You can be sure that Ben Carroll will never be seen in a North Face jacket. Even if the leisure brand is to be found in his wardrobe, Victoria’s new premier will banish the attire that – during Covid – became a Dan Andrews signature.
The new boss will want to distance himself from the old bosses in every way he can.
A failure to do so might have been Jacinta Allan’s biggest mistake. She had three years to establish herself after taking the top job when the polarising Andrews retired. She failed to properly articulate her vision for the future for Victorians, instead merely offering more big infrastructure projects and a continuation of the agenda she inherited.
Level crossing removal had been an unlikely vote winner for Andrews when he was elected Victorian premier in 2014. It seemed a huge political gamble to rely on such an unsexy policy.
But obliterating suburban level crossings meant commuters could benefit from more frequent suburban trains without level crossing gates being down more than up, which was creating gridlock on arterial roads.
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It proved hugely popular and delivered electoral success.
That thinking was leveraged into the Big Build, an infrastructure binge for Australia’s most rapidly growing city. The plan secured construction workers a pipeline of work for decades to come.
The Big Build is transformative and vast. It encompasses finishing Melbourne’s Ring Road with a lattice of freeways and tunnels, an ambitious outer Suburban Rail Loop that will take decades to be finished, an airport rail connection, a newly completed road and freight tunnel under the Yarra River and the expanded Melbourne Metro city train tunnel and new stations, now operational.
Add on the typical state commitments to new hospitals, schools, police stations and the like and Victoria’s construction sector started to experience capacity constraints.
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In addition to soaking up skilled labour and materials, the Big Build also attracted the attention of bikies and notorious organised crime figures.
Allan, as deputy premier and then premier, was in charge of the Big Build. For the first few years, that worked in her favour.
But as credible reports of the extent to which organised crime had infiltrated sections of the CFMEU became an almost daily barrage, released the Age newspaper, Allan was faced with a choice: she had to call some level of inquiry into the scandal or try to tough it out.
A royal commission into the Big Build risked being a royal commission into Allan, so closely entwined is she in its key decisions. It is hardly surprising this was not a palatable option.
As the electoral backlash to her refusal started to sink in to a large and nervous backbench, those who pinned their political survival on the scandal going away, the numbers in her party room shifted. Representatives from marginal seats stared into the abyss. Notionally safe seats started to look marginal as her “disapproval” rating exceeded those scored by Peter Dutton or Scott Morrison.
Something had to give. The chance for a reset, even with an election looming in late November, became compelling.
What happens now?
The ALP may be having a “deckchairs on the Titanic” moment, as a gleeful Liberal opposition claims. Or it may be that, free of the liability that Allan’s unpopularity had become, the government sees an immediate bounce in its standing under a new – male – leader.
Yet again, we see a female politician deemed unelectable, opinion polls harshly ending a career at the hands of the factional bosses even before the voters have the chance to decide.
Intense opinion polling will immediately be commissioned. We will quickly know which way the wind is blowing.
Neither Carroll, nor the opposition leader, Jess Wilson, is well known to the electorate. Wilson has been in parliament for not even one term and has no ministerial experience.
Carroll battled valiantly but nervously in his first question time on Tuesday, just moments after being sworn in by the governor. Opposition MPs, whose own internal feuds have frequently left them looking forlorn in parliament, were for once in full voice, taunting the new leader across the dispatch box.
Both sides’ attack lines are being rehearsed. Labor will brand the Liberal-National Coalition as needing support from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation; the Coalition will persist with its claim that a new leader changes nothing for a tired party that has been in office for 12 years.
Meanwhile, the spectre of One Nation hovers over all. Hanson has never made inroads in Victoria. Her party has no local leader, no candidates and no policy platform. But according to the polls, for many Victorians, none of that matters.
Buckle up: it’s going to be quite a ride.
