The Victorian Government’s decision to apply universal $300 electricity bill relief to every residential account — regardless of income, wealth, or need — is not just economically reckless, it’s legally unjustifiable. In a state facing record debt exceeding $180 billion, doling out public money to well-off households with rooftop solar and negligible bills amounts to fiscal malpractice.
Welfare and relief measures should, at law and in principle, serve those in demonstrable hardship — not the general population. The Commonwealth’s own Social Security Act 1991 and the principles underpinning targeted public assistance clearly prefer means-tested allocation. Yet this scheme has indiscriminately credited funds to the well-heeled alongside the vulnerable.
This blanket approach undermines legal norms of equity, proportionality, and public purpose. Worse still, it fails to satisfy the reasonable use of taxpayer funds standard articulated in cases involving public expenditure. If challenged under principles of administrative law or even through Auditor-General scrutiny, the scheme would likely be deemed poor value, poorly targeted, and open to legitimate criticism.
No rational legislative drafter would propose such a scheme today. Relief should have been restricted to concession card holders, pensioners, and low-income families, not gifted to every dual-income professional in Brighton and Toorak. Universalism may be politically easy — but legally and economically, it is lazy, unsustainable, and deeply unfair.
This is not energy justice. It is electoral expediency cloaked in populist policy.