The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) annual state accounts showed that Victoria’s per capita GDP declined by 1.2% in 2023-04 and has only increased by 10.4% since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008.
This compared with a 1.0% national decline in per capita GDP in 2023-24 and a 14.5% gain since 2008.
Productivity growth in Victoria has also been the worst in the nation since the GFC, rising at less than one-third the rate of NSW.
Having slowed the economy to a crawl, the nanny Victorian government has discovered a new way to crash productivity: lowering the speed limit on residential streets to only 30 kph.
The plan to slash speed limits in residential streets would start in child-friendly 40km/h hour zones, such as around schools, playgrounds, and kindergartens.
But eventually any local street that has a default of 50km/h limit would be transitioned to 30km/h zones.
Infrastructure Victoria chief executive, Dr Jonathan Spear, said “slower speeds make streets safer” and the recommendation was aimed at more people walking or riding in local neighbourhoods, such as to schools and playgrounds, without impacting travel times.
“A pedestrian hit by a car at 50km/h has an 85% chance of dying. At 30km/h this falls to 10%,” he said.
What’s next? Banning cars altogether?
Many roads across Melbourne have seen their speed limits reduced from 60 kph to only 40 kph. This has made travelling across Melbourne painfully slow and frustrating.
Dropping speed limits to 30 kph is absurd and would see travel times increase even further, sapping productivity.
In 2021, independent economist Saul Eslake attacked the Victorian government’s decision to lift fines by 10%, claiming it made the state even more reliant on draconian policing:
“Victoria is already the state which uses its police force as a branch of the state tax office to a much greater extent than any other state”, he said.
“We saw that during the pandemic when Victoria was levying some of the heaviest fines in the world for breaches of lockdown regulations and enforcing them much more zealously than for example the police in Russia or Saudi Arabia”.
“The consequences of the image that Victoria’s creating for itself as a high tax state, as an overpoliced state is going to do the Victorian economy some long-term harm”…
Victoria’s traffic camera and speeding fine revenue hit a five-year high in 2023-24, with $528 million collected, $127 million more than the previous year.
Fining people $227 for travelling three kph above an artificially low 40 kph speed limit is already ridiculous. This comes from a Melburnian that has only incurred one fine in 29 years of driving, not a leadfoot.
Victorian speeding penalties
Dropping speed limits to 30 kph would make the situation even more farcical.
Undoubtedly, the broke Victorian government would line the streets with more speed cameras to raise fine revenue and bolster the ailing state budget.
An online poll published in the Herald-Sun showed that 95% of readers were against the proposed 30 kph speed limit.
Herald-Sun Online poll on 30 kph speed limit.
Add this proposal to the growing list of reasons why the nanny Victorian Labor government must be thrown out.
