Steve Price: Victoria desperately needs its own Donald Trump
After a decade of being run by two career politicians with arts degrees in Dan Andrews and Jacinta Allan, our state urgently needs its own deal-making version of the US president.
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Australia desperately needs its own version of Donald Trump. Victoria and Melbourne need a Trump-like figure even more desperately.
Let me be clear, I’m not talking about the egomaniac side of the US President or his polarising antics, which enrage his critics. What I’m talking about is the deal-making side of Trump, his brutal honesty when dealing with the media and his America-first ambitions, which, right or wrong, are changing the world.
Now you are not supposed to say publicly that you admire the billionaire businessman – that conversation is reserved for like-minded mates over a beer or two.
My reason for outing myself as admiring how Trump goes about certain things stems from the lack of our own strong leadership at the top in either Canberra or Spring St.
I have said before in these pages that I can’t remember a time when we have had such a sad sack of senior politicians, from both sides, in federal and state parliament.
That’s saying something when we have endured people like Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, Dan Andrews, and now Anthony Albanese and Jacinta Allan. I will argue with three examples – some more damaging than the others – why I admire the type of mindset a billionaire businessman brings to running a country, and a state like Victoria.
We have been down this road of wishing for more senior businesspeople to enter politics before, of course. How many times have we replayed the footage of Kerry Packer telling a Senate inquiry that he paid all the tax he was legally required to, and given how poorly it was being spent he didn’t intend paying one cent more.
A classic exchange of its time.
In his prime, running CUB and IXL and jamming Foster’s Lager into every country he could find, John Elliott was even touted as a future PM. Alan Bond probably thought he could have done the job as well but that was, of course, before he went to jail for fraud.
Instead, in Canberra we always end up with career politicians elected by the factions on Labor’s side or lawyers on the Liberals side. At least the Nationals we get farmers most of the time who know how hard it is to make a dollar. Victoria by contrast has been run for more than 10 years by two people with arts degrees and full-time political careers in Daniel Andrews and Premier Allan.
As they say, you get what you pay for.
Trump, by comparison, has the advantage of hand-picking a team that has achieved significant business success and wants to serve its country. Instead, we get a bunch of political hacks who are then serving at the mercy of public servants — who, in many cases — have been in their positions for decades. Just think of the Sir Humphrey Appleby’s of this world.
Federally these mandarins of the public service are often paid three times what their political masters are paid. The elected officials – whose work experience begins and ends as supermarket shelf stackers or junior legal office workers or political office staffers – are then completely out of their depth.
It is rare that we get someone who has successfully started and run a business employing people, paying taxes and riding the ups and downs of the economy to add to the economic benefit of Australia. Most of these people making decisions as politicians are out of their depth.
I have never run a business and employed people either. I have always been a wage earner over but I am also not in charge of multibillion-dollar projects and budgets or paid by the taxpayer.
That’s why I argue we need someone with a business brain, who has risked their own money, often putting their own house on the line to survive, to take charge of Australia.
Let me give you three examples of federal waste and incompetence that proves we need our own Trump. I don’t need to again argue what a disaster the SRL project in Victoria is — that goes without saying.
Example one is waste on an epic scale. In 2024 the Albanese government sent 75 public servants – 75! – plus two federal ministers at your expense to a place called Baku in Azerbaijan to a climate change conference. This vital meeting was something called COP29 and cost us almost $2m for the privilege. The opposition managed to get these figures at a Senate hearing that was told around $20,000 was spent on each of the public servants plus an extra $102,343 to get the delusional Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen and his staff there.
Adelaide now wants to host this thing – COP31 – in November next year. Can you imagine what that will cost?
Example two is around national pride. We have a publicly owned and disused oil rig platform — The Endeavour — moored in the Timor Sea, which needs to be dismantled and recycled.
Instead of giving this work to an Australian company employing Australian workers – maybe based in Darwin – the Department of Industry Science and Resources (public servants) gave the contract to a US firm to do the work.
They are going to tow this thing 13,000km across the world to Denmark to a shipyard that we learn this week has a history of workplace accidents and safety violations with one worker calling it the “most dangerous workplace in Denmark”.
The cost to you and me will be $35.6m. Can you imagine Trump letting that happen.
Example three has Sir Humphrey Appleby written all over it. An election promise made by the Albanese government before term one was to establish a National Anti-Corruption Commission, which they delivered on and established. The NACC – as it is known – has a staff of more than 260 people with an annual budget worth more than $100m and what has it delivered? Not much.
Labor, meanwhile, has added an estimated 41,411 federal public servants during its term back in government taking the total according to the latest Budget papers to 213,349 people or almost a quarter of a million people (public servants) paid for by you and me.
Tell me we don’t need an Aussie Donald Trump, or at least our version of Elon Musk and his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency).
Only problem is, we have to find one.
Likes
• Roads in South Australia pothole free and 110 km/h speed limit when you cross the border.
• Melbourne Airport finally bowing to pressure and putting a taxi rank back in between terminals one and two.
• Basic cost of living in Japan cheap compared to Australia no massive taxes on alcohol or tobacco a pack of twenty cigarettes if that’s your thing around $3.60 Australian.
• Aussie cabbies win case against Uber to share over $270m in compo.
Dislikes
• Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece spending up big on travel overseas with Melbourne’s CBD still mired in graffiti and clogged by bike lanes.
• Media reports the Tigers are considering playing a couple of home games in Tasmania has to be wrong it would cause a member’s revolt – remember playing home games in Cairns, forget it.
• Bradley John Murdoch refusing to reveal where Peter Falconio’s remains might be buried before he died.
• Traffic nightmares travelling both ways on the other side of the Westgate Bridge – a planning disaster.
Originally published as Steve Price: Victoria desperately needs its own Donald Trump
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