Opinion
For Victoria, Allan’s bounce back is anything but healthy
Chip Le Grand
State political editorThe old gag about Melbourne’s weather is that if you don’t like it, just wait five minutes. The same might be said about the Allan government and opinion polls.
The latest Resolve Political Monitor survey shows that in a reverse of Newton’s law of gravity, the collapse of popular support for Victorian Labor at the end of last year is matched only by the startling recovery of the past six months.
Premier Jacinta Allan has settled into her default look as premier – hi-vis and a hard hat.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
A primary vote of just 22 per cent is now 32 per cent and rising. A looming electoral cataclysm has been replaced by the likelihood of a fourth consecutive win.
The volatility in voter sentiment is extraordinary but then, so is the situation in Victoria, where a Labor administration which, by any conventional measure or norm, has governed beyond its natural lifespan, yet remains the only viable choice before electors to run the state.
This is not healthy.
I recently interviewed Melbourne Law School associate professor William Partlett, a fellow at the Centre for Public Integrity. He sees Victorian Labor as an example of a cartel party, a concept the late Irish political scientist Peter Mair coined to describe how political parties co-opt the resources of the state to create electoral monopolies.
In Victoria, it is seen in the blurring of boundaries between the Labor Party, the public service and an expanding public sector that embeds a not-so-virtuous cycle of self-sustaining incumbency.
It is the passage of electoral funding laws, with the support of a gormless Liberal Party, that bake in an advantage for sitting MPs against challengers and established parties against new entrants.
It is constraint of the state’s anti-corruption agency with a jurisdiction so narrow it rarely holds public hearings and must be convinced of the commission of a crime before it launches an investigation.
It is enterprise agreements that deliver above-inflation wage rises for workers on the state’s tab and fatten the pay packets of people employed on government construction projects.
The longer it goes on, the more incentive there is for more people to keep the same lot in power.
It still looks like a democracy. We have elections every four years, independent media and the rule of law. But what’s missing, without a credible opposition, is an essential ingredient – political competition.
This is where, according to the results of the Resolve poll, Victoria finds itself after 11 years of Labor rule. The results are remarkable and more than a little disturbing.
First, let’s talk about what’s remarkable.
Six months ago, Jacinta Allan was in a deep political funk.
She had been the minister responsible for the government’s two most ill-conceived gambits; the Suburban Rail Loop and the Commonwealth Games. She’d been hand-picked by Daniel Andrews to take over the top job. She was bequeathed all his problems and none of his authority.
After a year in the job, voters had taken a close look at their new premier and weren’t impressed.
Allan today is a very different leader. She is more assured and more herself. The warmth and empathy her supporters in caucus talk about are starting to come through in her public persona. She is still never far from a hard hat and hi-vis vest, but is finding ways to connect with Victorian families beyond train stations and road links.
Her promise to give people a right to work from home two days a week is a case in point.
The idea was dismissed by business groups, workplace law experts and newspaper editors but resonated with people, especially women, who worry their boss might suddenly order them back to the office five days a week and upend their precarious balance between work, home, childcare and school.
Workplace lawyers might be right about the limits of states to make industrial relations laws, but London to a brick says that once federal Labor sees the result of this and other opinion polls, they will legislate nationally.
The Greens have already promised to do so.
Now, let’s talk about what’s more than a little disturbing.
When Peter Mair developed his concept of a cartel party 30 years ago, it was based on his observations of European politics. Were he alive today, it is difficult to know what he would make of the persisting, organisational dysfunction that conspires against the Victorian Liberals presenting themselves as a credible alternative to Labor.
The Resolve poll which, six months ago, showed support for Labor had collapsed, put the Liberals in an election-winning position. At about this time, a majority of MPs within the Liberal Party room saw fit to roll their leader, John Pesutto, and replace him with Brad Battin.
There is a pattern here. When Matthew Guy took the leadership before the 2022 state election, the polls had just started to open a path to victory for his predecessor, Michael O’Brien.
Pesutto’s leadership was devoured by a defamation case brought by one of his colleagues. An imponderably stupid spin-off from that protracted litigation is now playing out in the Supreme Court and undermining Battin’s electoral prospects.
Public support for the Coalition has cratered to the point where, if a state election was held today, the Liberal Party would go backwards from the drubbing they were handed in 2022. The bright side for Battin is that, given his party’s propensity to knife leaders at risk of winning, his job looks safe as houses.
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
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