The November 2024 audit of Victoria’s finances by former ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake charted the economic demise of a state that, for the majority of the nation’s history, had been among the richest and most powerful.Eslake’s audit, commissioned by The Australian Financial Review, found that Victoria had fallen to or near the bottom of key economic indicators versus its peers. That was mainly due to cellar-dwelling productivity performance and bloated public spending under Labor governments that had ruled the nation’s second-most-populous state since 2014.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Fetching latest articles