The Socialist Republic of Victoria has entered its post-Brezhnev stage. For a while in the early ’80s, Soviet premiers were coming and going so fast that the Konstantin Chernenko lookalike in the “Two Tribes” music video was out of date almost as fast as Frankie Goes to Hollywood themselves. As Ronald Reagan said, “How am I supposed to get any place with the Russians if they keep dying on me?”
So, will new Premier Ben Carroll be the Mikhail Gorbachev of Victoria’s own glasnost, or the Boris Yeltsin overseeing the Worker’s Paradise enter its final death throes? If his predecessors have any say in it, he’ll cark it quicker than a dissident enjoying a nice cup of tea.
Carroll’s opening press conference was, by the abysmal standards of Spring Street, almost competent. A royal commission into the construction industry. A special prosecutor. Immediate new powers for IBAC. Even a willingness to reconsider the sacred Suburban Rail Loop and talk to the business community. He pinched half the coalition’s talking points in one sitting. Jess Wilson must be wondering what, exactly, she is supposed to campaign on now. Other than, ‘Look! Over there! A scary One Nation!’
Then the old guard reminded everyone who still holds the knives.
The pitfalls for Carroll were revealed by Jacinta Allan and her camp’s last-minute pitch to put forward Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny as a leadership candidate at Tuesday’s 10am caucus meeting, threatening a six-week leadership campaign that would have derailed the government less than four months out from the November 28 election.
Allan insisted she resigned to avoid such a damaging contest, despite maintaining she would have won the membership vote. Even so, she simultaneously signed Kilkenny’s nomination form to trigger one.
The caucus was effectively held to ransom for two hours until Kilkenny withdrew at 11.55am, when a deal was struck to install Allan loyalist Tim Richardson into cabinet. That was all they wanted. And with only 15 votes, it was all they could get despite the ransom they held over both their party and the state.
“In a wide and competitive field, the Kilkenny-Allan push for a contested leadership election today is the most self-centred move I’ve seen from any politician in a generation,” said former Rudd-Gillard adviser Andrew Porter. That is really saying something, given how bitterly and relentlessly both of those two spent 2010–13 sniping, backstabbing and well-poisoning from the backbenches, as each was deposed by the other. Twice, in Rudd’s case.
Carroll has embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious political reset. It may prove exactly what Victorian Labor needs to win a fourth term.
It may also be what signs his political death-warrant. Carroll is not merely succeeding Allan. By ordering a royal commission into CFMEU corruption and floating the idea of dumping the Suburban Rail Link, he is repudiating the Andrews-Allan legacy. Worse, he is setting up an entire Praetorian Guard of advisors, factional bosses and union heavies to face the harsh glare of public scrutiny for the first time in their careers. In many cases, possibly even jail time.
The deeper problem is that Carroll inherits the same horse Andrews and Allan rode for 12 long years. Victoria’s unemployment has hit five per cent, the highest in the nation. Underemployment is worse. Capital has been fleeing for years because the Andrews-Allan governments treated business as a milch cow to be regulated and taxed, never as a partner. Payroll tax hikes, the mental health levy, property levies and lingering Covid charges compounded the damage. Work-from-home mandates and talk of regulating AI only accelerated the exodus of headcount to more business-friendly states.
As one high-profile executive put it on Tuesday: “The Andrews and Allan government has been an absolute enemy of business and investment in Victoria. That is one of the primary reasons the Victorian economy has gone so thoroughly backwards.”
When the previous Labor governments under Cain and Kirner knocked Victoria from a AAA credit rating, it was widely acknowledged as an economic disaster. Now, it looks like the Good Old Days. Victoria is limping along on an embarrassing AA rating – and even that is facing a downgrade.
This week, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s warned again that the state’s lower-tier AA credit rating is at risk, citing poor fiscal discipline and a debt load that leaves little room to manoeuvre.
Net debt is pushing 25 per cent of GDP. The capacity to absorb the next external shock is dangerously thin. Suddenly, Victorians are discovering that all that ‘free’ stuff has to be paid for eventually – and that Margaret Thatcher was right.
Carroll has four months. He can talk about partnership and integrity all he likes. Whether the residual Andrews’ machine will let him do anything that actually threatens their projects, their unions or their life out of bars, is another matter entirely.
