The Gherk calls out ON Real Deal policy booklet: “I’ve spent the morning reading ON Vic 64-page Real Deal policy booklet. & before we even get to the policy, I would like to acknowledge the usual collection of spelling & grammatical mistakes you might expect from a Year 7 civics project submitted at 11:58pm the night before it was due. There are rogue apostrophes everywhere. The most mysterious is on page 27, during the grand summary of how they’ll fix Vic’s justice system, we are told: “We will give the courts the rooms, the v’ & the hours to finish cases.” The v’ Nobody knows what the v’ is Perhaps this is the missing constitutional ingredient that has held VIC back for decades. But the more interesting problem is not the proofreading. It is that a surprising number of their “new” ideas already exist. ON says it will introduce income-tested sport vouchers so families can afford organised sport. VIC already has the Get Active Kids Voucher Program, which gives eligible families up to $200 per child. It has existed since 2020 & applications are open right now. They say they will free up granny flats & spare-room rentals so more Victorians can rent them. VIC changed the rules in 2023. Small second dwellings up to 60 square metres generally no longer need a planning permit & they can already be rented to anyone. They say schools will use systematic phonics & explicit instruction. VIC govt primary schools have already been required to use systematic synthetic phonics from 2025. They say they will expand Hospital in the Home &nurse prescribing. VIC already has dozens of Hospital in the Home sites & nurse prescribing is being rolled out. They say they will reintroduce firebreaks & back-burning. These are already part of bushfire & fuel-management practice. They say they will make govt contracts & spending more transparent. Fair enough...but VIC already publishes major contracts, variations & procurement information. The idea that this is currently some sort of sealed Byzantine vault is nonsense. & then we get to the policies that a VIC Govt cannot actually deliver on its own. “Deport violent criminals” VIC cannot deport anyone. Visa cancellation & deportation are Commonwealth powers. What VIC can do is refer cases to the Commonwealth. “Support stronger border controls”... again: international border control is federal. “Reinstate the 1,500 gigalitre cap on buybacks.” That was Commonwealth legislation. “Request a five-year GST exemption” for certain building materials. At least “request” is honest. Victoria does not control GST. “Support the full completion of Inland Rail to Brisbane.” A VIC govt can support it. It cannot order a Commonwealth-backed interstate freight project to finish itself all the way to back to QLD. There are also places where the booklet simply misstates VIC law. The section on sentencing claims judges can effectively pick 1 purpose (usually rehabilitation) & then give the “lightest sentence” consistent with that. That is not how sentencing law works. VIC courts can sentence for 1 or a combination of recognised purposes & they must consider a range of statutory factors & sentencing principles. The booklet reduces a complex system to a cartoon because the cartoon is politically useful. & its claim that multiple concurrent sentences mean 2nd & 3rd offences “effectively receive no punishment” is similarly misleading. Courts already use concurrency, cumulation & the totality principle to produce an overall sentence reflecting the offending. If you are asking Victorians to trust you with the machinery of state govt, it is probably worth knowing which machinery is already running, which machinery belongs to Canberra & which machinery you have misunderstood. Otherwise The Real Deal starts looking less like a policy platform & more like somebody Googled “things govts do” & began typing” 👏🏻 Full credit to the Gherk for again holding ON to account while others give ON a free pass.