Labor’s Victorian House of Cards Collapses

Victorian Labor has finally turned on itself.

On Monday, Jacinta Allan was still demanding the resignations of ministers and MPs who had been talking about removing her. Yesterday, she was finished.

Her deputy, Ben Carroll, cast aside all those public displays of loyalty, took the leadership and became Victoria’s 50th premier. Gabrielle Williams became deputy after yet another bout of factional bargaining and internal deal-making.

This was no dignified handover. Allan was taken out because Labor MPs had looked at the polling, looked at the November election and started thinking about their own seats.

The immediate crisis was the government’s refusal to establish a royal commission into alleged corruption and criminality surrounding Victoria’s giant infrastructure program. Allan tried to head it off with a new $170 million construction crime agency, as though one more government body would calm everyone down.

It didn’t.

Ministers revolted. Carroll moved. Allan first said she would fight, then resigned before caucus even met.

A few hours later, Carroll announced the royal commission Allan had refused to establish. He also promised stronger anti-corruption powers, a review of the eye-wateringly expensive Suburban Rail Loop and a different style of government.

That sudden change should make Victorians suspicious.

On Monday, Labor’s position was that a royal commission was unnecessary. On Tuesday, it became urgent. Under Allan, the big projects were beyond serious question. Under Carroll, they were suddenly up for review.

Nothing had changed except the person occupying the office.

Carroll now wants to present himself as the man who will do things differently. The difficulty is that he has spent years inside the same government, around the same Cabinet table, backing many of the same decisions.

He served under Daniel Andrews. He served as Allan’s deputy. He was there.

So where was he while the debt climbed, the projects blew out and confidence in the government drained away? Why did he wait until Allan was politically mortally wounded before discovering the need for a royal commission?

He cannot wash his hands of the record because caucus has handed him a new title.

Victoria is heading towards debt of roughly $200 billion. Major projects have been hit by delays, cost blowouts and allegations of union misconduct. Crime and housing pressures are getting harder to ignore. Businesses have been squeezed by taxes, regulation and a government that too often talks about private enterprise as though it is something grubby that needs to be kept in line.

Allan inherited part of that mess, but she also helped build it.

Before becoming premier, she spent years as Andrews’ infrastructure minister. She was closely tied to the Big Build and sat near the centre of the government whose conduct is now under such scrutiny.

She was never the break with the Andrews years that Labor pretended she was. She was the continuation.

Victorians noticed.

Now the same party is trying to perform the same trick again with Ben Carroll. New face, new slogans, same government.

The biggest shadow over all of this still belongs to Daniel Andrews.

Andrews governed Victoria with the conviction that winning elections entitled him to run the state almost as he pleased. Power became tightly centralised. Critics were brushed aside or attacked. Scrutiny was treated as an irritation.

COVID showed the full extent of it.

Melbourne endured six lockdowns totalling 262 days. Families were cut off from each other. Businesses collapsed. Children lost months of normal schooling. Ordinary people had curfews, travel limits and gathering rules imposed on them, often with little warning and with police standing behind every decree.

More than 50,000 COVID fines were issued.

The hotel quarantine disaster helped trigger Victoria’s deadly second wave. Yet after all the inquiries and testimony, the public was still left without a straight answer about who made the crucial decision to use private security.

Everyone seemed to be responsible, which usually means nobody was.

The hard lockdown of Melbourne’s public housing towers was later found to be incompatible with residents’ human rights and apparently contrary to law. People were shut inside with almost no warning, under police guard, because the government had decided that was the easiest way to handle the problem.

Andrews’ admirers called this strong leadership. Plenty of Victorians experienced something very different.

It was government by press conference, delivered with a grim face and backed by force.

People were told when they could leave home, how far they could travel, who they could see and whether they were allowed to earn a living. Protesters were treated like enemies. Police enforced health orders with a severity many Australians never expected to see in their own country.

Some emergency measures may have been defensible at the beginning. That does not excuse what followed. Extraordinary power became normal, accountability became scarce, and the government grew far too comfortable with public obedience.

Andrews left before the full political bill arrived.

Allan inherited his legacy, defended it and lasted less than three years.

Carroll now has only a few months to convince Victorians that twelve years of Labor government can be renewed by changing the name on the office door.

That will be a hard sell because Andrews, Allan and Carroll are not three separate governments. They are successive leaders of the same one.

The same government ran up the debt. The same government presided over troubled projects. The same government resisted scrutiny. The same government learned during COVID how much it could get away with when people were frightened.

Allan was removed because Labor MPs thought she could no longer save them. That is the real story of the past two days.

Carroll may yet change a few policies. He may hold inquiries, sack people and distance himself from Allan. He will certainly talk about listening.

Victorians would be foolish to judge him only by what he says now. They should judge him by the government he has already spent years helping to run.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
– Lord Acton