In the mountain of coverage about Victoria’s new Premier one point has been particularly common – a comparison of Jacinta Allan to Joan Kirner, Victoria’s second female Premier to its first.
Ms Allan invited this comparison, after referring to Mrs Kirner - premier from 1990-92 - as a"wonderful mentor" in her first media appearance as Premier.Sure, they both inherited the leadership of the state when its finances were a total shambles.This was on the head of the Premier and the men he put in charge of the state’s coffers. In these roles she did some good things.On the other hand, Victoria’s current financial woes are very much of Ms Allan’s own making.
Ms Allan promised the entire loop would not top $50 billion, yet the independent Parliamentary Budget Office has costed just the first two thirds at $125bn. Consequently, she made some hard decisions, such as selling the State Bank and starting to privatise the transport sector.The media may have derided Mrs Kirner as “Mother Russia”, but she was both smart and tough enough to borrow from the playbook of liberal economists like Milton Friedman, rather than cave entirely to the predilection of her own party for ever-more public ownership.
Indeed, the first action of her government was yet another tax, this time on so-called vacant properties.
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