Victoria has voted for another four years of Labor, and Premier Daniel Andrews says he’ll waste no time getting on with an expensive and ambitious infrastructure building program.
On Sunday morning after Labor’s landslide election victory, Andrews appeared on breakfast television to defend plans to double the state’s debt to fund projects like the Melbourne Airport Rail Link and the removal of more level crossings.
Days before the vote state treasurer Tim Pallas said Labor would borrow $25.6 billion over ten years to fund its infrastructure program, doubling the state’s net debt to 12 per cent of gross state product.
Describing the borrowing as “prudent” on Sunday morning, Andrews said the plan would benefit future generations.
“People talk about what this’ll mean for our kids and our grandkids, I think one of the best gifts we can give to them is infrastructure that works and this is what that building program will do,” Andrews told Sky.
The newly re-elected premier said borrowing money to fund infrastructure would be “much better than jacking up taxes so that the current generation pays for all the infrastructure that we’ll benefit from and many others”.
In what is being described as a “bloodbath,” Labor trounced the Coalition in Saturday’s election.
With 71 per cent of the vote counted, Labor holds 52 seats to the Coalition’s 24, with a further 8 still in the balance, according to the ABC.
Speaking on Nine on Sunday, Andrews said the result showed voters’ distrust for the Liberals not only in Victoria, but at a national level.
“I am certain that Victorians have just about had enough of a federal government that cuts hospitals, cans schools, and refuses to admit they have done it,” he said. “That is what makes people angry.
“They want politicians who say what they are going to do, and then get on and do it. Where that leaves [prime minister Scott] Morrison, I leave it for you to judge.”