For years, Victorians have felt stuck with a case of Stockholm Syndrome regarding the Labor state government.
Victoria’s nine-month lockdown during the pandemic was one of the longest and harshest in the world.
It was also delivered to us by the state government, whose incompetence surrounding hotel quarantine and draconian policing should have sent voters scurrying away.
There are cost blowouts everywhere and billions of dollars of infrastructure waste. The state is drowning in debt and has the worst credit rating in the nation.
The $200 billion-plus Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) boondoggle is the worst state infrastructure project I have ever seen.
The SRL makes absolutely no sense, fails any objective cost-benefit analysis, and is opposed by virtually every infrastructure expert and Victoria’s Auditor-General.
Yet, the Victorian government signed the contracts for the SRL anyway, locking residents into generations of crippling debt.
Former Treasury economist Stephen Anthony accurately summed-up Victoria’s situation in The AFR as follows:
“Victoria is on a suicide mission to record borrowing, just as global interest rates are about to hit 5%”.
“Potholes can’t get filled, emergency departments can’t afford clean linen, primary schools can’t fix heaters”.
“Things are about to get very ugly”.
After years of abuse, Victorians are finally growing tired of the Labor state government.
Exclusive polling by Resolve Strategic for The Age showed that Labor’s primary vote plummeted 5 percentage points in the last two months, leaving primary support for the Allan government at just 28%.
This reflects an 11-point drop in the six months since Jacinta Allan became premier, and the government’s lowest primary vote since Resolve began recording it three years ago.
The shift away from the government increased the primary vote for the Liberal Party and independent candidates, giving the Coalition 37%, nine points ahead of Labor.
However, the swing away from Labor does not mean that the Coalition is in the box seat to take office at the next election, since minor party preferences are likely to flow to Labor.
Regardless, Resolve Strategic director Jim Reed says Victorians are tired of the Labor government and are beginning to protest:
“People are just not happy with a tired incumbent, their lack of progress on tackling living costs and a shocker of a budget”.
“We can tell from the flow of votes from Labor to third options and respondent comments that this is a protest vote”.
“The problem for the opposition right now is that people are unhappy with Labor, but aren’t yet crossing over to their side of the street”.
“They need to demonstrate they are ready to govern, can get the basics right and improve people’s lives”.
Sadly, a key reason why Labor has held on to power for a decade is because the Liberal opposition is useless and couldn’t organise a chook raffle.
As a result, the Victorian Labor government has been allowed to fail upwards and hold onto power despite their shocking incompetence and waste.
