{"id":220441,"date":"2025-05-20T15:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T05:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=220441"},"modified":"2025-05-20T15:03:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T05:03:01","slug":"victoria-has-posted-a-modest-600-million-surplus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=220441","title":{"rendered":"Victoria has posted a \u201cmodest\u201d $600 million surplus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Let\u2019s not break out the champagne just yet. That $600 million \u201csurplus\u201d is an operating surplus, it doesn\u2019t include the billions still bleeding out through capital works and debt servicing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Victoria\u2019s net debt is still skyrocketing, heading toward $187.3 billion by 2028, and we\u2019re still running cash deficits when you factor in infrastructure blowouts and project delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s like claiming you\u2019re saving money because your everyday groceries cost less this week, while ignoring the fact that your credit card is maxed out and you just took out a second mortgage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A win?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only if you squint hard enough and ignore everything else on the balance sheet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only if you squint hard enough and ignore everything else on the balance sheet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":220442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,999,35],"tags":[993,8,16773],"class_list":["post-220441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-australia-politics","category-breaking-news","tag-melbourne","tag-victoria","tag-victorian-budget-2025"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220443,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220441\/revisions\/220443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/220442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}