Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced a $2.7 billion construction blitz to help kickstart the Victorian economy.

The package will include the refurbishment of 23,000 public housing units and the construction of 168 new homes.

$1.2 billion will be spent on new schools and school upgrades in regional and metropolitan Victoria, and $382 million will go towards tourism infrastructure.

The rest of the funds will be invested to deliver hundreds of smaller projects and secure 3,700 direct jobs and thousands more indirect jobs.

All of those projects are specifically chosen because they can begin immediately and start stimulating the economy right away.

A great additional initiative is the Working for Victoria scheme, in which people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic are placed into industries and sectors that need more staff.

Upon announcing this package, Mr Andrews said: “If a business wins a tender and needs to employ additional staff over and above what they have now, they will have to come to Working for Victoria first and if we can match up people who have lost their jobs with these small and medium firms, than that’s a fantastic outcome.”

And I fully agree with Mr Andrews that these are excellent initiatives to stimulate the Victorian economy and help get people back in the workforce.