10News threw six questions at One Nation Victorian leader Warren Pickering, and he torched Labor's record in just 58 seconds. His verdict was brutal: tear up the Suburban Rail Loop, build Airport Rail (20 years late), write off Labor's construction royal commission as a "soft touch," deny Daniel Andrews a statue, and gut the state's "dreadful, crippling" land taxes. Most Victorians, he added, never wanted the Commonwealth Games in the first place.
Short soundbites are easy to write off, but we pulled the state files to see if the claims stack up. The receipts are staggering.
Sitting behind those 58 seconds is a $216 billion rail project, an airport train Labor first promised in 1999, and an estimated $15 billion in union corruption baked into the Big Build. Throw in a $589 million bill for a cancelled sporting event, four new or expanded taxes squeezing Victorians, and a $134,304 bronze statue for the man who presided over the fallout.
Every figure comes straight from official state budget papers, independent analysis by the Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office, audits from the Victorian Auditor General's Office, or unrefuted reporting. Pickering was fast because the facts are already settled, and Labor owns every single one of them.
Today, One Nation Victoria Leader Warren Pickering faced a quick-fire round of policy questions with 10News. pic.twitter.com/sRIgM42UQU
— One Nation Victoria (@OneNationVic) August 19, 2026
The Suburban Rail Loop: A $216 Billion Money Pit Built Without A Business Case
Daniel Andrews pitched the Suburban Rail Loop before the 2018 election as a city shaping project, throwing it to the public before running it past a single expert. Infrastructure Victoria was left in the dark. The government's own initial business case attached a staggering price tag of up to $34.5 billion just to build the first 26km stretch from Cheltenham to Box Hill.
Then the independent Parliamentary Budget Office ran the real numbers. Building and operating the East and North sections rockets the total to $200.3 billion through 2084, with updated analysis driving that blowout to $216 billion. To grasp the scale: Victoria's entire net debt is projected to hit $199.3 billion by 2030, and it is already running up over $24 million a day in interest. Labor's single train project is officially larger than the state's entire debt burden.
Warren Pickering summed up the only logical move in two words: "Abolish it." The money flushed into early ground works is gone, but the $200 billion avalanche of future construction and operational costs is still on the table. That is the exact pile of public cash a responsible government can still choose not to burn.
The Ultimate Stall: Labor's $10 Billion Airport Rail Betrayal
Pickering pointed out that the airport train "should have been there 20 years ago," and he was actually pulling his punches. The Bracks Labor government first promised an airport rail link after taking power in 1999, only to immediately abandon it. Over two decades of bureaucratic procrastination and tens of millions of ratepayer dollars squandered on endless studies followed. Then in 2018, Daniel Andrews strutted out to declare "we'll be the government that finally gets it done," slapping his name on a $10 billion project backed by $5 billion in federal cash and a 2029 deadline.
Fast forward to 2023, and that same government slammed the brakes, pushing the project back at least four full years over a petty design feud about whether the station should sit above or below ground. The airport operator finally capitulated in 2024 to accept an elevated station layout, pushing the line's target back to 2033. If this train ever sees the light of day, it will land a full 34 years after Labor first promised it, spanning the failed leadership of five Labor premiers so far.
The solution is glaringly obvious, and Pickering did not pretend otherwise. This is the single entry on his list that requires actually constructing vital infrastructure instead of shutting down government waste, and it sits there with a completed funding deal waiting to be executed.
"Soft Touch" Carroll: Why Labor's Construction Inquiry Is A Shield, Not A Sword
This is the answer that hits closest to home, because the royal commission Pickering called a "soft touch" belongs to Ben Carroll. Launching an inquiry into the state's construction sector was his desperate first act as premier, coming the day after the party room dumped Jacinta Allan to hand him the leadership.
The commission is forced to confront what years of investigative reporting laid bare: total CFMEU dominance over the Big Build, underworld figures and bikies running rampant on taxpayer funded jobs, and rampant corruption that inflated Victoria's infrastructure bill by an estimated $15 billion. Labor pocketed union money for years while letting those same unions control state construction sites. Now a premier who sat right in the cabinet that built the Big Build is tasked with overseeing the inquiry into it.
Pickering did not hold back: "It's going to be a soft touch. A One Nation one will have teeth, because heads need to roll." Whether Carroll's inquiry is a genuine investigation or a political whitewash will be clear within months. The proof sits in its terms of reference, who gets dragged into the witness box, and whether a single figure who profited off Victorian taxpayers is actually named before the state votes.
A $134,304 Bronze Slap In The Face: Immortalising Victoria's Spending Crisis
The proposal to build a statue sounds like a bad joke until you track down the actual government expenditure. Under a cozy convention reserved for long serving premiers, the state confirmed a bronze monument of Daniel Andrews is slated for Treasury Place at an eye watering cost of $134,304.
This is the exact politician who unleashed a $216 billion train line without a business case, swore "we'll be the government that finally gets it done" on Airport Rail before shelving it, presided over the corrupt Big Build now under scrutiny, and lit hundreds of millions of public dollars on fire over the cancelled Commonwealth Games.
When asked if Andrews deserved to be cast in bronze, Warren Pickering cut straight through the noise with a cold "absolutely not" before stopping himself on camera. Given the record of fiscal destruction left behind, exercising any self restraint at all was the real miracle.
Bleeding Victorians Dry: Four Brutal Taxes Created To Cover Labor's Spending Blowouts
Pickering slammed Victoria's revenue measures as "dreadful, crippling," pointing directly to four levies he plans to slash: land tax, payroll tax, the windfall gains tax, and the fire services levy. Every single one traces straight back to policy choices made by this government, and every single one gets passed down to ordinary Victorians.
| The tax | What Labor did | Who ends up paying |
|---|---|---|
| Land tax | The COVID debt levy cut the threshold from $300,000 to $50,000 and added surcharges of $500 to $975 plus 0.1%, running to 30 June 2033 | Landlords on paper, renters in practice, at an average of $1,300 more per property each year |
| Payroll tax | The same levy added 0.5% on payrolls above $10 million and 1% above $100 million for ten years | Employers first, then workers and customers through wages and prices |
| Windfall gains tax | Since July 2023 the state takes up to 50% of the value uplift when land is rezoned | Landowners at first, then home buyers, because taxing rezoning makes new housing land dearer |
| Fire services levy | Rebadged as the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund, with the farm rate set to nearly triple from 28.7 to 83 cents per $1,000 of land value | Farmers and CFA volunteers, the people who fight the fires the levy is named after |
The revenue projections are staggering. The land tax hike alone was locked in to extract $4.74 billion in its initial four years. Meanwhile, the government briefly blinked on the fire services levy after thousands of furious farmers and volunteers swarmed parliament on budget day. Their response was a weak one year freeze, leaving a brutal rate tripling waiting on the other side of the ballot box.
Warren Pickering's costings for rolling back all four taxes are still pending, but the underlying motive is already exposed. All four revenue grabs were created or expanded to service the massive state debt accrued by the government, a purpose explicitly branded right on the box through the COVID Debt Repayment Plan.
Labor's Commonwealth Games Disaster: Taxpayers Pay $589M Not To Host
You do not need to take Warren Pickering's word for it on the Commonwealth Games, because the Victorian Auditor-General's Office shut the file on this disaster. Daniel Andrews abruptly pulled the plug on the 2026 Games, concocting a story that projected costs had ballooned to nearly $7 billion. But when the independent auditor dug into the books, the government's numbers were exposed as "overstated and not transparent", the auditor's own words.
The audit laid bare an astonishing reality: there was no functional business case to justify entering the deal in the first place, and walking away cost Victorians over $589 million. That total includes a staggering $380 million settlement cheque handed over to international sports bodies purely for the privilege of cancelling.
Pickering called it like it is in the quick fire round: Victorians never asked for the Games, knew the state budget was in no shape to pay for them, and ended up getting stuck with a bill north of half a billion dollars for an event that never even happened. His answer was simple, direct, and completely backed by official state audits.
Six Quick Soundbites, $32 Million A Day: The Maths Labor Cannot Hide
| The failure | The bill | Pickering's answer |
|---|---|---|
| Suburban Rail Loop | $216 billion to build and run the first two stages | "Abolish it" |
| Airport Rail | Promised in 1999, now targeted for 2033 | "Should have been there 20 years ago" |
| CFMEU and the Big Build | An estimated $15 billion in inflated costs | "Heads need to roll" |
| Andrews statue | $134,304 | "Absolutely not" |
| Four taxes | $4.74 billion from the land tax levy alone in four years | Lower all four |
| Commonwealth Games | $589 million for not holding them | Victorians never asked for them |
Line up those six rapid fire answers and the exact same political fingerprint emerges every single time. The $216 billion Suburban Rail Loop, the decades of delays on Airport Rail, the corrupt CFMEU Big Build racket, the $589 million Commonwealth Games collapse, and the $134k bronze vanity project all carry the exact same signature. Meanwhile, four new or expanded tax grabs exist purely to fund the carnage. By 2030, Victoria's interest payments alone are set to burn through $32 million every single day, the equivalent of torching the entire $589 million Games bill roughly every two and a half weeks for absolutely nothing in return.
Pickering is taking the fight directly to Labor in Pakenham, the most marginal Labor seat in the state, while leading a One Nation ticket Pauline Hanson says will run across 74 to 76 electorates on 28 November. Every candidate, targeted district, and deciding margin is detailed in our lower house guide, while his upper house team is profiled in Meet the Team, with live movements tracked on our poll tracker.
