Big Taxes, Big Debt, Big Bust
The Victorian Government’s 2021-22 State Budget has been described as a vehicle to turn Victoria into the Public Service State and a gravy train that doesn’t leave Melbourne’s tram tracks.
The admonishment was delivered by Member for Western Victoria, Bev McArthur, in the Victorian Parliament this week.
Mrs McArthur said regional Victoria has been put on skinny economic rations despite state debt ballooning to $156 billion.
“My electorate will see very little of this massive tax-and-spend budget,” she said.
The Andrews Labor Government has failed yet again to properly fund the much hyped Northern Aquatic and Community Hub, a project that has been on the drawing board for years.
Every new school will be in Melbourne with barely a third of upgrade funding going to the country.
And just $53 million has been allocated for roads in south-west Victoria.
“It would barely cover the cost of one of Labor’s massively expensive level crossing removal projects, let alone fix the sorely neglected road network in my electorate.
“Our roads are a catastrophe. We have slow-down signs because roads are never fixed. Meanwhile hundreds of millions of dollars are directed to potentially dangerous wire-rope barriers,” she said.
Under this Government, the desperately needed Murray Basin Rail Project has spluttered to a near stop. At $244 million over budget, and not finished yet, it is just one of the major projects contributing to a $22 billion major project blowout.
“It is yet another example that the model of big government just does not work.
“It is not a lack of money spent, it is not a lack of people employed, it is the essential philosophy of an ever-expanding public service spending greater sums of public money on centrally managed projects.”
Mrs McArthur lamented the impact of the state’s draconian lockdowns on the once-glorified status of Victoria as the Creative Capital of Australia, the Events Capital of Australia and even Melbourne’s title as the World’s Most Liveable City.
“The Education State has become the re-education state” she added.
The growth in the public service under the Andrews Government to more than 300,000 was highlighted by Mrs McArthur, noting the 9.6 per cent increase in the state’s wage bill to nearly $40 billion by mid-2025.
“The ballooning of the bureaucracy is simply unsustainable. We cannot become a state where everyone is dependent of the taxpayer while other states thrive through encouraging, not penalising, productive private sector enterprise. There is also costly and time consuming waste and duplication”.
The 2021-22 Budget includes $5.8 billion in new taxes.
“It is a classic of the left-wing, socialist, anti-enterprise genre: a short-termist, self-defeating attack on wealth creation.
“This budget would be damaging at any time but coming after the greatest economic shock since World War II, at a time when recovery should be paramount, it is absolutely unforgiveable.”
She criticised the increase in stamp duty as “a tax on aspiration, pandering to an ideology which craves punishing success.”
“The impact of these latest tax rises will be extreme; it has been calculated that the state and local government costs in feeds, duties, and charges will comprise more than 40 per cent of the purchase price of a home.”
Of the 38 new and increased taxes the Andrews Government has introduced, 22 are levied on property.
Mrs McArthur also called for the abolition of payroll tax. The 2021-22 Budget increases this tax to raise $2.9 billion for mental health, a need that should be funded from general revenue, not a special tax.
“Ultimately, we should abolish it. For any government attempting to create jobs with one hand and jacking up this tax with the other, is clearly terminally confused.
“There could be no better way of reducing our state’s competitiveness.
“I would mind less about the vast tax burden…if I were confident that the money would be well spent. But it won’t be.
“It never is,” she said.
11 June 2021
