With the ‘attention-sapping’ AFL football season over, many critical questions are starting to weigh on the minds of Victorian voters.
Can the state, currently on life support, ever be resurrected being central in their thinking?
Can integrity and honesty be restored to public administration?
Can government corruption be flushed into the open and can justice be done?
In summary, can the Victorian state recover from the omni-shambles of 12 years of Labor rule? This is a fair question. By pure coincidence, the day of writing this piece marks three years exactly that reviled Daniel Andrews ‘threw in towel’ as Premier. (September 27, 2023.)
As the chief architect of social and economic destruction in Victoria, the ignominious end to Andrews’ 3,219 days in office is a moment still rejoiced by millions of voters in the state. It is fortunate for us he didn’t attempt the remarkable 17 years in office achieved by a distinguished predecessor, Sir Henry Bolte.
Bankrupting an entire state and overseeing the virtual collapse of trust in public administration will, after all, take quite some focus by an incoming government, in whatever form it may come.
With virtually moribund state productivity and with crime out of control, few people are diminishing the scale of the task facing those elected to form government to restore functioning democracy to the state. Another ‘top of mind’ question for voters is will an incoming administration be able to stop the good ship ‘Fiscal Endeavour’ from sinking? Good question. Another good question is how long will it take to restore a semblance of integrity to the services paid for and required by the public?
With barely 60 days till the poll that matters (Saturday, 28 November) voters, with growing intensity, are more focused on burying the carcasses of Labor Premiers Andrews, Allan, and Carroll. For voters, this is ‘payback’ time for the grotesque and lethal Covid policies of Andrews, the eye-watering profligacy on unwanted infrastructure of Allan, and the sorry, pathetic excuses by (now) Premier Carroll. There is a growing awareness in the state that the time for change has come.
Voters know it’s at the ballot-box the gruelling task of stabilising this broken state can commence.
Failure to change the government, on the other hand, will consign Victoria to further debt and decline. The impact will be felt most acutely in our chronically underfunded hospitals, in state schools, over-crowded mental health facilities, barely functioning public transport services, rural and regional support services, and in so many other ways besides.
Even the least engaged voter knows that cutting out the cancer that is Labor from the Victorian body politic is an urgent task. Time is short and the urgency to stem haemorrhaging debt is urgent.
Having regard to the extent and depth of Labor’s politicisation of every aspect of public administration, voters cannot anticipate much heavy lifting from those inside the bloated public service. Those whose incomes come solely from taxpayers are largely the same people whose livelihoods depend on maintaining the ‘status quo’. They’re the ones on whom taxpayers rely to fix pot-holed roads, deliver proper funding to health and mental health services, and delivering law and order to our streets. These are the tasks for which there is no money – and even less concern.
The publicly-funded agencies intended to hold the government to account (think IBAC, the Victorian Ombudsman, the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office [VAGO], and something called ‘Integrity Oversight Victoria’ [IOV]) have either been sidelined, muted, or ridiculed by successive Labor governments highly practised at shielding taxpayers from burdensome facts as to how and where their money is being spent.
The more ‘transparent’ Victorian Labor claims to be in the conduct of its administration – it is certain the less transparent the government is actually being.
So profound is Labor’s disregard for voters, so deep is its animosity to anyone outside the ‘Labor family’, and so comprehensive is its ignorance of rigorous and lawful economic management that it is certain to take years to stabilise the state before reconstructive surgery can commence.
There’s another lifeline critical to the survival of the Carroll Labor government. That is its relationship to its Federal Labor counterpart.
The sunlight on the extent of the relationship is largely clouded by layers of operatives who prefer to ‘manage’ things away from the glare of taxpayers. It wasn’t that long ago Victoria received a so-called ‘top up’ of $3.8 billion from Albanese for the costly Suburban Rail Loop (SRL).
In what seemed to be just another day at the office, the cash injection was added to the $2.2 billion already gifted to Victoria. Was this a partisan gesture to assist Victorian Labor retain office? Other states suggested exactly that at the time.
Of course, the SRL is already massively over budget and the so-called Parliamentary Budget Office estimates the full ‘three-stage’ SRL project will cost between $100 billion and a truly gravity-defying $215 billion in nominal terms over its delivery and operational lifetime.
Given the state is, as observed above, already bankrupt – continuing with an open-ended project of this scale is an act of fiscal idiocy. This, and other components of the so-called ‘Big Build’ program, will rightly form part of the Royal Commission into the Victorian construction industry. With time so short, none of the findings will see the light of day prior to November’s election.
As observed by others, Victorian Labor feels like a very secretive government.
Think no further than the entirely secret 1 per cent levy on taxpayers conceived by Andrews and implemented by Allan to ‘help pay for’ the SRL uncovered by VAGO in August. For Victorian Labor – the less the taxpayer knows the better.
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