Via The Age:
Daniel Andrews’ Labor government is on course for a thumping win in Saturday’s election after extending its lead over its Coalition rivals in the latest exclusive opinion poll commissioned by The Age.
The poll predicts a Labor win on Saturday by 54 to 46 per cent of the statewide two-party preferred vote, a greater margin than it achieved in 2014.
This suggests that several Coalition seats are now in danger of falling to an increasingly confident ALP.
The results show the Coalition going backward since the previous survey, in October, when it trailled Labor 48-52 and it is the second consecutive statewide poll for The Age in which the ALP has pulled ahead.
It appears Victorians are happy to:
- do dodgy deals with the Chinese Communist Party;
- embrace dodgy infrastructure promises with no funding;
- believe dodgy outlooks for a near term property price rebound;
- accept dodgy misuse of taxpayer dollars for Labor’s own political purposes, and
- ignore law and order as an issue (whether it is truthful is another question).
Victoria is the snowflake state and is always difficult for the Coalition to win or hold. The recent terror attack probably favours the incumbent a little too. That said, Matthew Guy is pretty uninspiring and has failed to make anything of the mass immigration crush-loading issue that is tormenting Melbourne. He should have gone in much harder on reduced numbers, as NSW Liberals are doing. He threw another useless smoke grenade today. From The Australian:
…the Opposition Leader believes a long-term solution can be adapted from Britain, where successive governments since Margaret Thatcher’s have pursued a policy of decentralisation…
“Population growth is central to everything a state government does. We can’t keep going on the path of being a city state, which is what Victoria is on the path of: one great big heaving, massive metropolis and the rest of the state being forgotten’’…
He warns that, unless something changes, Melbourne will “collapse upon itself”, and economic growth will stall…
Mr Guy is agnostic when it comes to overseas immigration: neither supportive nor opposed to the sort of cuts in the permanent intake being discussed in Canberra… “The issue in Victoria is not the number,’’ he says. “The issue is where they are going.’’
Yesterday’s population projections from the ABS shattered Guy’s decentralisation pipe dream.
Melbourne’s population is projected to double to more than 10 million people by 2066 under the medium (Series B) projection, with Melbourne’s share of Victoria’s population to increase from 77% currently to 85% in 2066:
Even if Matthew Guy could magically deflect some of this growth into Victoria’s regions, Melbourne would still transform into an Asian-style mega city over the next 50 years. There’s no getting around this fact.
And with such a large population will come a complete demolition of Melbourne’s living standards. According to Infrastructure Australia’s projections (see next table), congestion will materially worsen as will access to jobs, schools, hospitals and green space as Melbourne’s population expands to 7.3 million people by 2046, let alone 10 million people by 2066. And this will happen regardless of how well Melbourne ‘plans’ or builds-out to accommodate this growth:
Guy botched the very simple politics of this message and, based upon the respective campaigns, Dirty Dan should win.
By default.
