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Once again One Nation has faced the only poll that matters: an election. Once again, they’ve come through with flying colours. The results of the Nepean by-election mightn’t have been a win for the One Nation candidate, but the party have every reason to smile. Their vote count, at 24.66 per cent, was almost exactly as it has been in the opinion polls, suggesting the party’s support is not going to evaporate at the polling booth.
More pointedly for the Allen Labor government, One Nation’s opinion polling is near dead-level with Labor’s. How things will play out in a three-way contest in Victoria is uncertain, because Labor chickened out of fielding a candidate at all. Smart move. The real fight was between the Liberals’ Anthony Marsh and One Nation’s Darren Hercus, with high-profile independent Tracee Hutchison throwing making a good showing as well, at 21.6 per cent of the primary vote.
When Liberal MP Sam Groth quit, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson tried to spin the Mornington Peninsula contest as an “exciting opportunity”. What she got was a reality check. Marsh held the seat. Barely. The Liberal primary vote might have seemed impressive at 38.5 per cent, but that’s a staggering swing of 9.6 per cent, in a formerly blue-ribbon Liberal seat. Nepean also showed that traditional Labor voters are switching to One Nation in droves. In the working-class pockets of the Mornington Peninsula, like Rosebud and Dromana, the swing to One Nation was even higher.
One Nation is no longer a protest vote. It’s a third force and the majors know it. The same working-class battlers who once reliably stacked up for Labor are now eyeing a party that doesn’t lecture them about emissions while their power bills go through the roof and African gang machetes turn suburban streets into no-go zones.
But Labor’s answer to looming electoral oblivion? The oldest trick in the socialist playbook: bribe ’em with their own money. Or, more accurately, with their grandchildren’s money.
New analysis from independent think tank the e61 Institute, released on Monday, has analysed multiple Victorian budgets and found repeated spending growth had constrained Victoria’s options, with total government spending forecast to be 16.4 per cent of the Victorian economy, also known as gross state product (GSP), in 2025-26. It was 14.5 per cent in 2018–19.
This was despite successive budgets forecasting the figure would come down […]
Chief executive of e61 Institute Michael Brennan, also a former chair of the Productivity Commission, said this trend had left [Victorian Treasurer Jaclyn Symes] with little room to manoeuvre.
“Victoria is not broke, but it is increasingly boxed in,” he said.
If it’s not broke, it’s shaking a beggar’s cup right next to it. Debt is proportionally higher than even in the dying days of the disastrous Cain-Kirner government. Yet again, Labor are pushing up debt, running down the state’s credit rating, jacking up interest repayments and making it harder to deliver the very services they claim to champion.
Future Victorians get the bill. Today’s voters get the shiny pamphlets – will they get suckered in, yet again, this November?
If you want a perfect metaphor for the whole rotting edifice of Victoria under Labor, look no further than Premier Jacinta Allen’s much-hyped tobacco licensing scheme. Launched with fanfare in February to smash the $8.5 billion illicit tobacco black market run by organised crime, it’s been an unmitigated farce. Three months later: zero criminal charges and less than half a shipping container’s worth of cigarettes seized. Twenty-seven piddling infringements totalling $250,000. Inspectors, all 14 of them, have spent their time hassling supermarkets and servo chains instead of the dodgy ‘specialty’ shops everyone knows are laundering gangster cash.
Two law enforcement sources, familiar with the operations of TLV but not authorised to speak publicly, said the licensing regime had been a dismal failure due to poor planning and lacklustre enforcement.
They said the 14 inspectors were devoting most of their efforts towards checking the licences of supermarkets, chain convenience stores and petrol stations rather than the ‘specialty’ tobacco shops that were known distributors of illicit products.
Claims that TLV and Victoria Police work in close cooperation were also branded as misleading amid allegations that TLV had ignored requests to participate in joint operations or seize tobacco uncovered during police investigations.
Sound familiar? Remember the machete bins? Millions blown on ‘weapons surrender’ bins that netted a handful of rusty blades while African migrant gang crime – machete attacks, carjackings, home invasions – continues unabated. Same script: announce the scheme, splash the cash, ignore the root causes, declare victory... and move on. Corruption, incompetence and debt-funded delusion, Victoria-style.
The Nepean result is the canary. Working-class voters are done being taken for mugs. Labor’s pre-election debt binge is the Hail Mary. Nothing this government touches works except the interest meter on the state credit card.
