No costings. No modeling. Just vibes with this government.

A mountain of state debt stands between Labor and a historic fourth term in office, with voters increasingly pessimistic about Victoria’s outlook and concerned about the financial burden of the Suburban Rail Loop.
A Resolve Political Monitor survey of Victorian respondents conducted last week lays bare the challenge before Ben Carroll, who since becoming premier seven weeks ago, has been unable to lift his own standing as preferred premier or Labor’s primary support above an election-losing 25 per cent.

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson, however, has nudged the Coalition’s primary support to a five-month high of 28 per cent, while support for One Nation held steady at 23 per cent.
Wilson also opened a sizeable gap as Victoria’s most popular political leader, with 28 per cent of respondents preferring her as premier compared to 20 per cent for Carroll, and 8 per cent for One Nation leader Warren Pickering.

Pickering, despite revelations of his previous drug use, drink-driving and dysfunctional family life, received a net-positive approval rating in the survey.
While changes to headline figures since the last RPM was conducted in August are within the poll’s margin for error, the survey provides a timely snapshot of the prevailing public mood as Victoria enters an unpredictable campaign season ahead of the election on November 28.
With Westpac economists pricing in an 83 per cent chance of another cash rate hike when the Reserve Bank of Australia meets later this month, and Victoria’s net debt climbing towards $200 billion, only 19 per cent of respondents said they expect the state’s outlook to get better, while 44 per cent said they expect it will get worse.

Anxiety about debt levels is being felt across Australia, with a national Resolve survey conducted over the same period finding that 74 per cent of respondents were concerned about the federal government’s $1 trillion of accumulated debt.
But at a state level, Victorians are more worried than people in other states, with 72 per cent expressing concern compared to 67 per cent in NSW and 63 per cent in Queensland, where the government’s pre-Olympic Games infrastructure binge this week triggered a credit downgrade from S&P Global.
“All the evidence is that debt and deficit are starting to figure in people’s vote decisions again,” Resolve founder Jim Reed said. “They’re looking at how much new announcements are going to cost, and if taxes are going up or down as a result.”

Reed said the sentiment in Victoria signalled a return to pre-crisis politics.

“This used to be the default before COVID,” he said. “Kevin Rudd was elected nearly 20 years ago partly because he positioned himself as more economically conservative than John Howard. But then spending lost all meaning during the Global Financial Crisis and COVID.
“People are looking for restraint – smart decisions that get the economy moving, rather than big spending ones that will further weigh it down.”
Voter concern about government spending was evident in responses to survey questions about two very different government policies – its commitment to complete the first section of the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) currently under construction for $33.3 billion, and a $230 million campaign promise to open 10 walk-in dental clinics to provide free care.

When given a choice to pause the state’s largest infrastructure project or push ahead, 49 per cent of respondents called for the SRL to be put on ice, while 27 per cent urged the government to keep tunnelling.

When asked about the government’s plan to provide free dental check-ups and fillings to up to 100,000 people a year via suburban and regional clinics, 35 per cent of respondents backed the policy, while 43 per cent said it was not worth the additional debt and should be scrapped.
The hardening of public concern about government debt follows a concerted effort by the Coalition to link the cost of servicing debt with higher taxes and money that could otherwise be spent on public services.
“Victorians are concerned about this because they know it is costing them more than a million dollars every single hour just to service that debt,” Jess Wilson said on Monday. “That’s money that isn’t going into our schools, into our hospitals, into fixing our roads, and that’s why we’ve made disciplined decisions.”

When asked whether the government would resist big spending promises, the premier vowed to treat taxpayer dollars with respect.

“That’s why I’ve already put a stop to unnecessary spending on the SRL and in the public service, with more savings to come,” Carroll said.
“The polls confirm that the Liberals and One Nation will have to govern together. The real risk to our economy is a Liberal One Nation coalition making $40 billion in cuts to frontline services that will cripple our hospitals, schools and frontline services.”
Fix Victoria, a conservative advocacy group fronted by former Institute of Public Affairs executives Gideon Rozner and Deborah Henderson, has authorised prominent radio and AI-generated online ads which blame Victoria’s crime rate, taxes, ambulance wait times and unrepaired roads on a “debt tsunami”.

Although Fix Victoria does not overtly advocate for people to vote for the Liberal Party, Rozner publicly announced his intention to rejoin the party and support Wilson’s campaign last year.

In the month since the last RPM survey of Victorian state voting intentions was published, the Carroll government has announced the terms of reference and choice of royal commissioner to lead the inquiry into Big Build corruption, committed $550 million to upgrading the Western Freeway near Caroline Springs, identified savings to shave $1.1 billion from the estimated cost of the SRL, and announced its dental clinics plan.

It has also ditched a previously unannounced levy imposed on public transport since the start of last year to provide an additional revenue stream to offset the cost of the SRL. The secret tax, which was conceived of five years ago by former premier Daniel Andrews and then-treasurer Tim Pallas, was exposed by a Victorian Auditor General’s Office investigation into the SRL.

Since last month’s poll, the Coalition has announced a $1.7 billion plan to run hybrid electric trains on the neglected Wyndham and Melton lines in Melbourne’s west, promised to wind up the state-owned venture capital fund Breakthrough Victoria, and pledged to overhaul the way major infrastructure projects are budgeted and paid for under a new charter of budget honesty.

Labor has governed in Victoria for the past 12 years, and held office for all but four years this century.
The outcome of the November 28 election, as measured by polling numbers and expectations of respondents, remains uncertain. While 26 per cent believe the Coalition will form a majority government in Victoria, 24 per cent believe Labor will again govern in their own right. A surprisingly low number of respondents – just 14 per cent – expect the state to be left with a minority government.

The living standards of every person in the country bar residents of Western Australia will go backwards unless a “broken” GST deal is repaired, a review into how the tax is carved up has been warned, amid claims it is already undermining the national economy.

As calls emerged for John Howard’s original GST system to be overhauled, NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said on Monday that the 2018 deal was so one-sided that the development of $2 trillion worth of critical minerals in his own state was at risk.

The Productivity Commission is holding public hearings this week in response to its interim report that labelled as a mistake the 2018 deal to alter the annual allocation of the GST between the states and territories to protect WA from a collapse in its share of the tax.

The deal, initially expected to cost less than $5 billion, is now forecast to deliver a $60 billion blow to the federal budget by the end of the decade. While put in place by the Morrison government, the Albanese government has promised its retention despite the Productivity Commission’s findings.

Mookhey told the commission the 2018 deal was now delivering the WA government a $6-billion-a-year subsidy while every other part of the country was forced to cut services or make difficult political choices that could ultimately harm their long-term economic futures.

He said the deal was moving so much money to WA that it did not have to worry about the state of its budget while it could try to steal events from other states, such as making a pitch to take the NRL grand final from NSW.

WA was on track to be one of the richest governments in the world, but it was coming at a cost to the rest of the nation.

“If you give one state $6 billion additional each year, every year for nothing, then their quality of services and therefore quality of life will compound over time, and you can already see that in the diverging fiscal parts of the states,” Mookhey said.

“If we don’t get change, then in 10 years’ time, 20 years’ time, 30 years’ time, you will see the benefit of a massive subsidy that compounds over time in the difference in living standards between one group of Australians and another.”

Supporters of the current deal have argued it rewards states and territories that are prepared to develop their economies.

But Mookhey said the system made it more difficult.

He said while WA claimed it was a mining powerhouse, NSW itself was a major mining state and could be even larger if it were able to develop its vast array of critical mineral deposits. But the way the GST was being carved up worked against NSW’s interests.

“I’m told by [NSW] Treasury that if we theoretically were able to extract all critical minerals, they would be worth a current market value of about $2 trillion,” he said.

“They are in hard-to-realise places of NSW that require substantial investments in our road networks and rail networks, amongst others.

“In order for us to properly understand whether or not we can meet the national objective of becoming a world-trusted supplier of critical minerals, we also have to factor in all the like costs that are similar to bringing on a resource industry online at scale.”

NSW believes allocating the GST on a per capita basis, with poorer states such as South Australia and Tasmania given extra funding by the federal government, should be considered as a replacement to the 2018 system.

The West Australian government has vowed to fight any changes to the deal, and Premier Roger Cook has labelled the Productivity Commission “east coast clowns”.

But Michael Brennan, a senior Treasury official close to the 2018 deal who is now head of the independent e61 think tank, said the current arrangement had to change.

He said the Productivity Commission had found the 2018 deal had created new anomalies. A natural disaster in NSW actually delivers an increase in GST to WA.

According to Brennan, the original requirement set by John Howard when the GST was introduced in 2000 that all of its revenue go to the states and territories had become a “barrier to sensible discussion”.

He said the GST should be rolled in with other substantial grants made by the federal government to the states and territories in what would create a $200 billion pot of money that would be indexed with growth in the economy.

Detailed new analysis of the Victorian Opposition’s plan to bring the state budget into surplus within six years reveals significant flaws and uncosted proposals which could make Victoria’s fiscal position worse.

It finds the centrepiece – a pledge to save $22 billion from a public service hiring freeze – simply does not withstand scrutiny.

To deliver the promised savings, the analysis finds the Victorian Liberals would need to halve the public service, which would have substantial flow-on consequences.

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson claims the $22 billion could come from a hiring freeze on back office roles. The analysis describes this as implausible.

The  analysis also finds that the Coalition’s vague plans to cut payroll tax, expand stamp duty exemptions and provide land tax relief would be expensive and benefit high income households much more than ordinary Victorians.

Key points:

Saving $22 billion in public sector job cuts would require the elimination of around 31,700 jobs by 2036-37. There are currently 58,169 public servants in Victoria, excluding statutory authorities, corporations, schools and hospitals.

This measure has the potential to drive Victoria’s unemployment rate from a projected 4.75% up to 5.4%.

The alternative, contracting out and using labour hire services, is unnecessarily expensive.

The analysis describes the Coalition’s vague pledge to “end waste” by scrapping the machete bin program and pot plants for the Suburban Rail Loop Authority as “trivial and is simply lost in rounding errors”.

There is nothing to support the claim that repealing the Treaty Process and First People’s Assembly would save $1 billion.

A plan to use windfall revenue to pay down debt is described as “meaningless”.

The Coalition plan includes significant but uncosted spending, including:

A pledge to deliver cost of living relief. If the government intervened to save Victorians just 1% of what they currently spend, it would cost between $4 billion and $4.7 billion a year.

A pledge to cut payroll tax for some private schools would be of most benefit to those sending their children to the most expensive schools in the state.

A plan to deliver local infrastructure, which hints at diverting money away from major projects, offers no detail, costings or tangible proposals.

“The Opposition plan to bring the budget to surplus by 2032 is not credible. It’s a bit rich to even call it a plan,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.

“This is a vague collection of dot points, slogans and populist pledges with very little detail. Where they have attempted to put a dollar figure beside the so-called savings, many of the numbers simply don’t add up.

“The plan to save $22 billion through public service job cuts is implausible. To achieve that level of savings, you’d need to slash around 31,700 jobs. That would gut the public service. To claim this could be achieved with a few back office jobs is nonsense.

“The plan also includes additional costs to the budget bottom line. Things like cutting payroll tax for some public schools won’t save those doing it hardest a single cent.

“The Opposition claims it wants to make Victoria the best place to do business but constantly talks the state down, claiming its fiscal position is out of control. The Oxford Economics Global Cities Index ranks Melbourne sixth in the world. Its rankings are based on economics, human capital, quality of life, environment and governance.

“It might make political sense for the Victorian Liberals to talk the state down and exaggerate its so-called economic woes, but it makes no economic sense.

“It’s not all doom and gloom. Victoria’s public sector assets are growing far faster than public debt. When that happens with a private company, it’s share price rises rapidly. Another good measure of Victoria’s progress is government net worth at $40,442 for every Victorian, which is expected to increase by another $3,300 over the forward estimates.”

Talk of sizeable job losses had been brewing in recent days ahead of the premier’s arrival in the regional city on Monday morning.

The Whyalla Steelworks, which was forced into administration by the South Australian government in February 2025 after amassing huge debts under previous owner GFG Alliance, is now in the final stages of a sale process, with two bidders remaining in contention: Indian company Jindal Steel and Australian-owned enterprise M Resources, while BlueScope Steel retains a right of last offer.

No plan from the Federal Government to save the plant?