Putrefaction anywhere is generally unwelcome, but when it occurs in government it’s particularly nauseating. We not only have to bear witness to it – we have to pay for it too.

Putrefying governments are one of the less attractive aspects of whichever system of government prevails – democracy included. Our rules allow even reprehensible governments to linger.

In Victoria, the Socialist Left (SL) Labor administration, currently headed by Premier Jacinta Allan, is approaching advanced decomposition. Attempts at concealment by third-rate Labor hacks in Spring Street have long since been futile.

Allan has been Premier for a little short of a year courtesy of the sudden (and blessed) departure of her reviled predecessor, Daniel Andrews.

Rather than leading, Allan has presided over the continuing desecration of the Victorian economy on a scale unmatched by any previous government in the State’s history. She has followed the abhorrent and cynical path Andrews set over a decade ago.

Labor’s idiotic mantra is broadly ‘promise it all and do it with other peoples’ money’.

It’s how socialist left regimes operate. Debt is fine so long as those who created it have long gone when it needs to be repaid says the SL playbook.

Victoria’s Treasurer, Tim Pallas – the architect of Victoria’s financial catastrophe – disgracefully clings to power like a limpet on the hull of a sinking boat.

Some earlier Labor governments tried their best at being the worst (notably Joan Kirner’s rabble), but Allan and Andrews win hands down. In public administration their administration is the worst of the worst.

Public health, mental well-being, state education, transport, energy, our justice ‘system’, and our cultural sector are all in advanced decline thanks to this ideologically driven, incompetent government that has held the Treasury benches since 2014.

The scandals directly and indirectly involving Premier Allan are so numerous it’s hard to know where to start.

Two glaring examples of Labor’s disdain for taxpayers are the CFMEU scandal engulfing the national Labor movement and the cynical cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth Games to be held in Victoria. It was Allan (as Games Minister) who invested millions securing the Games and it was she and Andrews who killed the plan, which many believed to be their intention from the start. Hundreds of millions were wasted as a result.

Allan’s fake incredulity regarding the obscenities of Labor’s biggest donor (the CFMEU) has not gone well with voters. Bereft of even basic leadership skills, the Premier is struggling for air given the damning allegations of CFMEU behaviour which has been widely suspected for years..

Taxpayers have become so inured to self-serving, amateur politicians who purport to represent their interests that they have stopped listening.

There’s a form of political hypnosis in Victoria in which reality is suspended while government debt grows to ever more stratospheric levels. The billions of dollars needing repayment have become incomprehensible.

Nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, firefighters, police, and other emergency service personnel, all report growing threats to their safety and inability to do their jobs because of shortage of team members and growing community violence.

After a decade of flawed Labor policy and practice the government has run out of people to blame. It’s their policies, their shameful profligacy, and their union affiliations which have combined to bring Victoria to its knees.

By the time bewildered Victorian voters get to throw the decrepit Allan government out of office Victoria will be left with at least the following:

1. State debt at or about $135 billion in 2024-25, heading towards $180 billion in two to three years time
2. At a minimum a $10 billion blowout in a single road project northeast of Melbourne
3. No rail link between Melbourne city and Tullamarine Airport
4. Tax increases of at least 5 per cent across the forward estimates hitting low-income earners hardest – in the middle of a cost of living and housing affordability crisis
5. A housing crisis about which the government is comprehensively clueless
6. Massively under-funded public hospitals in which patients are dying while waiting admission
7. Some of the worst rates of mental ill-health in the country
8. School performance rates below acceptable levels and continuing to fall
9. Crime figures which are terrifying – with house invasions and drug-related law-breaking at an all time high
10. A bloated public sector – the vast majority of which still ‘work’ from home following the State’s Covid disaster.

Rarely has a runway to government been so wide open as it is in Victoria and rarely has an Opposition been as invisible as the incumbent Opposition.

It’s no wonder voters are so comprehensively disillusioned as they grapple the cost of living crisis and a bone-chilling Victorian winter.