That Victoria has been in a financial sinkhole has been obvious to me for quite a long time. Andrews even tried to sign up to the Chinese Road and Belt program to stave off the ruin that was certain to follow his profligate ways. But now all this has come to the attention of others: Andrews govt accused of blurring budget figures found in a late night release on a Saturday night in the Herald Sun [update: now the front page story in the Sunday paper]. Perhaps the news will last until the beginning of next week. It is certainly a dismal story.

The state government has been accused of hiding the state’ true financial plight from Victorians.

In a bombshell report, parliament’s independent budget watchdog says the Andrews government has missed and blurred key figures as the state races towards record debt levels.

The report by the Parliamentary Budget Office has accused the government of:

SCRAPPING or modifying most of its own fiscal targets;

BURYING key details to make it harder for Victorians to properly monitor its financial performance;

FAILING to be transparent about the government’s debt position;

DEFINING fewer targets, and less clearly, than before than pandemic; and

IGNORING recommendations made by the parliament’s budget watchdog.

“Blurred figures” is trying to put it nicely. It is a catastrophe that will even outdistance the horrors of Cain-Kirner years which was the previous occasion when Labor was left alone to run the Victorian economy for a succession of years.

State government ‘hides truth from voters’