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June 11, 2026 — 5:00am
There are two ways in which Australian politics is starting to resemble the final seasons of Game of Thrones.
The first is watching familiar characters – what’s left of them – struggling to adjust to the reality that Pauline Hanson’s army of the dead is real, on the march and coming for them all.
This week, we’ve had an acknowledgment from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that economic resentment, rather than ideological adherence, is turning ordinary people into blue-eyed grievance zombies as well as an offer from Liberal Party president Tony Abbott to keep directing preferences to One Nation while it devours what remains of his party’s vote.
The second is an uneasy feeling that the national conversation, like the later instalments of the GOT TV series that had outpaced the writings of George RR Martin, doesn’t have much of a script to show where things are heading from one episode to the next.
Spoiler alert: the Trumpification of middle America, rise of Reform UK and stunning electoral results of hard-right, populist parties in Italy, France and Germany provide a clue. So do this week’s riots in Belfast after graphic images of a horrific attempted murder by a Sudanese asylum seeker were passed around by anti-immigration agitators.
In our little play here in Victoria, a familiar story is unfolding in the Labor caucus. This is the scene where less than honourable members of the Queen’s guard, having knocked back a tankard too many in the members’ dining room of parliament, start openly musing about putting someone else on the throne.
This is what happened in parliament last Thursday night, at the end of a long and frustrated sitting week, when the conversation turned to the long political winter facing Labor MPs who, not that long ago, saw in their futures an accumulation of land, titles and use of chauffeur-driven cars.
It is a conversation that has been running hot and cold for more than a year, driven by Labor folk inside and outside parliament who think Jacinta Allan needs to go if the government is to have any chance of retaining power after November 28.
If Victoria was heading towards something resembling a normal state election, sacking an unpopular premier six months out from the poll would be a rational political response.
The state government is approaching the end of its third term and many voters, the end of their tether. After nearly three years in the job, Allan has not connected with enough people in the way Labor hoped she would. If published polls are an accurate guide, her leadership is a weight on her party’s vote.
The problem is, there is nothing normal about the election season ahead. As Allan reflected this week, “the old rules of politics, they’re changing.” Labor’s greatest threat is not from the Coalition but the rising, orange tide of One Nation.
Labor and the Coalition are being hammered by forces local and global, self-inflicted and beyond anyone’s control. They are both bleeding support to Pauline Hanson’s populist movement which, until recently, never gave much thought to governing anywhere in Australia, least of all in Victoria.
Replacing Allan with another premier might better equip Labor if it was waging an orthodox political battle against the Coalition over who can best provide essential services while reducing crime, managing debt and responding to Big Build corruption.
Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, from the party’s minority, right faction, is the most likely usurper. Installing him in the top job would not be an exciting choice – he is more of a Richie Cunningham figure than the Fonz – but it would enable the government to put greater distance between itself and the chequered legacy of its dominant modern figure, former premier Daniel Andrews.
Labor is engaged in this fight and a much bigger one. As the incumbent of the past 12 years and the party of government in Victoria for all but four years this century, it must convince voters not only that it deserves a historic, fourth term, but that our centrist, two-party system is still capable of delivering in the interests of voters.
Dumping Allan now, ahead of this battle, would make Labor look like a rabble. It would gain a new leader but lose whatever claims it has to be the sensible adult in the room. It would instead resemble the Liberal Party. Allan’s replacement would be the sixth leader of the two major parties in Victoria since the last state election.
This would bolster One Nation’s central claim – that the political system is broken – and signal that Spring Street is cooked. This in turn would give license to more voters to throw in their lot with a party that exploits our worst instincts against Aboriginal, Muslim and transgender people.
Even if Labor could bear this cost, it is a transaction Victoria can ill-afford. Not when opinion polls are already showing One Nation leaping ahead of Labor as the party of first-choice in Victoria.
Some of Allan’s fiercest critics privately concede this point. They believe Allan’s leadership is a problem but acknowledge that changing leaders in the current, febrile political climate may aggravate a bigger one.
Smart MPs are not spending their evenings getting pissed in parliament or days backgrounding journalists about a challenge that may or may not happen. They are knocking on doors in their electorates, having difficult conversations with voters, listening to what they need.
They know One Nation is coming for their seat and the seat of nearly every Coalition MP. They don’t need to rewatch Game of Thrones to understand it could all end up in flames.
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
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