Victorian State Budget 2024/25
Something I noticed in the Victorian State Budget this week, which might be controversial (especially if you’re a politician – sorry not sorry) was:
Property taxes? $9.63billion.
Gambling taxes? $2.7billion.
Despite high interest rates and cost of living through the roof it’s heartbreaking that our fellow cash-strapped Victorians are spending so much on gambling and the government makes so much money from their pain.
I can kind of see why people are actually gambling though.
Numbing, seeking joy, seeking a win, ads on every channel and during every break on family football broadcasts.
And if you thought the gamblers and investors were the only ones with a problem think again.
The Vic state govt is totally dependent on the above taxes now they have dug a $188 billion hole for us.
For context, that’s not 1880 x 1 million. It’s one-hundred-and-eighty-eight-thousand-million-dollars. It looks like this: $188,000,000,000
When it comes to property taxes I personally can’t see any chance of land tax or stamp duty cuts in the short term. Vic needs this to survive.
There was an allocation of $700million to the Vic Homebuyer Fund, which basically means they have decided to spend $700milllion on taking equity in the homes of first home buyers.
The govt is literally spending more than $25million a day on interest alone (which is only getting worse) and just whacking reckless spending on the credit card! We don’t have the money… take the card off them.
Surely even children know that the “first” step to budgeting is to managing your expenses better. Spend less “then” you focus on earning more. Earning more once expenses are in check bodes well for making progress.
Earning more before that just means lifestyle creep more likely. Spending behaviour is what gets us all into a mess regardless of income (Eg Mike Tyson and countless bankrupt sports stars).
I have an idea! Cue sarcasm…
Why don’t we build a tunnel that goes from nowhere to nowhere for $15 billion instead of building 800,000 houses that we “promised”?
Don’t worry about the debt that will create for the Victorian tax payers, the fact that rents will continue to increase, that tradies who could otherwise build those homes are unavailable due to building tunnels (thus increasing costs to build homes - hello supply issue) and that all of that points to higher inflation and pressure on interest rates. We will keep a lid on power bills (sorry, what’s that we can’t because we don’t own the power companies?).
I guess land tax increases (deterring landlords buying properties for renters) next year will make our problems go away…
Rant over. Pain not.
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