Suddenly, the reason for Ben Carroll’s drastic coup against Jacinta Allan in Victoria becomes clearer. While it was always obvious that a large motivation was panic as an election loomed and Allan’s poll numbers plumbed new depths, there was a second iceberg lurking in Victorian Labor’s path: the pending corruption findings against Allan’s predecessor Dan Andrews. The conclusion is obvious: Carroll is nothing more than a front-man for a Labor party trying to convince gullible Victorian voters (which is to say, Victorian voters) that they’ve put all that behind them.
It’s deckchairs being rearranged, all the way down to the bottom of the sea of debt.
Premier Ben Carroll is locked in an integrity war with Daniel Andrews after he savaged the former premier’s conduct as “intolerable”, only for Labor’s ex-leader to claim he had been vindicated by Victoria’s anti-corruption watchdog’s eight-year investigation into his dealings with the firefighters’ union.
The clash leaves Mr Carroll with just 115 days until the November 28 election to convince voters his promised integrity overhaul will purge the stain of the Andrews era, after the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission found the former premier and senior ministers engaged in “serious and concerning” conduct during secret negotiations with United Firefighters Union chief Peter Marshall.
Hands up who thinks that’s going to happen?
Eight years after the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission started digging into the 2016 firefighters’ pay deal, Operation Richmond has finally landed. The findings are as damning as they are familiar. Premier Dan Andrews authorised secret negotiations with United Firefighters Union boss Peter Marshall. Special Minister of State Gavin Jennings and senior public servant Tony Bates did the backroom work. The responsible minister, Jane Garrett, was cut out entirely. Meetings were held in rented rooms and hotels. Text messages referred to “secret mission” and “secret business”. A handshake sealed the deal. Marshall later boasted it was negotiated “in a backroom” and “endorsed by f..kin’ Andrews and cabinet”.
IBAC’s conclusion? The premier, ministers and public servants acted “contrary to government policy, procedures, conventions and their respective codes of conduct”. Marshall was afforded “extraordinary influence” and “privileged access”. The conduct was “serious and concerning”. It increased the risk of corrupt conduct. Yet, under Victoria’s absurdly narrow definition, none of it quite crossed the line into formal “corrupt conduct”. No crime, no finding. Andrews immediately declared himself vindicated. Marshall called the report “creative writing” and demanded an inquiry into IBAC itself.
Carroll, freshly installed and desperate to look different, declared the behaviour “poor” and “intolerable”. He promises to implement every recommendation and expand the definition of corruption. He has put Bates on leave. Well, whoop-de-do. Is anything being referred to police? Will ‘Dictator Dan’ still get his promised statue at Treasury Place?
Instead, it all looks like nothing but the usual performative huffing and puffing. All while the election clock ticks down to 28 November.
Besides, the corrupt deal with the UFU is hardly an isolated episode. Victorian Labor’s greatest hits include the Red Shirts rorts, the hotel quarantine catastrophe that killed hundreds, the ‘Bike boy’ affair, and the Big Build money pit that has funnelled billions to union bosses and bikie gangs while the state hurtles toward $200 billion in debt. Each time the pattern repeats: process ignored, mates rewarded and accountability delayed until the political damage can be managed.
Changing the face on the bridge changes nothing. Carroll sat at the same cabinet table for years without public protest. He now insists he is neither Andrews nor Allan. Yet his first major integrity test has produced exactly the same evasions: he hasn’t fully read the report, he can’t answer for the past, the focus must be on the future, blah blah blah. The structural incentives remain identical. The same union influence, the same public service loyalty tests and the same willingness to treat proper process as optional when a short-term political win is available.
Will any meaningful accountability ever arrive? History says no. IBAC’s toothless legislation ensures that finger-wagging about “serious and concerning” is as far as it goes. They’ve all been naughty boys and girls, and… well... just run along, now.
Recommendations gather dust. Royal commissions, if they ever appear, are carefully scoped and timed for maximum delay. The guilty parties keep their pensions, their board seats and their influence. The voters are invited to believe that a new premier equals a new era. Being Victorians, they’ll all-too-likely fall for it.
