Everybody knows that Labor governments are rubbish with money. They sit around for years, spearing holes in the bottom of the Australian ship until the water swells around their ankles. When their mates at the ABC get tired of bailing and the Greens toss their buckets overboard in protest, the ship is given back to the nearest Liberal to salvage.

Breaking things is exciting. Fixing things is tough. This is why voters tend to enjoy Labor brandishing their credit cards and then sit around in perpetual boredom as the Liberals tut-tut like a stern parent.

This time, there’s a really big problem.

The Victorian Labor Party forgot to let the Liberals win the ‘fix it’ election. They got greedy, and now there is no way to hide the extent of their economic failure.

Worse still, the Australian mainland has wall-to-wall Labor governments. There are no blue-ribbon wallets and no piles of money stashed under the bed. All the apocalyptic political panickers in the Covid years saw to that.

As Speccie Editor Rowan Dean hilariously said on last night’s Bolt Report, the Victorian Premier hasn’t just run out of other people’s money, he’s run out of other other people’s money. Imagine what Margaret Thatcher would have to say!

Victoria’s permanent state of Labor governance has left a gaping black hole that is sucking in everything around it as it grows. The debt sits at an astonishing $115 billion – which is more than New South Wales and Queensland. By 2025, that debt is expected to be $165 billion.

Worse, this debt is not static. Interest rate hikes mean that by 2025, the state will pay $7.318 billion to finance the debt – forget paying it off.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has been quick to heap blame on the Covid pandemic, even though (presumably) he was fully in charge of his senses during that period and could have made better financial decisions to avoid this outcome.

‘Just as your interest rates have gone up on your mortgage, the government’s interest rates have gone up on the borrowing we simply had to undertake to get us through Covid. This is going to be a challenging budget – there’s no other way.’

What Andrews does not want to talk about is the state of the Budget pre-pandemic, which was already in the middle of crashing and burning. It’s almost convenient for the Labor Party to blame ‘Covid’ for their financial failures instead of their endless spending.

In 2018, two full years before the pandemic, the ABC acknowledged that Labor was borrowing billions for “intergenerational projects” while the Coalition wanted to reduce debt. During the election fight, Labor showed no remorse for doubling Victoria’s debt with election promises.

Well, flashing money in front of voters should have consequences – and those consequences must include Andrews having to find the money on his own by cutting back on this nightmare shopping spree. Under no circumstances should Albanese bail this failed leadership out.

‘We’ll always lobby, push, pressure, and advocate, and put a good quality case to the Commonwealth government for more and more support,’ said Andrews.

Someone needs to explain to Victorian Labor that this is a proposal to bully and steal money from the rest of the nation that is needed on national projects. There is no free cash here. Whatever Andrews takes to make up for his mistake is coming out of someone else’s pocket.

Andrews must be left to fail so that the people of Victoria – who are largely left-leaning – finally understand that socialist politics comes with consequences and those consequences include a broke failed state.

The Coalition was right to accuse Labor of ‘mortgaging our kids’ in that 2018 election period. They should be out in front of the cameras every single day repeating that line and parading Andrews’ economic failures and wasteful spending in front of the press (instead of persecuting women inside the Liberal Party).

‘Ten million dollars a day – each and every day – is being paid on the interest in Victoria. This makes the Cain and Kirner years seem like responsible economic managers,’ said Shadow Treasurer Brad Rowswell.

It’s good, but Rowswell needs to remember that a large chunk of the voting public hadn’t even been born when Cain and Kirner were in power.

‘For as long as the government continues to waste, they’re going to increase taxes, they’re going to increase levies, they’re going to increase charges. The impact on frontline services that every Victorian relies upon are under threat,’ he added.

The problem is that Labor will take that line and use it as justification to go begging outside Chalmers’ window, and if the Liberals try to stop Andrews, Labor will run the line that the Liberals are trying to ruin the state. Labor is crap at budgeting but genius at spin.

The Liberals need to get way out ahead of this narrative and expose the Labor Party’s spending habits so that every mum, dad, and hard-working adult can see exactly where their taxes are going. Only private anger directed at the government’s shameful behaviour can salvage this mess. We used to call this ‘accountability’.

Why does, for example, the state have an ‘unprecedented’ $1.6 billion renewable energy package set aside for decarbonisation? Are we meant to believe that renewable energy is so cheap and successful that the bankrupt state of Victoria has to bankroll companies in this area? The definition of a successful business is one that operates on its own merits, not as a public parasite.

Can the Andrews government explain why they are spending $1.7 billion on the Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation? That seems like something governments do when they are rolling in money, not on the brink of oblivion.

Why has the Suburban Rail Link project engorged to $200 billion – four times its projected cost? How can anything cost that much? You could probably build a whole city for that in China.

Not only has Labor bled Victoria dry, it has become so terrified of confessing its economic failure that it is pressing ahead with spending promises that compound the error.

‘The budget will deliver on our election commitments as we continue our strong economic recovery. We’ll continue to consult with unions and employees as we deliver savings identified in previous budgets, ensuring that key services are maintained,’ said a government spokesperson.

This is the sort of calamity that requires the government to tear up its promises and confront the truth – the gravy train is finished. The public service has to shrink. Wasteful public projects have to be mothballed. Anything that doesn’t centre around the immediate running of the state has to go. A full audit or resources is required.

The union movement is already getting ready to muscle up against the government, which is the problem with having Labor in bed with a powerful entity that acts in its own interest rather than the interest of taxpayers.

‘You can’t just cut people’s jobs and expect them to continue to survive with cost of living, interest rate rises, and some of them may even lose their houses,’ said the union.

Strange. I don’t seem to remember Andrews or Labor crying any tears when they deliberately locked the unvaccinated out of their jobs for nearly a year. Many of them lost their homes and had to pull their children out of school. What was it Andrews said? ‘This is going to be a vaccinated economy, and you get to participate in that if you are vaccinated. We’re going to move to a situation where, to protect the health system, we are going to lock out people who are not vaccinated and can be.’

After comments like that, Andrews cannot pretend to care about the fate of Victorians.

The Victorian Budget is due in May. Expect it to be part train wreck, part fantasy, and part dystopian horror.

We will all have to pay very close attention to the detail of the Budget and make sure there isn’t any magic money in there as a result of Andrews’ secret trip to Xi Jinping. Having already tried to sign up to China’s debt-trap politics once, there is no longer a federal Liberal Party to stop Labor endangering national sovereignty in exchange for saving face.