Jacinta Allan’s Labor faces trouble as the west gets wild

In Labor’s “red wall”, a block of seats in Melbourne’s west and north-western suburbs have given their vote to the party for workers for generations. But the electorates, where Labor MPs were once handed primary votes above 60 per cent, are now viewed as those at risk of calling time on Premier Jacinta Allan.

Eight months into her leadership, Allan has overseen an 11-point crash in the Resolve poll conducted exclusively for The Age. Labor’s primary vote collapsed below 30 per cent, slipping to the bottom of the “Danslide” built by her predecessor, Daniel Andrews.

“Quite scary,” one Labor insider said of the survey results. “I have always thought 2026 will be a contest,” a minister said. “The numbers prove it.”

The Age has spoken to more than a dozen ministers, MPs, party insiders and stakeholders about their prospects after almost 10 years in power.

Party figures believe Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, pictured touring the new Parkville station earlier this month, needs to better define her vision for the state.Credit: Penny Stephens

Labor figures described two separate dynamics at play: a new premier who is yet to show the voting public her personality or vision, while being hamstrung by debt, and a worsening cost-of-living crisis driving anti-government sentiment.

Labor still holds a healthy majority with 54 seats (and had more than double the Coalition’s 27 seats before losing two MPs to the crossbench). But with 36 per cent of those surveyed by Resolve uncommitted, a minority government is a possibility.

Allan has 2½ years to convince Victorians they should elect Labor for a fourth straight term – something the party has never done.

“If it’s business as usual, it will get worse,” RedBridge pollster and former Labor Party strategist Kos Samaras said. “She needs to define herself. Offer what the plan from this government is, what’s her vision for the state of Victoria – and offer it early.”

Allan has been in the public domain since she was 25 when she entered parliament in 1999. She was a minister in the Bracks and Brumby governments, and from 2016 oversaw the infrastructure agenda that has become totemic in this era of Labor dominance.

But Labor figures said she still needed to carve herself out a space in the public imagination.

Allan has begun a more collaborative style of government than her galvanising and all-consuming predecessor. “You can speak without fear of being locked out,” an MP said.

That can already be seen in recent announcements that cut progressive reforms, with cabinet ministers owning decisions to ditch bail changes for children and trial ankle bracelets instead, and to dump a safe injecting room in Melbourne’s CBD.

One party figure, however, suggested Allan communicated the injecting room decision as if the government was fearful of a backlash. While the same decision might have been made under Andrews and for the same reasons, they said, he would not have let himself look anxious or that a decision had been made for him. “Daniel was able to resist that narrative always by railroading his way through objection.”

Allan’s “captain’s call” to keep duck hunting in Victoria, ignoring the recommendation of a government-led inquiry, has also not been forgotten by a large chunk of the party room. Stakeholders described a level of stagnancy under the current, more consultative government. At least under Andrews, as one put it, even unwelcome decisions were made clearly and forcefully.

“I still don’t know if there’s a long-term strategy or if it’s dealing day to day with the punches, administering in the moment,” one party insider said. “I don’t know where the narrative writers are.”

Another MP said Allan’s time had been chewed up clearing thorny problems left behind by Andrews, leaving no “clear air” for a new agenda or vision.

“We need to clear those hard decisions,” a minister agreed.

This month’s state budget ditched the Arden health precinct and delayed the full rollout of expanded free kinder for four-year-olds – key promises from the 2022 election. Allan insists these changes were “sensible and disciplined decisions that reflect the circumstances that we’re in” because of escalating construction costs and workforce shortages.

A Labor figure said Andrews and his inner circle were not confident a majority was guaranteed in 2022 and had promised far-flung election commitments that were proving difficult to deliver.

“They threw the kitchen sink at it,” they said. “I think some of that was always going to come apart,” another said.

It suggests Allan could be falling victim to the “glass cliff”, where women are promoted ahead of a downturn and the chance of failure is high, given inflationary pressures and debt.

“She has to be very careful not allowing herself to be seen as a victim, that she can’t handle it,” one figure said.

Samaras said cutting or delaying these reforms meant Allan needed to show she still had an agenda. Because she has no money to play with – which is partly of her own making as the former transport infrastructure minister – she would need to think creatively.

“They need visionary announcements,” Samaras said.

Another Labor figure pointed out the government had won elections on the mantra of “getting it done”, and changing the rhetoric was always going to be a challenge.

“Delivery is your brand. No one cares about the Commonwealth Games, but its cancellation was the first visible chink in that armour and delays to projects like airport rail will continue to damage that reputation,” they said.

Allan signalled that families would be a priority early in her leadership, and has since spoken forcefully about women’s health and gendered violence. This week, pointing to $400 rebates for every state school student in this year’s budget, she said her focus was on supporting struggling households.

The opening of the Metro Tunnel and the West Gate Tunnel next year will also give something for Allan to promote after other projects were delayed in the budget.

More polls with the same trend were needed before some within Labor would put too much weight on the result, noting it came after a difficult budget while people were in financial pain.

Rumours that Treasurer Tim Pallas would retire after handing down his 10th budget have circulated since Andrews exited last September, which would open Labor up to a byelection in his outer south-western seat of Werribee.

If he did go, four Labor men from the Socialist Left – Gary Maas, Nick Staikos, Josh Bull and Paul Edbrooke – would be next in line for promotion to cabinet.

Pallas would follow an exodus of talent since the 2022 election, joining Andrews and former ministers James Merlino, Martin Foley, Richard Wynne, Lisa Neville, Martin Pakula, Jill Hennessy and Jaala Pulford. Collectively, they amount to well over a century’s worth of experience and had followed other significant departures.

“How do you backfill that?” one senior Labor figure said. “Most of the others are pretty new.”

Another said some of the key factors for re-election were just a little bit off, leaving the government exposed.

“When all the things are off, it’s risky,” they said. “There’s not one thing they’d need to correct and then everything’s fine.”

The heartland

The affordability crisis has made the outer west and north-western suburbs a particular concern for five sources, speaking anonymously for fear of political reprisals, even though Labor maintains strong margins in the electorates after surviving double-digit swings at the 2022 election.

“I think it’s going to get a lot worse out there,” Samaras said. “Labor’s bound to lose seats in the west.”

The west remained the government’s biggest vulnerability, a minister said. “We got whacked last time but managed to hold on.”

Allan became premier after the Reserve Bank had lifted interest rates 12 times, making monthly mortgage repayments particularly unbearable on Melbourne’s fringe. The protest vote will get a chance to smash the federal government first.

Samaras said: “Every month that passes, there is another group that wants to punish governments.”

Allan and Pallas have been at pains to explain that the government is also feeling those pressures, and it’s only practical that some commitments need to be recalibrated as a result. But it is the outer west that still doesn’t know when the train tracks to Melton will be electrified, as promised in 2018, and whether the Calder Freeway will be upgraded after the federal government pulled funding. The airport rail link has been delayed again during a stand-off with the airport while the east reaps billions for the first leg of the Suburban Rail Loop.

Allan has always disputed that the west is overlooked or taken for granted. In a statement to The Age, she said the government was “delivering what matters” for the west and north-west, opening 32 new schools since 2015, putting billions of dollars in roads and rail, and building new hospitals. Footscray Hospital is due to open next year.

A government insider said there was a sense Labor had underspent in the west and north-west, forcing local members to “go out and sell a shit sandwich” to their voters. The war in Gaza should also not be discounted as a factor in those communities, where there were higher proportions of Arabic or Muslim people, they said.

“These are seats we’ve held since we were a party,” they said, and losing them would do psychological damage to Labor.

The budget committee of cabinet seemed “out of touch with the outer suburbs”, another said.

While some disaffected Labor voters have started showing a willingness to vote for the Coalition, which should pick up seats in 2026, the Resolve survey found independents would also clean up votes that would come back to Labor on preferences.

It means strong independent candidates could make inroads in the outer west. Labor fought off independent candidates in Melton, Werribee and Point Cook at the last election.

Closer to the city, seats including Footscray, Pascoe Vale, Preston, Northcote and Albert Park would be at risk to the Greens.

The ‘it’s time’ factor

Twelve years will have passed under Labor by the time the November 2026 election arrives and survey respondents pointed towards an “it’s time” factor.

Monash University emeritus professor of politics Paul Strangio said political history showed that the upper limit for Labor was three consecutive election victories, and this pattern might be repeating, even though the Liberal Party had been “riven by personal and factional animosities”.

“That reality probably explains why a majority of the vote defecting from Labor is going to the independent camp rather than the Coalition. This may be a source of consolation for Labor – that the public is yet to be persuaded of the Coalition’s fitness for government.”

A Labor MP said the 2026 election ought to be a contest after 12 years in power.

“Given the results of that poll, we are exposed in parts of metro Melbourne. If [the Liberal Party] can’t take advantage of that, if you can’t seize that opportunity, something is seriously wrong with your operation,” they said.

“Not a day goes by where I am not grateful for the Libs being a shitshow.”

The Liberal Party has been enjoying a rare period of stability. Opposition Leader John Pesutto settled two of three defamation cases launched against him earlier this month. And Pallas this week handed the opposition a victory when relenting and announcing payroll tax would be waived for bulk-billing GPs.

It was actually time for some in the Labor parliamentary team to knuckle down, three sources said.

“Realistically, caucus has never been under pressure until now,” one minister said.

“It’s in our own hands now. Getting a fourth term was always going to be a challenge. We certainly aren’t going to pick up any more seats, but we have to be careful about losing too many.

“People are annoyed, but they are still listening.”

Two sources said the party had also shown no discipline at state conference. Ministers were booed by party members over industrial matters and showed “immaturity” in debating motions.

While there is a new premier, staff and younger ministry, head office has also been shaken up, with Steve Staikos as state secretary.

Winning an unprecedented fourth term and defending the red wall with less experience leading the government and the party HQ was always going to be difficult. The hope for Labor, as one party insider put it, was that they had time. “We’ve got two years to get our shit together.”

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