Is Jess Wilson Victoria’s drover’s dog?
It was Bill Hayden who introduced the phrase ‘drover’s dog’ to the Australian political lexicon. It was Hayden who spent five thankless years rebuilding the Labor party after the chaotic Whitlam years. Whitlam ended his tenure as Labor leader, not with the Dismissal or the subsequent landslide election loss, but a humiliating second landslide loss in 1977. When Hayden took over, he took Labor quickly back to a winning position: despite a narrow loss in 1980, he halved Malcolm Fraser’s lead in the House of Representatives.
By 1982, it was obvious both that Fraser was manoeuvring for an early election, and that he would lose. Yet, on the eve of what should have been a personal triumph for Hayden, he was gazumped by Bob Hawke. Hawke was parachuted into a safe Labor seat and the subsequent election win, prompting a bitter Hayden to observe that “a drover’s dog could lead the Labor Party to victory, the way the country is”.
Brad Battin could be excused for feeling the same way. Despite the media hoopla for Jess Wilson, who deposed Battin a few weeks ago, it begs the question of whether a drover’s dog could have beaten the corrupt, hopeless Andrews-Allan government.
The latest Resolve Political Monitor shows an 11-point gap has opened between the Allan government and the Jess Wilson-led coalition on primary votes, with Labor dropping two points to 28 per cent and the Liberals and Nationals increasing their combined share from 33 per cent to 39 per cent since the survey was last conducted.
That is barely a couple of per cent difference from the last election, and still well behind the coalition’s high point of 43 per cent under even John Pesutto. That lead mostly evaporated in the fallout from Pesutto’s demotion, but was slowly rebuilding under Battin: having dropped to 32 per cent after Pesutto’s demise, the coalition vote had slowly climbed back to 37 per cent by the time Battin was knifed.
Time will tell whether Wilson is just Jenny-on-the-spot for a continuing trend, or if the coalition’s rise will gather pace. So far, the best that can be said about Wilson for sure is that she has avoided the punishment meted out to the party after dumping Pesutto. She still needs to win 16 seats at the election to win.
Both sides of politics will find some good news in the survey, which was conducted in two parts on either side of the change of Liberal leadership from Brad Battin to Wilson and Premier Jacinta Allan’s “violent crime, adult time” response to carjackings and home invasions by young offenders.
Coalition strategists will be encouraged by a rising primary vote which peaked at 39 per cent at the end of Battin’s leadership before settling at 37 per cent under Wilson. Both these figures represent a substantial improvement since the 2022 state election, when the Coalition attracted 34.4 per cent of the vote.
Primary support for the Coalition is further buttressed by a popular reception for Wilson, the Liberal Party’s third leader in 11 months. Her positive net approval rating of 14 is the best by any Liberal leader since Resolve starting polling in 2021.
On the other hand, Allan is scoring a rare win by at least pretending to get tough on crime.
When asked whether they supported the government’s policy response to rising youth crime rates, 77 per cent of respondents either said they supported or strongly supported the approach, while only nine per cent opposed it.
Those in support included 77 per cent of respondents who identified as Labor voters, 86 per cent of respondents who identified as coalition voters and 79 per cent of all respondents living in marginal electorates.
With crime being the second-most critical election issue, behind cost of living, this should have Wilson worried.
Resolve founder Jim Reed said the volatility of poll results reflected the frequent changing of leaders over the past two years. He said that as the 2026 Victorian election year approaches and the impact of this year’s federal election campaign recedes, voters are becoming more focused on state issues.
“As we enter an election year, the federal impacts on state political opinions seems to have retreated,” he said. “Voters are turning their attention to state issues and the new leadership contest.”
Even the pollster is noting that Wilson may well be the drover’s dog.
It would be easy to assume the bounce in the coalition’s vote was down to Wilson alone, but our monthly samples show that Battin was already making gains. We’ll never know what might have happened, but she’s taken the reins of opposition at just the right time.
The biggest threats to the Labor government are not just the astounding levels of state debt, and correspondingly skyrocketing state taxes. There’s also the deadly ‘It’s Time’ factor. Better governments than Andrews’s/Allan’s have been tossed out of office after 11 years.
