It was a wonderful cartoon. Premier Dan Andrews is getting ready for work. He looks in the bathroom mirror, but the reflection is the hapless former premier, Joan Kirner. The obvious question: after all this time, has Dan simply turned into a sad version of Joan – a premier who is remembered for her fiscal profligacy and incompetence?

State budgets generally elicit about as much interest as daytime TV: they are the classic case of here one day, gone the next. But this year’s Victorian budget was different because even a kindergarten child – now attending kindy free of charge, courtesy of the Andrews’s government – could see that Victoria’s budgetary situation is seriously bad.

Spending is out of control, the debt is exploding and it is just a matter of time before the state’s credit rating is downgraded again. All this with the highest taxes in the country.

Before the pandemic hit, recurrent spending in Victoria was around $68 billion. This financial year, it will be $93 billion and increasing each year after, to reach nearly $100 billion by 2026-27. There was a massive step jump at the time of Covid, but there is no sign of a return to the prior status quo. Over the same period, government debt will explode, reaching over $171 billion by July 2027 or 25 per cent of gross state product.

Sadly for the citizens of the state, Dan and his trusted wing man, Treasurer Tim Pallas, have been inclined to see the parlous fiscal position as an opportunity to demonstrate their superior political skills. This tactic is instead of taking the bull by the horns and setting the key budget parameters on more sustainable trajectories. The idea of walking away from their spending promises, which include free fishing-rods for primary school children (I’m not making this up), just doesn’t appeal to the intrepid duo.

Let’s not forget the $15 million Dan decided to throw at Netball Australia, to show up Gina Rinehart. It turns out that the most-played sport in the country is still in trouble and one of the teams, Collingwood, has announced its intention to withdraw from the national competition.

Then there is the close to $2 billion for the Melbourne Arts Precinct, or should that be the Yarts Precinct, to placate all those creative types who just love Dan. And did I mention the $2.6 billion for the upcoming Commonwealth Games that no other country wanted? But it’s OK, it’s going to be a regional thing and create new infrastructure of lasting value with a new daggy mascot, no doubt.

Cutting government spending is simply not in Andrews’s DNA. To ensure the taps could remain on, he needed to find an alternative. And this alternative was to hit his political enemies with higher taxes and imposts and to pretend this was sufficient to remedy the state’s budget predicament.

It’s a case of A for politics but F for economics. The design of the new taxes and imposts will discourage investment in the state as well as make the housing situation even more dire.  But what the heck: both Dan and Pallas will be out of there by the time that real action is required to prevent a serious economic meltdown.

Call one of the key new taxes a Covid-19 debt repayment plan – a sort of payback for all that government largesse that was handed out by dint of the excessive lockdowns and other pandemic-related restrictions – and restrict it to big companies and the politics works a treat.

The fact that, bizarrely, big companies in Victoria are already paying a mental health levy which has no economic rationale whatsoever is simply ignored. Big companies can afford it because they’re big: that seems to be as deep as the Treasurer’s argument goes, although he did mention that some big companies had done well out of Covid.

Mind you, the expected additional revenue from the higher tax on big companies – which is expected to last ten years, no less – doesn’t come close to repaying the debt. It is expected to raise an additional $31.5 billion but government debt will continue to rise. This has led the Victorian Parliamentary Office courageously to point out that there is an insufficient effort being made in the budget to deal with the burgeoning debt.

As for increasing the incidence and rate of property tax on investment properties, the sure-fire outcome will be higher rents as owners pass on the higher costs. Andrews’s suggestion that investors can simply deduct the higher costs through the federal tax system – thanks for that piece of gratuitous advice – was intended as a dig at the federal Treasurer, Jimbo, who had had the gall to knock back the request for a federal bail-out. Over the next four years, property owners will be slugged an additional $5 billion odd for the ‘privilege’ of owning property in Victoria.

It is astonishing that the Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance wasn’t warning, in the strongest possible terms, of the sheer stupidity of any action that would put further pressure on escalating rents. About the only thing propping up the Victorian economy at this stage is the massive influx of new migrants but the residential rental market is as tight as a drum.

One of the burning questions now is how long will Dan the Man last. Arguably, he’s achieved everything he wants to, politically speaking. He has his deputy, Jacinta Allan, waiting in the wings to take over the reins.  Needless to say, no one believes his ‘sincere’ statement that he intends to see out this term of government.

It will be Allan’s job to pick up the pieces and attempt to begin the process of repairing the fiscal position. It would be a poison chalice were it not for the pathetic state of the Victorian Liberal party and its complete incompetence as an opposition. The likelihood of Labor being defeated at an election any time soon – the next twenty years, say – is as remote as winning the Tattslotto Superdraw.

Of course, the long-serving Treasurer of the state, Tim Pallas, will be following his mate out the door, to begin his well-remunerated, part-time commercial career courtesy of all the business connections he has made since 2014 when Dan first won.

It has been a great gig for these two men, when you think about it.

Just pity the poor citizens of the state who will have to bear the consequences of their ruinous time in office.