Be careful navigating the Hume Highway and watch out as the B-doubles weighing almost 70\u00a0tonnes shimmy alarmingly as their drivers seek to avoid potholes<\/a>. Regular drivers know where the big ones are but deadly craters open up regularly.<\/p>\n We\u2019d repair them. But we don\u2019t have the money. Indeed, this week the Jacinta Allan government promised to spend $1bn on 200,000 potholes. That\u2019s an election stunt. The roads have been a deadly mess for years under Labor. In any case, we still don\u2019t have the money.<\/p>\n In January, more than 1100 motorcyclists gathered outside the state parliament to demand the government start fixing our crumbling roads. They heard from Max Lucas, who was almost killed on a popular tourist road when his motorbike hit a pothole, breaking the machine, which exploded, flinging him into a tree. Lucas suffered third-degree burns and a traumatic brain injury. He almost died.<\/p>\n Last year 59 motorcyclists did die on our perilous roads. How many because of potholes was not recorded. <\/p>\n At least Victorians haven\u2019t lost their sense of humour. It is about all we haven\u2019t lost. Ratepayers have started planting trees and flowers in the unrepaired holes in suburban streets. It\u2019s a protest, but it also flags their location.<\/p>\n Potholes are a problem for us. But there are even bigger holes in our state budget, in our ability to fund the Victoria Police and hospitals, and there are holes in our society. Right now there are potholes in Victoria\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n What eats most acidly into the heart of our state is the criminality of a single union: the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union. <\/p>\n At the rotten hub of this conglomerate leviathan is the construction division, which created the original CFMEU in the 1990s after the deregistration of the disgraced Builders Labourers Federation. It was joined in 2018 by the maritime union, formerly the Waterside Workers Federation, whose sabotage, theft and cruel industrial bastardry on our wharves during World War II cost Australian and Allied lives. That should never be forgotten or forgiven.<\/p>\n It is a new-look CFMEU these days<\/a>. Its criminality is slickly organised and it has been penetrated by outlaw motorcycle gangs as it oversees worksites around Australia with mafia-like command and control \u2013 and in a true mafia style even trafficking drugs. Criminals are given positions on worksites and then employ their mates as they stand over construction companies holding them hostage and stripping them of not millions, not tens of millions, not hundreds of millions but thousands of millions of dollars. Just in Victoria.<\/p>\n There have been calls for a royal commission into the CFMEU, but Allan won\u2019t have it. Like the rest of us, she\u2019s knows what it would find. <\/p>\n In the most extravagant example of solidarity forever, investigator Geoffrey Watson SC<\/a>, who was commissioned by recently resigned Mark Irving KC<\/a>, the administrator of the CFMEU\u2019s construction and general division, to examine the union, found it was a criminal enterprise that had stolen or diverted about $15bn from Victorian taxpayers. <\/p>\n Irving pulled the plug on Monday. Two heart attacks in and he is done with it all. He received death threats from day one. And who threatened him? I am betting it was not the Musicians Union. <\/p>\n The Australian revealed last year that Premier Allan, formerly the long-time transport and infrastructure minister, had been warned about the CFMEU\u2019s lawlessness long before Watson\u2019s explosive report detailing how the union exploited Victoria\u2019s Big Build infrastructure program and siphoned off about 15 per cent of its $100bn spend. (Allan\u2019s second husband is a one-time CFMEU official in the forestry and manufacturing division, which often butted heads with the union\u2019s Victorian division secretary, John Setka, and there is no suggestion he was involved in any wrongdoing.) <\/p>\n Watson said it \u201cwas no longer a trade union, it was a crime syndicate\u201d that had converted building sites into \u201cdrug distribution centres\u201d. It is a uniquely Victorian problem. He said if you compared corruption around the states on a scale of zero to 10, \u201cNSW is about a two or a three, Queensland\u2019s about a five, and Victoria\u2019s about 1000. It\u2019s insane.\u201d <\/p>\n Rather than distance herself from the CFMEU, Allan appears to have a soft spot for the Victorian branch, which until recently was led by the thuggish Setka. He is a deeply unpleasant person who once posted a photograph of his children holding a sign directed at a workplace compliance officer that read: \u201cGO GET FU#KED\u201d. When Setka had a falling out with his wife, he sent his wife a note: \u201cYou are a c— just like the rest of your family.\u201d <\/p>\n This month, when three members of Allan\u2019s cabinet sniffed the wind and bailed, she had to find replacements. Many were astounded when she chose to elevate Luba Grigorovitch to the cabinet. Grigorovitch, a former boss of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, and an old mate of Setka, thanked him in her maiden speech to the Victorian Parliament: \u201cI am as solid and as good as my word, because at the end of the day that is all you have got. I am grateful to have found fellow travellers, so thank you to Johnny Setka.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about these words this month, she said: \u201cI don\u2019t just ditch my mates when things get tough.\u201d <\/p>\n After Watson\u2019s criticisms, and for a short while, Victorian ministers weren\u2019t seen so often in hi-vis and hard-hat photo opportunities. It was all a bit too close to home. But they are brazenly back in full stride. <\/p>\n It is hard to imagine what $15bn means, but here\u2019s some perspective: I grew up in Mitcham, a middle-class eastern suburb of Melbourne. There are 9639 houses in the suburb with an average value of $1.25m. The total value of every house there is $11.5bn. The CFMEU could have bought Mitcham and had enough left over to buy the world\u2019s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and still be left with change.<\/p>\n No wonder we can\u2019t afford to fix potholes, properly fund hospitals or pay for a fully functioning police force.<\/p>\n I have called Melbourne home since 1958 and I have never known a city to be so paralysed by hopelessness. World\u2019s fourth most liveable city? That ranking mocks us. We used to be so content in our little southern paradise the car number plates stated \u201cThe place to be\u201d. Now it is the place to be stabbed. Recently a sushi chef on her way to work was stabbed by a complete stranger at 7.40am in the CBD. <\/p>\n Melbourne\u2019s children are stabbing, slashing and killing each other. We are so hardened to the numbing uniformity of crime by children who should be in bed but instead steal cars and attack and rob people, it soon drops from the news agenda. <\/p>\n Our children are the most violently criminal in the country. Morning radio bulletins carry news of savage home invasions, machete attacks and cars stolen and crashed by drivers not long out of primary school. Sometimes they or their passengers are found dead in the wreck. <\/p>\n More than 90 cars are stolen a day in Victoria. Insurers say car theft claims are up 59 per cent. Premiums are soaring.<\/p>\n Last September the news was worse: two boys, aged 15 and 12, walking home from a suburban basketball game were stabbed to death by a gang of youngsters. One of the dead boys had his hand sliced off. Prosecutors say the boys\u2019 deaths were revenge for another boy\u2019s murder nine months earlier. That victim also had his hand chopped off. <\/p>\n These are schoolchildren. <\/p>\n On January 3, a teenager was shot dead outside inner-city Fitzroy Police Station<\/a>. This was allegedly payback for an earlier attack. The police station wasn\u2019t open; we can no longer afford that many police. The state government cut the police budget by $50m last year. The number of police has fallen to 15,601 full-time officers, the lowest for seven years. <\/p>\n Since then the state has grown by more than 500,000 people and the crime rate has exploded.<\/a> The Police Association believes we are more than 1400 officers short. But too few want to be a police officer in Victoria. Who can blame them? Another 150 have left in the past three months. <\/p>\n The money stolen or diverted by the CFMEU \u2013 traditionally one of Labor\u2019s biggest donors \u2013 would cover the total Victoria Police budget for years. <\/p>\n Children\u2019s courts deal daily with a tidal wave of youngsters charged with serious violent crime<\/a>. The gang culture in the city is so vicious that one of the courts is festooned with security cameras \u2013 focused on the streets outside and beamed inside. Those about to be bailed are able to see if enemy gang members are waiting for them. One boy must know those cameras well; he has been bailed more than 50 times. He has had 388 charges struck out. He breaks into houses while families are asleep, steals money and cars that he often crashes. But we\u2019re good with it, apparently. He is reportedly here on a refugee visa. No doubt he\u2019ll make a fine Victorian citizen if he lives long enough. <\/p>\n It was reported this month that 17 Victorian schoolchildren are physically or sexually assaulted or threatened by their classmates every school day. The attacks have tripled since 2023. Child crime has been normalised in Victoria. We have given up. <\/p>\n This complete contempt for law and order is aided and abetted by a criminal justice system that refuses to punish its citizens even for edge-of-life violence<\/a>. The sentencing of criminals in Victoria is absurdly lenient and has been for years. <\/p>\n Victoria\u2019s hospitals are underfunded, understaffed and overcrowded, and run up huge debts in a system so stressed and demanding that patients are attacking doctors, nursing staff and each other. <\/p>\n Things are so bad that Royal Melbourne Hospital is reported to be using donated funds for a security centre to combat the violence rather than on lifesaving equipment. There were 5000 code grey incidents at the hospital in 2024. These are episodes involving aggressive but unarmed members of the public or patients. That is almost 14 a day. And it was rising steeply. Victorian hospitals totalled 23,977 violent incidents across 2024-25, almost 66 a day. The nurses union believes incidents are under-reported. We are collectively losing it.<\/p>\n We cannot afford the investment needed to restore our health system because the Victorian government has run out of money. That $15bn the CFMEU directed into its pockets and those of its members and their mates would solve most of these issues. <\/p>\n When this Labor government was elected, Victoria\u2019s debt represented about 5 per cent of its economy. Today that figure is more than 25 per cent. <\/p>\n Adam Creighton, chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs,<\/a> and a columnist for this newspaper, says even the Allan government\u2019s forecast of a $194bn debt by 2029 <\/a>is an underestimate. Creighton says debt will actually be $235bn using a broader set of state accounts. <\/p>\n Even on the lesser figure Victoria is the most indebted state (comparable subnational jurisdiction) in the world.<\/p>\n \u201cThe capacity to increase taxes is very limited. They are running significant budget deficits \u2026 the outlook is diabolical,\u201d Creighton noted, saying Victoria not only had too many public servants but too many were on bloated salaries. <\/p>\n So the interest bill for all this debt sits at $7.72bn this year. That means we are paying more than $880,000 interest every hour. By 2029 that interest bill will be $10.47bn, so we\u2019ll be paying almost $1.2m. Every hour. Every day. <\/p>\n Nonetheless, despite the unprecedented debt pileup, Premier Allan is finding new and exotic ways to lose our money.<\/p>\n Victoria\u2019s Commonwealth Games kick off on July 23. In Glasgow. That is 16,994km away from the MCG. The hollowed-out taxpayers of Victoria are paying for Glasgow\u2019s Games. Why? Because the state government was so incapable of delivering them that it withdrew from the Games in July 2023 and ran away. <\/p>\n It could, but we can\u2019t. Nor from the $569m bill for scrapping the Games that we had signed up to just the year before. It was a timely if cynical bout of bread and circuses in the run-up to November\u2019s election, but this government is so incurably incompetent we lost our bread and missed the circus. It goes almost without saying that Allan was the minister for Commonwealth Games delivery. <\/p>\n Not all holes in Victoria are caused by wear and negligence. We sometimes build and pay for them. The East West Link road and tunnel project was to have been built as a much-needed connection between suburbs at either end of the capital. <\/p>\n As he said he would, the then new premier, Daniel Andrews, scrapped the project in 2014. Taxpayers and angry senior federal Labor figures knew it was going to cost hundreds of millions to call it off but nonetheless were shocked when the figure came in at $339m. <\/p>\n We did not know the half of it. Victoria\u2019s Auditor-General, Dr Peter Frost, wrote a scathing report months later revealing the real cost to be more than $1.1bn. Thrown away in an unfinished hole.<\/p>\n Allan has signed off on some of the biggest state-funded projects Australia has seen: the Metro Tunnel (years late and more than $4bn over budget); the Suburban Rail Loop that comes with a $34.5bn price tag, but no one believes it will be on time or come in other than billions over budget. <\/p>\n Melbourne\u2019s Herald Sun reported that the \u201cParliamentary Budget Office in 2024 revealed a $16bn increase in projected costs \u2026 driven by rising construction and maintenance pressures\u201d. Most Victorians have a good idea where those billions are going. <\/p>\n Victoria is failing at everything at the same time. Rust-bucket state? It would be, but the bucket\u2019s been knocked off long ago. <\/p>\n Last time Labor bankrupted the state, when the John Cain-Joan Kirner government fell in 1992, Victorian taxpayers had assets to sell and the incoming Jeff Kennett put them on the market to try to save the place: the State Electricity Commission, the train and tram networks, the Port of Melbourne, Land Titles Office and gas and water utilities. Kennett would have sold the State Bank of Victoria but under Labor it had collapsed two years earlier. <\/p>\n Too few people are talking about the debt mountain Victoria\u2019s children will inherit. Rather than restrict government spending or trying to control the outflows to the CFMEU, the Allan team is digging in. Literally. <\/p>\n The fact is that the CFMEU is the biggest spanner in Victoria\u2019s works. But Victoria isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n Our number plates should be more honest. We are the insolvency state. <\/p>\n Alan Howe has been a senior journalist on London\u2019s The Times and Sunday Times, and the New York Post. While editing the Sunday Herald Sun in Victoria it became the nation\u2019s fastest growing title and achieved the greatest margin between competing newspapers in Australian publishing history. He has also edited The Sunday Herald and The Weekend Australian Magazine and for a decade was executive editor of, and columnist for, Melbourne\u2019s Herald Sun. Alan was previously The Australian’s Opinion Editor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the sake of all of us who live in Victoria, I hope that, following November\u2019s state election,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4074,4121,297,23,133,4111,4077,4064,4068,4114,4083,4072,4095,4093,4096,4116,4122,4059,4094,4056,4085,4107,3244,4110,4050,290,4118,4084,4067,4113,4087,4054,4108,4109,4073,4088,889,4086,4102,4092,4058,4076,4065,4089,887,4063,4123,4103,260,4105,4101,355,4069,288,4060,120,4079,4057,4097,4104,2594,588,1063,4112,4117,4091,4090,4066,3300,4078,4099,4070,4115,4082,4080,4071,4100,4120,2043,4061,4081,4053,4098,4052,4075,4106,3386,4051,68,4062,4119,4055,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-2902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-melbourne","8":"tag-alan-howe","9":"tag-angry-senior-federal","10":"tag-asia","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-australia-and-new-zealand","13":"tag-body-bag","14":"tag-bread-and-circuses-window-dressing","15":"tag-bulletins-carry-news","16":"tag-car-number-plates","17":"tag-car-theft-claims","18":"tag-child-crime","19":"tag-city-police-station","20":"tag-construction-division","21":"tag-crime-capital","22":"tag-crime-rate","23":"tag-crime-syndicate","24":"tag-criminal-enterprise","25":"tag-criminal-justice-system","26":"tag-dan-andrews","27":"tag-death-threats","28":"tag-debt-mountain","29":"tag-distribution-centres","30":"tag-dubai","31":"tag-election-stunt","32":"tag-enemy-gang-members","33":"tag-europe","34":"tag-facts-and-figures","35":"tag-fitzroy-police-station","36":"tag-forestry-and-maritime-employees-union","37":"tag-geoffrey-watson-sc","38":"tag-glasgow-city","39":"tag-government-spending","40":"tag-government-start","41":"tag-hard-hat-photo-opportunities","42":"tag-health-system","43":"tag-heart-attacks","44":"tag-home-invasions","45":"tag-infrastructure-program","46":"tag-inner-city","47":"tag-inner-city-police","48":"tag-insolvency-state","49":"tag-jeff-kennett","50":"tag-john-cain-joan-kirner","51":"tag-land-titles-office","52":"tag-machete-attacks","53":"tag-maintenance-pressures","54":"tag-mark-irving-kc","55":"tag-max-lucas","56":"tag-melbourne","57":"tag-morning-radio-bulletins","58":"tag-motorcycle-gangs","59":"tag-new-south-wales","60":"tag-news-agenda","61":"tag-northern-europe","62":"tag-number-plates","63":"tag-oceania","64":"tag-parliamentary-budget-office","65":"tag-peter-frost","66":"tag-police-association","67":"tag-police-budget","68":"tag-police-force","69":"tag-police-officer","70":"tag-police-station","71":"tag-popular-tourist-road","72":"tag-price-tag","73":"tag-radio-bulletins-carry","74":"tag-real-cost","75":"tag-refugee-visa","76":"tag-royal-melbourne-hospital","77":"tag-rust-bucket-state","78":"tag-school-day","79":"tag-security-cameras","80":"tag-security-centre","81":"tag-sink-hole","82":"tag-standover-construction-companies","83":"tag-started-planting-trees","84":"tag-state-bank-of-victoria","85":"tag-state-electricity-commission","86":"tag-state-government","87":"tag-suburban-basketball-game","88":"tag-suburban-streets","89":"tag-sushi-chef","90":"tag-trade-union","91":"tag-tram-networks","92":"tag-traumatic-brain-injury","93":"tag-tunnel-project","94":"tag-united-kingdom","95":"tag-unprecedented-debt-pile","96":"tag-victoria","97":"tag-victorian-hospitals","98":"tag-waterside-workers-federation","99":"tag-watson","100":"tag-western-asia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Paramedic](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/7cff56d78abef447a10cab7b89834454.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Alan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/alan_howe.png\")
<\/a>Alan Howe<\/a>History and Obituaries Editor<\/p>\n