Family First’s Jane Foreman says the Herald Sun’s report on FixVictoria’s new “tsunami of debt” ad campaign (9 August) is independent confirmation of the debt crisis Family First has been warning Victorians about since May, and further proof of why the state needs Family First’s voice in the Legislative Council after November.
Mrs Foreman says the Herald Sun’s coverage of FixVictoria’s new television campaign, which depicts a computer-generated tsunami of red ink surging out of Victoria’s Parliament and swallowing Melbourne’s CBD, puts pictures to numbers Family First has been putting in front of Victorians for months. FixVictoria head Gideon Rozner said Victoria’s debt is on track to hit $200 billion by 2030, that it now costs more than $24 million a day to pay the state’s interest bill, and that Victoria is on track to spend one in every 10 dollars of state revenue simply servicing interest — before a single decision is made about keeping a hospital bed, a classroom or a police station open.
“FixVictoria didn’t need AI to invent a crisis — Family First gave Victorians the real numbers in black and white months before this ad ever screened,” said Mrs Foreman. “In May, we warned this Budget was a debt bomb, with net debt hitting $199.3 billion by 2030 — that’s $70,935 sitting on the kitchen table of every Victorian household. In July, we pointed to Moody’s own modelling showing interest could eat up ten cents in every dollar of state revenue by 2030. FixVictoria is now putting exactly the same warning on TV screens across Melbourne.”
Family First says the fact that FixVictoria’s figures, Moody’s independent modelling and Family First’s own analysis all point to the same conclusion shows Victoria’s debt crisis is not a partisan talking point invented for an election year, but a fact every serious observer of the state’s finances now agrees on.
“When a ratings agency, an independent lobby group and Family First are all reaching the same numbers by three different routes, that’s not a coincidence — that’s a government that has run out of ways to hide the bill,” said Mrs Foreman. “Instead of answering for a decade of borrowing, the Government’s response is to call the messenger political. That is exactly the kind of accountability-dodging Victoria will keep getting until there is a genuine check and balance in the Legislative Council.”
A spokesman for the Carroll Government dismissed the FixVictoria campaign as part of a “pro-Liberal” attack and pointed to this year’s state surplus. Mrs Foreman says Family First is aligned with neither Labor nor the Liberals and was raising the same debt warnings months before FixVictoria existed, and that no amount of finger-pointing at the messenger changes the trajectory of the state’s finances.
Family First is calling on the Victorian government to legislate a debt cap, commission an independent, line-by-line audit of government spending, and rule out any further increase in net debt without a clear repayment plan. Mrs Foreman says the growing chorus of independent warnings, now including FixVictoria’s campaign, is exactly why Victoria needs Family First in the Legislative Council after November — to be the check and balance that forces whoever is Premier to answer for the state’s finances, instead of just shooting the messenger.
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