It looks like it’s all over, Red Rover, for the red witch of Spring Street. Even if Jacinta Allan survives a party meeting today, the Bad Orange Lady is nipping at her heels.
First, the leadership challenge:
A delegation of Labor ministers and MPs has met with Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan to urge her to step down.
The group met with Ms Allan this morning to inform her she had lost majority support of caucus.
It comes as Ms Allan this morning wrote to the Labor Party’s state secretary to indicate she would fight any leadership challenge.
Challenge accepted.
Deputy Premier Ben Carroll has informed Jacinta Allan he will be nominating for the leadership, as the premier refuses to stand down and is threatening to force a six-week leadership campaign.
Even Allan’s own socialist left faction is piling on the pressure for her to quit. If Allan digs in and forces a challenge, it will come at the worst possible time for Labor. Under party rules, if there is more than one candidate for leadership, an internal election with a six-week campaign must take place, which, by the time it concludes, will leave whoever the new leader is with just over two months before the next state election.
An election that will almost certainly see Labor devastated – and, at a long shot, lay the road for Australia’s first-ever One Nation government.
One Nation is on track to sweep the Victorian election by winning up to 34 seats in a “f..king urgent” crisis for Labor and Australian politics at large, party members have been warned, as state MPs consider whether moving on Premier Jacinta Allan will save them from a wipeout in their heartland at November’s election.
It seems those the most worried are the ones with the most to hide.
Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari told Labor delegates at a side event at the conference on Friday that if Victoria fell to One Nation there would be little hope for the rest of the country.
The head of the state’s union movement, who has been warning about One Nation’s threat to Labor’s traditional working-class base well before leadership rumblings emerged against Ms Allan, said polling commissioned by his organisation suggested Pauline Hanson’s party could win up to 34 seats in November. This could make it the majority partner in a coalition government, he warned.
What he really means is there’ll be no hope of covering up the tens of billions of dollars the Victorian Labor government has poured into the pockets of corrupt union officials and criminal bikie gangs, which often means the same person.
As for “Labor’s traditional working-class base”, the ’70s called and want their punchline back. There isn’t a single Labor politician in the country who can legitimately claim to be ‘working-class’. Working-class voters have duly abandoned Labor in droves, leaving them to fight with the Greens for the votes of inner-city lefties and Sydney Muslims.
Parties require a majority of 45 seats in the 88-seat Legislative Assembly to form majority government, but snaring 34 seats could mean One Nation governs in minority.
The Australian revealed this month that the poll of 6500 Victorians, commissioned by Trades Hall, found One Nation leading both major parties on a statewide primary vote of 27 per cent. Labor and the coalition were tied on 26 per cent, with the Greens on 12 per cent and others on eight per cent.
The only thing holding One Nation back in Victoria is that its meteoric rise means that the party is currently scrambling to vet candidates, ahead of the election. As party strategists are only too-aware, the legacy media will scour the backgrounds of any candidates announced, hoping to find something they said on social media years ago.
Meanwhile, Labor’s electoral staff are being set up for a world of pain over the coming months.
Labor members were encouraged to combat Senator Hanson’s pull with voters – her “authenticity” – by going house to house.
Tell them to be sure to wear safety goggles. Tomatoes and spit can spread all kinds of infections.
Update
Allan defied her own defiant words and quit this morning. It took less than 24 hours for her to do the Reverse Ferret and avoid the leadership challenge she swore she’d fight, yesterday. Mind you, she’s still talking tough, maintaining that she would have won a challenge.
So, why quit? Because clearly frantic party bean-counters got in her ear and warned her that a six-week leadership campaign, just four months out from an election, would be a disaster. “At the end of the day, I am and always have been, a team player,” she said.
Translation: she jumped before she was pushed and took everyone else with her.
Update 2
Ben Carroll has just been announced as the new premier. A wrap-up of the state of Victorian politics will follow tomorrow.
