As a Tasmanian, you get used to being the butt of sneering from mainlanders. Which is kind of odd, considering how many of them are so clearly envious of our state. You only need to see the daily hundreds of RVs and latte rider Boomer Harley owners disgorged at Devonport to realise that. Or visit the towns which have become God’s Waiting Rooms, on the picturesque east coast, bursting at the seams with retired mainland Boomers driving young locals out of the housing market and burdening the state’s health system.
It’s mainlanders’ determination to keep our state as their personal national-park holiday spot that does so much to hold back development in this state. No sooner does a profitable industry start up – from mining to salmon fishing – than activists are trying to shut it down.
The sneering about a so-called ‘mendicant state’ is also hard to wear when you consider the sheer scale of the economic disaster at times inflicted on the national economy by some of the mainland states. Chief sneerer, Western Australia, remains a banana republic economy that has consequently often been a drag on the national economy. For all its vast resources, the state’s economy grew slower than the rest of Australia for much of the ’90s, even plunging into negative growth at the turn of the century while every other state was forging ahead.
But even WA has nothing on Victoria’s self-inflicted economic millstone.
The state government mismanagement of Victoria has been a national joke for some years, particularly in Canberra.
A bad situation in our second-largest state by population now looks set to become much worse and will seriously impact the national economy. If it develops as expected, it will make the Reserve Bank’s task of guiding the economy extremely difficult because a major part of Australia will be different to the rest.
It’s all history repeating, of course. In the early ’90s, Victoria descended into basket-case status at the hands of a long-running Labor government. They’ve voted themselves into the same corner, again – and this time, there’s no Jeff Kennett waiting to fix it all.
The first of the ‘killer blows’ to hit the state is industrial gas rationing which will be followed by much higher power prices, and is driven solely by Victorian government incompetence. But, the second – the smashing of its tertiary education industry which could turn the greater Melbourne CBD into a ghetto-like ‘no-go’ area – has being devised and will be implemented mainly by the Albanese government […]
The impact of the two blows will be made doubly serious by Victoria’s rampant and reckless borrowing, which has left the state in a situation where it is in desperate need of strong revenue.
Easily the most insane self-damage Victoria has inflicted on itself is its lunatic hostility to natural gas extraction.
Victoria cannot afford to seriously shrink its natural gas-using industries or its extensive university structures. Yet, both are set to be crippled.
Victoria has up to 10,000 businesses which depend on gas, and they add almost $10bn to the local community, contributing more than $3bn in state revenue.
Most of those businesses face the high likelihood of periodic gas rationing next year because the burden of gas shortages will be borne by business (and their employees) and not consumers.
Alarmed by the alerts from the national energy regulators, the Victorian industry bodies asked 500 Victorian businesses which depend on gas for fuel what they would do if they were subject to gas rationing. One in five enterprises said they would go offshore or close permanently.
A big majority of the rest said they would slash their operations and their work force.
Why on earth would Victoria even have to think of gas rationing, when it has immense gas reserves, both offshore in Bass Strait and onshore?
Climate Cultism.
The government had plenty of warning gas supply cuts were inevitable, but energy and resources minister Lily D’Ambrosio has constantly blocked development of Victoria’s immense reserves and appears to rank the state’s financial and employment issues a distant second to other agendas.
Instead, Victoria is banking on one of the most ruinously expensive forms of energy generation going – offshore wind.
The state is also going to be hit hard when the Albanese government finally takes action on the long-standing international student rort.
Big parts of the greater Melbourne CBD revolve around the University of Melbourne and RMIT.
Both are set to be forced by the Albanese government to slash their numbers of overseas students, which are essential to their current financial viability.
And which have driven down standards, as university dumb down courses to accommodate students who can barely speak English. There are credible accusations of the international student trade being linked organised crime, sex trafficking and even slavery.
So, yeah, don’t go pointing fingers across the Strait, Victorians.
