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It was just after 10am on Monday, an hour when Jacinta Allan would normally be busy preparing for cabinet at the start of a busy parliamentary week, that the premier got to see for the first time the faces of the once-loyal colleagues who now want her gone.
They walked into her office at No.1 Treasury Place led by Gabrielle Williams, a senior minister within the premier’s powerful Left faction.
Behind Williams came Left faction convenor Matt Hilakari, Right faction convenor Ella George and ministers Anthony Carbines, Lizzie Blandthorn, Colin Brooks, Ingrid Stitt and Luba Grigorovitch. Dylan Wight, another factional convenor, was stuck in traffic and missed the meeting.
The premier invited the delegation to sit. They wouldn’t stay long.
Williams, the appointed spokesperson, delivered what one source in the room described as a polite but clear message: The premier had lost the support of the majority of the caucus and should stand down on her own terms.
If the premier refused, a spill motion would be moved at the next day’s caucus meeting, Williams told her.
The premier’s response was defiant. She was prepared to fight them all the way.
“And I expect you all to resign,” Allan added.
Even then, the premier still had a glimmer of hope that she was dealing with another kind of half-baked challenge she had previously endured, rather than a well-organised and broadly supported leadership spill.
Allan asked the plotters who their candidate was. They replied they didn’t have one.
“You are coming in here without a candidate?” The premier was incredulous.
A short time later, her hope vanished.
For a second time that morning, Williams rose in the lift from the ministerial offices to the premier’s suite. This time, she was accompanied by Deputy Premier Ben Carroll. Widely considered the only viable challenger, Carroll had agreed to stand against the premier.
Allan requested a one-on-one meeting. What was said inside the room is known only to them, but after a short, cordial conversation, the premier understood that this time, they were serious.
So began the strangest and most tumultuous day in Victorian politics since Daniel Andrews abruptly resigned as Labor’s longest-serving state premier in 2023.
Carroll’s reasons for standing against his boss, outlined in a statement issued on Monday, were succinct. “This decision is not easy, but the stakes at the upcoming election are simply too high,” he said. “The prospect of a Liberal-One Nation government that will cut schools, health and frontline services is simply too high a risk to ignore.”
Half an hour later, the premier, her leadership rival, and their ministerial colleagues bitterly split over the rights and wrongs of the leadership spill now quickly unfolding, surrendered their phones and walked into a cabinet meeting.
The atmosphere in the room was variously described as icy, tense and bizarre by those in attendance.
Once seated, they were each handed a thick red folder containing a 40-page cabinet submission to address the state’s problem with serious and organised crime. Developed between the Premier’s Private Office and Victoria Police command, the submission would prompt the second rebellion of the day.
Chief Commissioner Mike Bush had been invited to the meeting by Allan. He walked the ministers through the proposal for more police resources, powers and the creation of a new Organised Crime Command with access to top-level intelligence from national and interstate agencies to bring down serious crooks profiting from corruption on Big Build construction sites and fuelling the so-called tobacco wars.
It was a complex proposal which would require $170 million in additional expenditure for specialist staff and equipment, and legislation to give police greater powers to compel financial institutions to produce information about suspect clients, and better capacity to protect intelligence provided by confidential sources.
About 15 minutes into Bush’s presentation, while Victoria’s cop top was still working his way through Powerpoint slides – and before ministers had finished reading the document in their folders – Allan declared the submission approved.
It is not the first time a Victorian premier has sought to ram through a cabinet decision without debate. This time, it didn’t fly.
Carbines suggested Bush leave the room so the ministers could discuss the political implications of the proposal. Once the chief commissioner had made his exit, a heated debate became less about the submission than what it was plainly designed to avoid – a royal commission into the Big Build.
“It was Carbs who led the charge and fair enough – he is the police minister,” one minister said. “I was not comfortable to say I support this with just 10 minutes to read it.”
Carbines, Williams and Minister for Freight and Ports Melissa Horne all argued that additional police resources, while important, would not address the integrity crisis created by two years of corruption allegations about the Big Build, many revealed by this masthead.
A more powerful intervention was needed to restore public confidence in the construction industry and the government, they said.
It was the first time anyone in cabinet had openly called for a royal commission – the single greatest issue on which Allan, by refusing to establish one, has staked her leadership.
“You want a government to work and a leader to work, but a royal commission is a dealbreaker,” one Labor MP told The Age. “That is the thing that can change the culture in the industry, clean out the crooks, and have a proper examination of the activities of government.”
Carroll has told colleagues that if he becomes the next Labor leader, one of his first acts as premier will be to establish a royal commission.
That will depend on the outcome of Tuesday’s expected spill motion in caucus.
Supporters of the premier are furious it has come to this. They say the campaign to replace Allan has been driven from outside the caucus by factional power brokers. More than one MP pointed a finger at former federal MPs Alan Griffin and Stephen Conroy – factional warlords from the party’s Left and Right.
“This is work being done by a couple of faceless hacks who did the same thing in Canberra and are doing it here now,” the MP said. “There are all sorts of people being threatened and intimidated about toeing the line and people being offered all sorts of things to knock off the leader from their own faction.”
A senior government minister questioned whether the factional conveners who met on Sunday and set the spill in motion had properly canvassed the views of MPs. “I think it is really close,” they said. “A lot of Left are saying the numbers aren’t done.”
MPs involved in the move against her say the numbers are overwhelmingly against Allan. “She is clinging to what she has got. But over the course of the day, because of her approach, her numbers have got worse.”
Allan’s promise to fight her challengers all the way, if taken to its logical conclusion, would mean requiring the party to facilitate not only a vote within caucus on the leadership, but a ballot of all party members.
On Monday, before the delegation of MPs had visited her or the cabinet meeting held, Allan took the unusual step of writing to the state secretary of the party, Steve Staikos, to declare herself a candidate in any future leadership contest. In her letter, which was widely distributed by her office, she pointedly reminded everyone of the need for a ballot of party members.
This process would take up to six weeks to run and sideline both Allan and Carroll from their leadership positions while the matter was decided. The one thing that Allan’s supporters and detractors agree on is that such a protracted limbo would be untenable this close to a state election.
