New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed jobs in Victoria continued to fall in August, despite a minor increase across the rest of the country.
Mr Walsh said it was cause for alarm.
“Overall since the start of the pandemic in mid-March, payroll jobs have fallen 7.9 per cent in Victoria, compared with 2.9 per cent in the rest of Australia,” he said.
“These figures reveal while Australians in other states are getting back to work, Victorians keep losing their jobs — with no end in sight.
“The Nationals and Liberals have offered proposals and ideas to help deal with the pandemic (and) have raised them in the Parliament, but they have been ignored by the Andrews Labor Government.
“Livelihoods have been lost, and are still disappearing down the drain, because of the Andrews Labor Government’s bungled hotel quarantine program and contact tracing shambles, which caused Victoria’s second wave.”
Mr Walsh said the figures were evidence the rest of the country was beginning its road to recovery, but that Victoria was still hurting.
“And this is with weeks, and maybe months, left to go in Daniel Andrews’ lockdown — no-one has any sort of target date because the Andrews Labor Government has no clear plan to extricate Victoria from the mess its failures have dumped on it,” he said.
“Only now has the Andrews Labor Government decided to reach out to states such as NSW to try and bolster its bungled and inept contact tracing.”
A Victorian Government spokesperson said it understood the concerns around job figures.
“We know how incredibly tough these restrictions are for Victorians and Victorian businesses, but we're in a very different place compared to the rest of Australia — we simply have to do what's necessary to ensure our economy re-emerges without the threat of a third wave,” the spokesperson said.
“The fastest way to sustainable economic recovery is to continue our aggressive suppression, followed by a steady and safe path to ‘COVID normal'.
“While we continue to slow the spread of the virus, we’re standing with those hard-hit businesses and families, with more than $10 billion in support to help them through to the other side of the crisis.”
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