted?

Sort of neatly bookends the Andrews years, doesn’t it? He came in ditching a tunnel at a cost of $1bn; and departs leaving a tunnel that will have to be ditched at a cost somewhere north of $10bn?

How quickly will Jacinta Allan move to ditch the tunnel? Picture: David Crosling

And he departs, leaving of course also, his brutally destructive legacy from the ‘Covid years’ and the world’s longest lockdown – the destruction of business, of lives and of civil liberties.

It was beyond parody to hear him tell us of his proudest legacy – the just-announced social housing package.

With all due respect, Mr departing Chairman, not one of those houses has yet been built. Like the tunnel, it’s all in the – in my judgment, fantasy MANANA – future.

It’s not so much whether the trains will ever run on time through that tunnel, but the near-certainty they will never run at all. Ditto the houses.

Meanwhile, right now, the ambulances ain’t running much at all when most needed. And what about the schools, hospitals and all the other badly needed infrastructure?

Furthermore, where’s the promised SEC and the cheap, reliable power that the old original SEC used to deliver?

All that is just ‘filling’’ in that sandwich, that 8m Victorians are going to have to eat.

Originally published as You can take it to the bank that Victoria’s debt will go easily past $200bn