I have more good news: I’m also going to miss the Victorian budget lock-up which is happening soon. OK, I haven’t actually been to a Victorian budget lock-up for quite a while, but it’s still good news.

When I used to go, it was obvious that Victorian budget lock-ups were altogether more amateurish affairs than the federal ones. I used to spend a lot of time dreaming up reasons why I should be able to leave early – I need to feed my goldfish, my great-grandmother has died, you know the sort of thing – but when I got to the desk, the nice women would always simply give me an early mark and hand back my mobile phone.

I do remember one time when the Coalition government was in for a nanosecond and the Treasurer – I can’t remember his name – offered to sign my copy of the Budget papers. I politely declined, informing him that I had no intention of taking them home.  What would I do with a collection of Victorian budget papers – they’re not exactly Shakespeare’s collected works?

Mind you, there may be more fireworks as part of this year’s Victorian budget as it’s clear that Victoria’s public finances are in a catastrophic state. Dan the Man has been softening us up for a ‘horror’ budget, which will probably mean a small increase in public servant numbers as opposed to the gargantuan rises we have been experiencing since 2015.

Dan has been demonstrating something of a comedic touch recently by firstly calling for the federal government to bail out the state and then blaming the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Philip Lowe – Phil to Speccie readers – for the level of government debt in Victoria. Again, it was a case of laugh, I thought I’d die.

At this stage, Jimbo hasn’t shown any inclination to rescue Victoria, although doing something down the track can’t be ruled out. Bruvvers helping each other, you must understand. Even though Dan complains about the special GST deal that Western Australia received under the Coalition government – thanks, Mathias, it was one of the worst fiscal decisions ever made by any finance minister – the reality is that Victoria was made no worse off by the deal. It was simply a top-up for Sandgropers even though their booming resources sector means that the coffers in Perth are overflowing.

As for Dan suggesting that Victoria would never have borrowed the amounts it did if Phil hadn’t assured him that interest rates would not rise until 2024, oh please. The fact is Victoria’s credit rating was being downgraded at the same time that Phil started up his unfortunate forward guidance.

In other words, the credit agencies were looking at what debt had been accumulated by the Victorian government and its likely upward trajectory – it had nothing to do with Phil. According to the most recent figures, net government debt in Victoria is heading towards $160 billion by the middle of the decade. Given that it was around $20bn a decade ago, this might be some sort of record in terms of a deteriorating government debt position. Victoria has undoubtedly grabbed the mantle as the worst fiscal manager from Queensland.

One of the key features of the state of public finances in Victoria is the major contribution made by ill-considered and over-budget infrastructure projects which come under the heading, Big Build. (I’m not kidding; it’s sounds like Sesame Street.) The list goes on: the Metro underground project, the Airport Link, the West Gate tunnel – all disasters. They are all costing many billions of dollars more than anticipated and their completion dates are uncertain.

Indeed, the Airport Link, which is planned to provide a rail service between the CBD and Melbourne’s main airport, is now up in the air. Premier Dan has taken a keen interest in this project to the point that it is now uncertain whether it will ever be finished. By insisting that the link swing out west and use a number of existing stations, some of them well-known drug hubs, the attraction to users was already significantly diminished.

But an intractable dispute with the Melbourne Airport Corporation which owns the land around the airport has seen the situation become farcical. The Andrews’s plan was to locate a new airport train station away from the terminals, placing it somewhere close to the long-term carpark. Passengers would then alight and have to take a bus.  Let’s face it, even a ten-year old would know that such a plan won’t work.

The real tragedy is that an alternative plan was put to the Andrews government by IFM Investors some time ago, to build an elevated rail link down the median strip of the Tullamarine Freeway and connect to the CBD that way. It wouldn’t have cost the Victorian taxpayers a cent. But Dan wasn’t having a bar of it.

Sniffing the wind about the public’s changing attitude to large-scale infrastructure projects, Dan is now backtracking from his embrace of the Big Build. The ongoing disruption, the lengthy delays and the blowout in the costs are factors that are causing the voting public to rethink their love of anything called infrastructure. Even though Dan had only recently promised to build a fast train service between Melbourne and Geelong, this project has now been ditched.

Bizarrely, the one project that seems to have survived the cull is the totally unjustified Suburban Rail Loop. Costing at least $100 billion, it has failed every benefit-cost test applied to it and has suffered criticism from the Auditor-General as well as other parts of the bureaucracy. It was never referred to Infrastructure Australia or Infrastructure Victoria for appraisal.

But here’s the thing: the Albanese government is totally on board, having allocated over $2 billion to the project. It is also excluding this project from its current reconsideration of federally funded infrastructure projects.

The only conclusion to draw is that promises have been made to another set of bruvvers, this time members of the CFMEU, and a promise is a promise.

In this context, it’s interesting to observe the very mixed reaction to Albo’s pledge to contribute big dollars to a new stadium in Hobart to accommodate a Tasmanian AFL team. Ignoring the fact that there is already a stadium at Bellerive, this new stadium is demanded by the AFL even though the league will be contributing only a fixed sum of $15 million and will not be responsible for any cost over-runs.

The project is not supported by the Tasmanian leader of the opposition and the Liberal government has lost two members because of it. The bread and circuses game may be reaching an end point, politically speaking. That’s good news as well.