That was the message from government ministers on budget morning,contradicting a pre-election slogan by now-departed premier Daniel Andrews who swore Victorians wouldn’t have to choose.
“Not rail or hospitals. Both,” his team tweeted ahead of the 2022 election,alongside a screenshot from an Old El Paso advertisement featuring a young girl who uttered that iconic line “porque no los dos” – in English,“Why don’t we have both?”
Tuesday’s budget is an acknowledgement that this slogan is no longer fit for purpose,but what remains unclear is whether the government has done enough to adequately clean up the budget books.
With Andrews gone,Treasurer Tim Pallas and Premier Jacinta Allan are subtly shifting away from a singular focus on the false promise that Victoria could simply grow its way out of its multibillion-dollar debt mess and are making some attempts at budget repair.
Last year,handing down his budget,Pallas championed “an economic growth strategy”. This year,it’s “time for government to recalibrate” with a range of “sensible and disciplined decisions”.
Tax tweaks,infrastructure delays and cuts to services will help spread the political pain,but to what end?
In this budget – his 10th – Pallas wants us to cast our minds forward and focus on the forecast operating surplus in 2026 and the ever-so-slight reduction in the debt ratio a few years later.
Good news if he,or his replacement,can deliver it.
While there is some hope buried in the forward estimates,if we have learnt anything from recent budgets,the forecasts are rarely as good as promised.
Particularly if the forecasts are based on a best-case-scenario position,like the rivers of gold – extra GST money – continuing to flow at the same level from Canberra and inflation cooling,as this budget hopes.
Hidden behind the are cuts to mental health,delays to infrastructure projects and services and programs that would have helped Victorians suffering from cost-of-living pressures.
The government won’t quite admit to it,but they have reneged on several election promises – including more government-funded childcare and kindergarten hours,two new hospital towers near the site of the future Arden Metro station in North Melbourne,and the Airport Rail Link.
Labor insists it remains “committed” to these projects,but voters hoping to jump on a train to get a Jetstar flight out of Tulla or send their kids to a suburban government-owned childcare centre by the end of this decade might not agree.
The key will be whether the government can present this more “gradual” approach to its promises as a necessary trade-off to fix the budget. And that will depend on whether the burden we are being asked to bear actually results in a better long-term economic outlook for the state.
According to the budget,that “better” outlook is the tiniest reduction in net debt as a proportion of the state's economy by 2028.
A major obstacle is the government’s pitch that this is a budget focused on families.
This claim will dissolve quicker than an Arrowroot bikkie dunked in tea unless Labor can convince mums and dads its one-off $400 payment is worth more to their families than school upgrades or more hours of publicly funded pre-school.
Families of school children will benefit most from the Victorian State Budget.
This is a budget peppered with delays and cuts,but not in the areas where it could make a notable impact to the budget,such as the Suburban Rail Loop,which has an estimated price tag of more than $100 billion once complete.
In that sense,it is risk-averse. But it still acknowledges the deep financial hole Victoria is in and makes some attempt to rebuild financial credibility after years of big spending.
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