Jacinta Allan is either delusional or dogged by claiming election was a mandate for SRL

At a dusty construction site for the Suburban Rail Loop, a group of state parliamentarians gave the Victorian premier the kind of standing ovation on Monday normally reserved for a political leader who has just won an election.

It was a moment that encapsulates a post-election battle raging inside the Victorian Labor Party between Jacinta Allan’s supporters and detractors over the meaning of Saturday’s result.

Jacinta Allan has claimed Labor’s federal election victory as a win for the Suburban Rail Loop. Credit: Chris Hopkins

Allan said the federal result delivered her government a fresh popular mandate to push ahead with the SRL and reaffirmed majority support for the values championed by Victorian Labor.

The minister responsible for the SRL, Harriet Shing, said Victorians had now backed the project at a federal and state level at four elections.

However, former senator and right-faction power broker Stephen Conroy said it was “delusional” for Allan to argue that her government had helped deliver federal Labor a second term in office.

“The people who were door-knocking across Melbourne all had a toxic view towards the Victorian state Labor government,” he told Sky News. “It is just the reality.

“For her to pretend that her policy agenda delivered the results that Anthony Albanese delivered is just offensive to all of the federal Labor candidates and MPs across Victoria.”

Another senior party figure, unauthorised to speak publicly about internal matters, warned of state Labor misreading the lessons of the federal poll. “The concern here is the state caucus gets lulled into a false sense of security from the federal result. We still have deep, deep issues with state Labor.”

The federal Liberals looked to tie Albanese to Allan in key federal seats with flyers and posters depicting both leaders under the title “double trouble for Victorians”.

While the Albanese government did not campaign on the SRL – it refused to commit federal funds to the $35 billion project beyond the $2.2 billion it had previously announced – Allan said the project was implicitly on the ballot due to the Coalition’s pledge to scrap it.

“I think if you spend any time out and about on the ground in local communities, the Suburban Rail Loop was being talked about,” she said. “It was being talked about on doors. It was being talked about on the streets. The communities understood.”

The Coalition advertising campaign which described Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan as “Double Trouble”.Credit: Michael Read

When asked whether she accepted that her government’s unpopularity was a genuine issue for her federal colleagues in the campaign, Allan did not address the question directly. She suggested every vote for federal Labor was, in effect, an endorsement of her government.

“What Victorians were focused on is what federal and state Labor governments are focused on. We share a value set in the Labor movement. We are on the side of working people, we are on the side of families. We understand, in a global, challenging economic environment, that families are looking to their government to do more.”

Steve Dimopoulos, one of the state MPs who applauded the arrival of his leader on Monday, took the argument one step further.

“Three-year-old kinder, women’s health, infrastructure projects, employment, free TAFE – they are all Labor values and, frankly, they are policy initiatives that the Victorian Labor government has come up with, and good governments, like (South Australian Premier Peter) Malinauskas and the prime minister have taken a leaf out of that book.

“We are the powerhouse of Labor values in this country.”

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, during an interview with ABC Radio, was asked whether the SRL had helped the federal campaign. “I think ultimately, this was an election which was decided on federal issues,” he said. “One of the things that is clear in Australian politics is that ultimately, Australians do know the tier of government they are voting for.”

Labor’s long-serving member for McEwen, Rob Mitchell, put it more bluntly. He confirmed people had concerns about the state government but said they were over-ridden by those about what a Dutton government would mean. “People were smart enough to know there was a difference,” he told this masthead.

“There were plenty of people who said, ‘Look, I’m not overly happy with Labor, you haven’t fixed everything.’ But, particularly with women, if you said, ‘Do you want Peter Dutton as your prime minister?’, it was a pretty simple f---k no.”

Evidence of voters separating state and federal issues can be found in polling booths in Melbourne’s west, where voters cast ballots on Saturday only three months after having their say in the Werribee state byelection.

In Manor Lakes and Wyndham Vale, the same polling places which returned primary votes of 30 and 27 per cent for state Labor MP John Lister endorsed federal MP Joanne Ryan with 45 per cent of the vote.

At Manorvale Primary School in Werribee, the same electors who reduced Labor’s vote to just 24.4 per cent in the byelection gave Labor 42.6 per cent in the federal poll.

Victoria played a critical role in the re-election of the Albanese government. Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on election night that it was the state Labor needed to successfully defend to win. Depending on which way undecided electorates fall, it may end up delivering 27 of 38 Victorian seats to the federal government.

The Albanese government committed only $2.2 billion towards the $35 billion Suburban Rail Loop.Credit: Justin McManus

At the same time, the 1.4 per cent swing towards Labor recorded in Victoria on Saturday was half the strength of the national swing. In NSW, it was 3.2 per cent, South Australia 5 per cent, and in Tasmania, it was 8 per cent.

Over the Christmas and new year break, ALP party polling warned of a very different outcome. Three party figures, not authorised to discuss internal research, suggested that Labor was at risk of losing Aston, Chisholm, Dunkley and Bruce in Melbourne’s east and south-east, Hawke and Gorton in the city’s west, and McEwen in the north.

The party’s polls and focus group research indicated that dissatisfaction with the Victorian government was a significant cause of voters turning away from Labor. This is consistent with the findings of published polls, including surveys conducted for this masthead by Resolve Political Monitor.

Allan’s supporters say the election result shows this research was either flawed or wrongly interpreted, and the Victorian Labor brand is strong. Allan argues it is now an academic point because the decision of voters trumps the polls, party research and the views of her detractors. “I’m not focused on commentators. I’m focused on what Victorians are saying,” she said.

The premier is adamant Victorians want the SRL. This is why, on the morning after an election weekend, she drove to Clarinda in Melbourne’s south-east, put on a high-vis vest and declared that major construction work was starting to prepare for the arrival of tunnel-boring machines at the end of this year.

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