It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Victorian Premier Ben Carroll. Almost. With just over two weeks to go before the state election, even his most reliable troopers are turning on him like pack dogs.
While there’s no doubt Carroll has been left to carry the can while Dictator Dan Andrews and Jacinta Allan scurry off into the shadows of their fat, taxpayer-funded pensions, nobody made him take the poison chalice. And he was content to stand behind both his predecessors as they perpetrated their reign of corruption and oppression. Often in positions of key responsibility for their worst decisions. So, if he ends up as a pub trivia question about shortest-serving premiers, well, he asked for it.
Still, it’s not exactly edifying to watch a man get the living shit metaphorically kicked out of him by the very people who helped launch the government he’s been part of for over a decade.
When the Andrews government was first elected, it was in no small part due to a dodgy kickback deal with the union movement, especially the Melbourne metro-based United Firefighters Union. In return for a political guarantee to gut the venerable, volunteer-based Country Fire Authority and hand it, lock, stock and barrel, to the Melbourne union bosses, the union campaigned hard for Andrews. But the sheer, staggering scale of government-union corruption has slowly come to light as the veils are pulled back on the ‘Big Build’ construction program.
Now, Carroll is finding out that the same union attack dogs Labor set loose are all-too ready to turn on their former masters.
Sixteen days from polling, the Health Workers Union and Trades Hall both decided the premier could manage without their endorsement. Health Workers Union Victorian secretary Jake McGuinness told the branch’s 15,000 members he could not recommend a Labor vote. He accused the “arrogant” government of “playing on grievance and fear” and noted that Carroll had ignored repeated requests for a 30-minute meeting on the healthcare crisis.
Hours later, Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari accused Carroll of breaking a promise to injured workers by extracting $1.3 billion in WorkSafe payments to prop up the state budget. Labor had pledged in May 2023 that once WorkCover returned to surplus, any extra capital would stay in the scheme to improve outcomes or lower premiums. The pre-election update revealed the opposite.
“This surplus is built by once again ripping money away from injured workers,” he said […]
In a newsletter sent to the HWU branch’s 15,000 members, Mr McGuinness accused Mr Carroll of ignoring his repeated requests for a 30-minute meeting to discuss the state’s “spiralling healthcare crisis”. “Last week, however, Premier Carroll found 30 minutes to DJ a Minecraft concert,” he wrote.
Just to make clear which horse he is backing (or, more likely, which the union movement finds less terrifying, Liberals or One Nation), McGuinness met opposition leader Jess Wilson instead and found her “genuine, well informed, and respectful”. He still believes, he says, that many Liberal policies would leave the state worse off and worries about industrial relations and any reliance on One Nation. The latter being the quiet part out loud.
But he was clear about the present government:
“In its few months in office, this ill-fated Carroll government has shown none of that energy and hope – they reached for the lowest-hanging fruit, playing on grievance and fear. Working people deserve more.”
He will still hand out how-to-votes on election day, because he respects some of Labor’s earlier achievements (probably the ones which involved enriching union leaders). He will not tell members to vote for a government that refuses to acknowledge a meeting request. An unnamed Labor MP’s complaint about a “lack of solidarity” from the unions simply confirmed the arrogance, he said.
“Labor exists to serve working people – to be their advocate and fighter. Working people do not exist to serve Labor. Unions do not exist to campaign for Labor, especially when the Carroll government has forgotten us.”
“Labor exists to serve working people”? Since when?
The same Thursday produced two further blows. The budget update showed Carroll’s “respect every dollar” surplus of $655 million was achieved by the WorkSafe raid reclassified as dividend revenue. And the Big Build royal commission continued to drag the Andrews and Allan years into the open, with key advisers now compelled to appear over a secret CFMEU deal and the Carroll government already criticised for withholding documents.
Carroll is currently on track for roughly 123 days in office by 28 November. That would place him among Victoria’s shortest-serving premiers, behind only a handful of 19th- and early-20th-century footnotes. The unions that once delivered Andrews the firefighters’ campaign and the CFA carve-up are no longer delivering. The corruption inquiries that Labor created as smokescreens are blowing up in their faces.
The premier who accepted the job after years of standing behind the worst decisions is discovering that the dogs do not distinguish between the master who gave the orders and the one who merely held the leash.
