Jacinta Allan is heading into the last Labor caucus meeting before the winter break with leadership rumblings again circling her government. Six Labor MPs, speaking across the factional divide, said speculation was building once more, with some in the party saying a challenge could still emerge before the November 28 state election.
The timing matters because the meeting is only a week and a half away and will be the last internal checkpoint before parliament rises. In Victorian politics, that leaves Allan walking into a narrow window in which support can be tested, numbers can be counted and a challenger could try to force a special caucus meeting in a non-sitting week.
The pressure on the premier is being driven by numbers that have not improved since April. The Resolve Political Monitor published by The Age found Labor’s primary vote at 27 per cent, below the Coalition’s 29 per cent and well behind One Nation on 21 per cent. It also found only 20 per cent of voters preferred Allan as premier, compared with 39 per cent for Opposition Leader Jess Wilson.
Those figures have fed a nervous mood inside Labor, where MPs are staring at a November 28 election and worrying about seat losses if the government cannot steady itself. On Thursday night, the unease was on display at parliament, where Labor MPs dined during a break in an all-night debate on donation laws, after a difficult week marked by a belated commitment to reform the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, messy negotiations over campaign finance laws and repeated questions over character references provided by minister Luba Grigorovitch.
Still, no one has declared an intention to challenge Allan. That is the key friction inside the party: the talk is growing, but the person willing to put names to a move has not emerged. In March, Allan had already confronted disaffected MPs and brushed them off as scallywags in need of a cuddle, a line that showed she was willing to fight for control of the room.
One reason the mood has sharpened is that Labor MPs believe the $15 billion corruption estimate linked to CFMEU-linked wrongdoing across the government’s $100 billion Big Build program has cut through with voters, even if ministers deny the damage. Earlier this year, barrister Geoffrey Watson, SC, put that figure on the table, and MPs now say it has become harder to shake from the public conversation. As one Labor MP put it, the party acted because people would not stop talking about the $15 billion figure, but by acting it had only drawn attention to the issue again.
For Allan, the next test is simple and unforgiving. If no challenger can gather the numbers for a special caucus meeting before the break, the leadership stays with her, for now. If someone does, the winter recess may become the moment Victorian Labor decides whether it is heading to the election under the same premier or under a new one.
