The Victorian Independence Movement is growing quickly as more and more people realise changing Prime Ministers from Sydney hasn’t – and won’t – fix the problems we face as members of this failed federation.

But what would an independent Victoria look like? How would work? How dramatic would the changes to the average persons day to day life be?

What system of government would Victoria use?

The current Westminster derived system of parliamentary government would remain at independence.

The Premier would become the Prime Minister. Some new roles – Foreign and Defence Ministers – would be created.

Victorian independence would offer the opportunity to reform our system of government further if elected representatives or the people via a plebiscite.

Who will be the Head of State

Although we have strongly republican instincts, the Victorian Independence Movement doesn’t have a formal position on this issue.

It should be decided by the people of Victoria.

Under the current constitutional arrangements, Victoria could vote for a republic in an Australian referendum and have their wishes denied by other states.

If an independence referendum were held and won tomorrow, the Governor of Victoria would assume the same constitutional powers as the Governor-General.

What about First Nations people?

The Victorian Parliament is currently negotiating Treaty with the First People’s Assembly of Victoria.

Independent Victoria will be predicated on the legal recognition of the sovereignty of First Nations people.

What currency will Victoria use?

Independent Victoria would use Victorian dollars issued by the Central Bank of Victoria.

It is very likely Victorian businesses would accept Australian dollars at the relevant exchange rate.

Similar situations occur in places like Canada and Ireland.

Will Victoria have a defence force?

Yes.

Victoria will require a small, but very well trained and equipped defence force to protect our interests.

As a good global citizen, Victoria would contribute to United Nations peacekeeping operations and stand ready to assist friends and neighbours as required.

Would there be a border with Australia

Yes.

This does not mean there need be a hard border.

We don’t want an impractical situation where passports are checked at Murray River bridges.

We anticipate reciprocal working rights, a common travel area and mutual recognition of qualifications would reduce most of the day to day friction of independence for both Victorian and Australian citizens.

Australia already has reciprocal working rights and a common travel area with New Zealand. The European Union also has had similar arrangements.

What happens to Australian citizenship and people here on visas issued by the Australian government?

All Australian citizens living in Victoria at the time of the successful referendum would automatically gain Victorian citizenship.

Victoria would recognise dual citizenship and nobody would lose their Australian citizenship.

All existing visa holders would have the conditions of their stay honoured by the Victorian government.

Will Victorians be able to represent Australia (and vice versa) in international sporting competitions?

Yes, as long as the player’s situation meets the requirements of the relevant governing body.

What about the ABC?

A Victorian Broadcasting Corporation will provide the same services at the ABC, but to a higher standard with better comparative funding.

What about Victoria’s share of the national debt?

Victoria will assume its fair share of the Australian national debt, along with our share of Australian assets.

Will we still pay GST?

Broadbased consumption taxes are common in advanced economies like Victoria.

After independence there will be a GST, except we will keep every cent it raises, rather than losing 8 cents in every dollar like we do now.

What about Free Trade Agreements (FTA) we’ve already signed?

Victoria would honour all existing requirements in FTAs signed by Australia.

Independence would allow us to sign other agreements too.

New Zealand has a FTA with the European Union, while Australia’s negotiations have lingered for years.

Isn’t this a fundamentally stupid idea like Brexit?

No.

Victorian independence from the Commonwealth is entirely different from the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

The better comparison is Scotland leaving the UK.

Independent Victoria would be wealthier, healthier and properly able to enact our priorities.

The federal election was won and lost in Victoria and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese must orient his government accordingly if he wants another term .

Booooooo go the Western Australians. The west had a bigger swing to Labor and took five seats off Morrison they say. We even have our own teal independent too!

The Sandgropers have a point. Federal Labor formed majority government on the back of Perth votes.

But it was Victoria that holed the Liberals below the waterline and gave Albanese his best chance of survival.

Labor victories in Higgins and Chisholm built the foundations for the crowning glory of the WA swing. Deakin, Menzies and Aston were made marginal too.

The Liberals are one election away from complete obliteration in the city of their birth.

But it was Victorian independents who struck the blows that will most please Albanese. He will very much fancy his re-election chances against Peter Dutton.

The inexplicably popular outside Victoria Josh Frydenberg would have been a different story.

Albanese floats on other strong currents generated by the late autumn southern storm.

The COVID Wars of lockdown and borders and their legitimacy are over and Labor won, thanks to the brutal political streetfighting ability of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews.

While Albanese carefully avoided the fray in Canberra, and WA Premier Mark McGowan sat secure in his western fastness, Andrews successfully prosecuted the COVID argument for Labor values: public health before the economy.

COVID is now over as a mainstream political issue in Australia, and Albanese is on the team that carried the day. The electorate is willing to listen to Labor on the big issues for a while.

Another trend benefiting Albanese is the assertion of political muscle by “professional women”, which defined the Liberal rout in Melbourne’s east.

After a decade fetishising hi-vis blokey go Sharkies fauxganism in NSW and Queensland, a new political alignment decides governments.

The eastern suburbs of Melbourne are the new Western Sydney. Professional women are the new tradies.

The Greens, led by the Member for Melbourne, are also on the march. And the teal independents, whose spiritual home is Cathy McGowan and Helen Haines’ Victorian seat of Indi, are likely only just getting started.

The locus of political culture is shifting to Victoria and the Prime Minister must govern accordingly, or he’ll be a oncer.

Albanese understands this of course. The question is what he can, or will, do about it.

He campaigned hard in WA on keeping the shocking GST rip off in place and Treasurer Jim Chalmers has confirmed it will remain.

Labor will argue that the politics demand as much: WA gave Labor four seats.

Just as Victorian taxpayers had to fund the Coalition’s naked pork barrelling in Queensland, now we have to cough up to keep the Perthlings happy.

There’s a few smaller wins Chalmers could produce in his Spring budget, notably by “unlocking” the likely mythical billions stashed away for the East/West Link.

Labor can also move swiftly to lift Victoria’s wider share infrastructure funding from its current offensively low 6 per cent of new funding announced in this year’s budget.

This will mean taking money from other states, that will no doubt squeal at the thought of losing hard earned Victorian money for their own pet projects.

Do Albo and Chalmers have the political hide, and integrity, to stare down the sooks and return Victoria’s share of infrastructure spending to something reflective of our population?

The early signs are not good. Albanese wants to resurrect his pet agency Infrastructure Australia, and have Canberra boffins run their slide rule over what they think Victoria deserves.

Albanese and Chalmers appear to be trying to wriggle out of increasing Victorian infrastructure funding for much needed projects like the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL).

Labor committed $15 billion to SRL ahead of the 2019 election, but by 2022 this commitment dropped to just $2.2 billion.

To put this in context, SRL East will cost $30-34.5 billion, of which the Victorian government has already kicked in almost $12 billion.

In three years, Federal Labor has gone from equal partner in the project to a rounding error.

Any further Commonwealth funding will need to go through the Infrastructure Australia maze, despite an already complete business case on the table.

This is a grievous error as SRL is popular in newly rebellious Melbourne suburbs and crucial to the Andrews’ government re-election strategy. Spring Street will not accept the slap without punching back hard.

The Albanese government would also be wise to exercise what remains of Canberra’s soft power in Victoria: basing the new Federal ICAC in Melbourne would be an excellent start.

The Sydney-centrism of the previous government cannot be denied. The sneering attacks from NSW on Victoria when we were sick and scared in 2020/21 left scars that will take years to heal, if indeed they ever can.

As a Prime Minister with Sydney DNA, who leans on a log cabin story about his love for an NRL team, Albanese must recognise he will be viewed from Melbourne through the prism he has himself largely created.

The Albanese majority government deserves the opportunity to demonstrate it is different from the previous governments run by men from Sydney.

But it must also recognise that the political landscape has changed dramatically.

Victoria’s Premier and Treasurer have made abdundantly clear they will not abandon their fight for fair Commonwealth funding simply because Labor comrades are now hold power at the federal level.

The constitutional order is also significantly different from Labor’s last term in the early ‘10s.

The mechanics of federalism were significantly disrupted by COVID and state Premiers restored many powers that had long lay dormant. They will not relinquish them voluntarily.

The Council of Australian Governments was summarily executed during COVID and replaced by National Cabinet, or to give it it’s Sunday name, the National Federation Reform Council.

Albanese will convene a National Cabinet – which had fallen into abeyance since mass vaccination and the Omicron variant altered the COVID calculus – in coming weeks, where he’ll be besieged by health funding and governance demands from the states.

Will the Albanese government move to shore up Commonwealth power?

Given the scale of the economic challenges it is unlikely Labor will want to expend political capital on a long and contested constitutional process of little immediate interest to the average voter.

Instead, there will be a typically Australian fudge, one that doesn’t give Victoria what it wants.

Australia’s ludicrously short three year federal terms, where election dates are not fixed, allows Federal Labor very little breathing space and Albanese will face a Victoria made marginal, very aware of its newfound power.

Victorians know that states that squeal at the ballot box get chocolates and kisses from Canberra and we want our share, especially when it is our credit card buying the goodies.

There’ll be the usual handouts to NSW and Queensland, as our intellectually flabby Sydney based national media convinces itself that “elections are won and lost” in the only states they know or care about.

Albanese will put party first and shore up his WA gains while tryting to win more seats in the rugby league states. They’ll simply hope for the best in Victoria.

Victoria will be back where we started.

Labor will be incumbent at the next election, and their seats will almost certainly be targeted by community based candidates not aligned with any party.

The Victorian Independence Movement may also stand in the Senate.

If a Federal Labor government in Canberra won’t give Victoria our fair share, we’ll need to vote for more independents.

Or even independence.

It is the most divisive day on the calendar, so what happens to Australia Day in an independent Victoria?

Warm late January in Victoria, summer enough to still sustain full beach days.

But the sun drops orange in the western sky a few minutes earlier every afternoon, ancient laws of time and space immutable.

January 26.

What the independent country of Victoria used to call Australia Day.

A day commemorating an amphibious assault by Royal Marines on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation in 1788.

When the Royal Marines, most effective fighting force on the planet of their time, had made the initial beach head secure, other urgent business could begin.

These tasks took days to complete.

Convicts were unloaded at gunpoint from their floating prisons. These people ranged from serious violent criminals to the desperate human refuse of Britain’s rapidly changing economy.

There were dozens and dozens of women, many transported for little more than being poor and female.

They had been abused on the prison ships, and the rapes continued as their feet touched the dry soil of Gadigal Country.

The naval officers removed themselves from the depraved scene to conduct official business.

The standard they walked past would be accepted in what came to be called Australia for hundreds of years.

Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the expedition, quite correctly recognised the immense military potential of the vast and glittering harbour the Gadigal had lived beside for eternity.

So in the late afternoon of that Saturday, Phillip claimed possession of the land in the name of the British Crown.

Naval laws of rum and the lash formed the administrative underpinning of the British presence until on February 7 1788, the Colony of New South Wales was declared.

It was not a Crown colony like Nova Scotia, but a Penal Colony.

It would not become a Crown colony until 11 August 1824.

These differences matter.

On January 26 we commemorate the formation of the Penal Colony of New South Wales.

No mention of Australia.

Let alone Victoria.

The first few years after Victorian independence Australia Day felt weird.

In the lead up to the referendum, when it became clear the pro-independence forces were gaining momentum, there was a push from Canberra to celebrate federation with greater pomp and ceremony.

But who wants a big party on January 1?

When people were already nursing sore heads the idea of parades and military brass bands was not wildly popular.

And for … federation?

The thing everybody could see dying before their eyes?

Of course some Victorians still celebrated Australia Day.

Especially those who voted NO in the referendum.

Nobody bothered them, and YES voters by and large came to the family barbeque or pub session in good humour.

But because it wasn’t a public holiday in Victoria anymore, the tenor of the whole day changed.

Australia Day just stopped being A Thing in Victoria.

The last Saturday in October, the day of the vote that decided a state would became a nation, that was Victoria’s day.

But pubs would do Australia Day specials, bar staff in retro Australian one day cricket tops.

Kind of like they did for the Superbowl.

Or St Patrick’s Day.

And we still shared solemn occasions with our Australian cousins.

Like ANZAC Day, when three nations; Australia, New Zealand and Victoria remember the sacrifices made in the murder gullies of the Dardanelles, the bodies of our youth sucked beneath the mud at Ypres.

Just because Victoria had chosen a future outside Australia, we hadn’t forgotten what we did together.

It was still a very difficult day for the First Nations people in Victoria.

Gadigal people had been the first on the continent to experience what British colonisation entailed but the men on horseback hunting clans through long grass, cornering them at the creeks later given names like Skeleton or Massacre, they came to the place later called Victoria too.

On Gunditjmara Country in the south west, the Henty Brothers made genocide a family affair.

But prior to independence, the Victorian Parliament had agreed a legally binding Treaty with the First Nations People’s Assembly.

This provided an innovative legal underpinning for the independence referendum.

Independent Victoria’s legal power rested in the sovereignty of the First Nations people of the land that the political construct governed.

This meant that when the demos at the Australian embassy got rowdy on January 26, Victorian police in attendance acted sensitively, with cultural awareness and restraint.

The Victorian Prime Minister of course attends Australia Day ceremonies in Australia.

She chooses her words carefully when she gives her speeches affirming the friendship and alliance between Victoria and Australia.

Words matter.

The Australian Prime Minister never quite knows what to say when he’s in Melbourne on that last Saturday in October for our day.

He always manages to either annoy us, or his electorate back home.

Victoria doesn’t mind.

We don’t actually take our big day in October that seriously.

Now in Victoria January 26 is simply another day, there’s 364 just like it in a year.

It isn’t Australia Day any more.

Lockdown sucks.

Watching NSW people get out of lockdown today has been truly heart warming. If anyone knows just how much lockdown sucks, it is Victorians.

To the folks of NSW we say: well done.

Enjoy.

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Victoria will be out of lockdown soon enough too. It is a matter of days from here.

The lockdown phase of the pandemic is well and truly over.

Which means, after taking a few big gulps of fresh freedom air, we need to understand what the hell happened over the last 18 months.

The first and most important lesson is this: Victoria is not part of Australia any more.

We were abandoned by Australia during 2020.

Our Sydney-based political and media class cut us off when we were most vulnerable.

The Prime Minister called a global pandemic the “Victorian wave”. Victoria was mocked and abused. For months. While we were sick and scared.

As 2020 ground into 2021, we saw just how differently we were perceived and treated by those who run the country.

Sydney’s lockdown over Christmas came after a hotel quarantine breach, but the vicious attacks on its government and the character of its citizens were oddly absent.

It was like being in a different country.

Further lockdowns in Victoria in early 2021 caused by quarantine failures elsewhere in the nation met a Federal government reluctant to provide individuals and businesses with financial support.

Hypocritical drunken adulterer Barnaby Joyce then told us just how much the Federal Government hates Victorians.

“We look at Melbourne and go you can almost smell the burning flesh from here,” the now Deputy Prime Minister sneered of lockdowns in Victoria.

There’s been a fair bit of Victoria v NSW argy-bargy on social media, and lesser journalists such as James “My Mom Says I’m Cool” Morrow and Unlucky Phil Coorey haven’t been afraid to take sides.

But this was one of the most senior politicians in the country. A man who had been, and is now on occasion again, Acting Prime Minister.

The lesson here is clear.

Not only is Victoria a differently country, and treated accordingly, but the people who run the nation we’re legally part of hate us.

They really hate us.

To borrow Maya Angelou’s famous line, when someone like Barnaby Joyce shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

*

Then came the disaster of Delta in Sydney. There’s no point relitigating whether NSW should have locked down faster or harder.

They were decisions for June, made by an ex-Premier who’s decision making skills will soon be publicly examined by the ICAC.

Delta spread across Sydney, then NSW, then Victoria and all the way to New Zealand.

The end result was further proof that Victoria is not part of Australia. This was demonstrated when Scott Morrison, a man so deeply from and of Sydney’s distinct culture he’s earned the sobriquet “Prime Minister for NSW”, sprung into action.

Suddenly the full force of of the Commonwealth of Australia was deployed to pulling New South Wales out of lockdown. Vaccines were sourced from around the world, a sense of stunning urgency super-charged the rollout across Sydney.

Which was great. That’s what should have happened. Dollars couldn’t flow quick enough from Canberra coffers to NSW and there was massive re-direction of vaccine to New South Welsh arms.

The difference in attitude from Kirribilli was telling. When Victoria was sick it was our fault. Any financial assistance was conditional and begrudging.

Back when it seemed serious COVID outbreaks were limited to Victoria because of NSW’s legendary … wait for it … wait … here it comes … GOLD STANDARD contact tracing … sourcing vaccines wasn’t a race according to the passenger on Shark One.

If Victorians got sick and died in large numbers, that was suitable punishment for their daring to elect a government of a different stripe to that preferred in Sydney.

NSW is different though.

The nation had to sacrifice money and vaccine to make sure NSW pulled through as fast as possible.

NSW had to be saved.

*

This brutal calculus makes perfect sense though.

It is no secret that the Prime Minister for NSW believes his path to victory in the next election runs through … NSW.

He’s right. There’s a culturally aligned population bubble in NSW and Queensland that decides elections.

It has done so since 2013 and the dynamic is not changing any time soon.

Due to a wide range of historical, economic and political forces, rugby league is very popular in NSW and Queensland. Outside those states, the football code invented in Victoria prevails.

But the population of NSW and Queensland is large enough to support a substantial professional rugby league competition (NRL) and attract big TV audiences.

That’s why the “quality” the leaders of both major Australian parties advertise hardest is their support for an NRL team.

Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese understand that to win an election in Australia, you need to look like the kind of bloke you’d want to have a beer with while watching the State of Origin.

Elections are won and lost in NSW and Queensland.

Victoria doesn’t count.

Indeed, bashing Victoria gains you votes in that election winning population bubble.

That’s why Barnaby Joyce – who has represented both Queensland as a Senator and a NSW seat in the House of Representatives – made his unforgivably vile comments.

The politics of the Federation of Australia actively rewards attacking and marginalising Victoria.

*

So the lockdown stage of the COVID-19 pandemic is now over.

What’s next and what does it mean for Victoria?

Nothing good.

The idea of NSW as the Gold Standard that leads the nation in spite of whinging incompetent Victoria is firmly established among the incestuous mediocrity that is the nation’s Sydney-based newsrooms.

That worldview frames the daily media cycle the major parties vie desperately to win. Victorians can get used to that, especially the New South Wales Broadcasting Corporation.

And just because the COVID-19 pandemic is coming to end, the “good old days” of December 2019 are most certainly not coming back.

With the climate heating rapidly and natural disasters intensifying accordingly, we will see the same pattern of behaviour from our Sydney political and media elite.

*

Just as COVID outbreaks in NSW warranted a very different response to COVID outbreaks in Victoria, so bushfires will burn more intensely in the seats in NSW needed to win government than they do in the Dandenongs or along the Great Ocean Road.

Heatwaves killing hundreds in their homes in western Sydney or Queensland peri-urban areas will warrant immediate federal support.

Die of the same heat in Melbourne’s outer sprawl, or in the disadvantaged suburbs of towns like Mildura or Shepparton and it will be a Victorian government issue. Bank on it.

Victorian taxes will pay for coal miners in Queensland to have a “just transition” away from fossil fuels, while Victorian auto industry workers were happily thrown on the scrapheap by those same Queensland voters.

Victoria has a choice.

Either we stay part of, paying well over the odds, a federation that is structurally biased against us, and led by people who hate us, or we leave.

Things will not get better.

There will be no “Prime Minister for Victoria” splashing money south of the Murray ahead of NSW or Queensland.

The path to power doesn’t run through Preston, the Peninsula or Patchewollock.

Indeed, such is the distorted nature of this failed federation that members of parliament elected in Victoria join their NSW and Queensland colleagues in attacking their own constituents in order to curry favour with the Sydney-based leadership.

This is it now.

They treat us like scum and they laugh at us while they’re doing it.

The only question is how long we decide to put up with it.

*

So NSW folks, enjoy your freedom today.

Get the monorail from Five Dock to Pennant Hills for a big feed at Rashays or whatever it is you do up there.

Order a mountain of potato scallops at the Rooty Hill RSL.

We’ll leave you to those distinct pleasures.

Victoria has bigger and better things to do now.

Victoria should be independent of Australia.
There we said it. Out loud.
Victorians would be better off.
Better off politically, culturally, economically and most important, socially.
*
Australia isn’t working anymore. Except for a select few people.
We all know this deep down, that sense that things aren’t right.
There’s another feeling, an insidious sinking notion, like we’re trapped behind glass, that we can’t do anything about it.
Politicians are all crooks, the best you can do is just put your head down and do your best for you and yours.
If you’re feeling like that, we get it.
Australian politics is completely stuffed.
It isn’t fixable.
But that state of affairs simply isn’t good enough.
We need something new.
For us, that’s Victorian independence.
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If Victoria was independent, we’d be able to keep the bits of Australia that do work.
And improve – or remove – the things that don’t.
As people start getting their heads around the idea of Victorian independence, they’ll have questions.
What currency would it use?
Would Victorians need visas to go to Australia?
How would we keep the lights on?
What does it mean for my kids?
They’re all great questions.
We don’t have all the answers.
But we reckon you do.
That’s what this is all about.
Starting a conversation about what an independent Victoria could do.
What it – we – would want to do?
Who we’d want to be.
*
We’ll have a crack at a few ideas as we go.
We want your views, sledges and takes.
Which brings us to – who are “we” exactly?
We’re a group of people who think Victoria should be independent.
Or at least have a proper, grownup conversation about it.
Who can be in it? Anyone.
You don’t have to live in Victoria, or be born in Victoria.
Just have spent some time here and reckon the place goes alright.
And could probably get even better, hard as that is to believe lol.
If you want to be in it, you are. There’s no forms or membership fees.
Just get down with the penguin.
*
We chose the penguin as our logo/hero for a few reasons.
First, they’re Victorian.
And we get that people think they look a bit silly.
But that’s fine, because we reckon penguins are great.
They’re social beasts that look out for each other.
They’re willing to wait out in the cold for a long time to hatch something amazing.
And there’s millions and millions of them.
Just like us.
*
So rock the penguin. Wear it out, stick it on your socials.
Or just keep it in your head.
And have a think about what Victoria could be like.
A Victoria standing on its own two feet.
Independent Victoria.