A horror week for your cost of living

It’s been a horror week for family budgets.

Victorians are drowning in taxes and debt.

Everyone’s power prices are going up another 25 per cent.

Both fiscal disasters are the creation of politicians. Both were avoidable.

First, Daniel Andrew’s Labor Government is scrambling to deal with $171 billion in net debt by 2026 and is taxing everything that moves.

It must. The interest payments on servicing the debt have doubled to total $7.5 billion per year in 2025-26, up from $3.9bn in 2022-23.

Imagine if you ran your family budget like this.

Land tax is up as is payroll tax.

One is a tax on people’s efforts to get ahead, the other is a tax on jobs – a disincentive to businesses to create prosperity.

Alarmingly, Dan’s taxes will have a negligible impact on the debt. He’s hired too many public servants for that. The wages bill for public servants in Victoria has more than doubled since 2014 to $39 billion per year. This represents 40pc of government revenue.

From disastrous infrastructure cost blow-outs, starting with ripping up a multi-billion dollar road contract in 2014, to out-of-control Covid spending, political incompetence has brought Victoria to the fiscal brink.

The only correct thing the hapless Opposition Leader John Pesutto has observed is that Victoria is broke.

Secondly, the electricity price rise is a direct result of net zero policies started by the Liberals and ramped up by the Albanese Labor government.

It’s not the war in Ukraine. Electricity prices are going up because our politicians are pursuing an un-costed and un-scoped rush renewable energy.

The loss of cheap coal-fired power replaced by taxpayer-subsidised windmills and solar panels which are unreliable is translating to the bottom line of family electricity bills.

Until there are politicians with the will and courage to push back on climate catastrophism, bills will keep going up.

How Victoria gets out of its mess is unknown.