Shannon Deery: Victoria is in election mode and voters have stopped listening to Jacinta Allan
The responses from a focus group of voters who will decide the next Victorian election — heavily skewed in Labor’s favour — should ring alarm bells for Jacinta Allan. Not a single participant could name anything positive the government has done.
Opinion
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Is the mood for change on?
That’s the question that will be front of mind for Jacinta Allan who returned to work on Monday after a short Christmas break.
And if it is, how on earth does she stop it?
A sliding trend against the government has Labor’s primary vote stuck at 30 per cent, while the coalition’s has risen to 43 per cent.
In 2010, when John Brumby was dumped as premier, Labor’s primary vote was 36 per cent.
Now, no one is suggesting Allan is in any danger of being dumped.
There is no appetite to punish the woman who inherited a mess from Daniel Andrews, even if she was one of his most senior ministers.
However, concerns are definitely increasing about the Allan government inside Labor at both a state and federal level.
And for the first time conversations are being had across Spring St about what Labor looks like in a post-Allan world.
As a 25-year parliamentary veteran none of this will surprise, or bother Allan much.
She leads a government with a very significant majority meaning that the Coalition will need a lot to fall into place to win government in 2026.
But she knows when voters turn away from governments they do it fast.
Annoyance turns to anger, voters move, and they don’t come back.
Voters will get to take their frustrations out on Allan and her team from next week when early voting opens for the Werribee and Prahran by-elections.
It is those February 8 polls that will give us the best idea yet of whether or not the public mood has really shifted.
With Labor not running in Prahran will the Coalition become an attractive option for voters in the Greens-held seat?
Will the government be punished by voters in Werribee, a traditional heartland?
The beauty about by-elections is that it gives voters a chance to send a strong message to the government with little consequence.
Even if Labor loses the seat, which it holds with a 10.9 per cent margin, it obviously remains in government.
For voters who only want to send a message, this makes turning their back on Labor much more palatable.
And it means we can genuinely get a feel for the current state of play.
Because whether or not the mood for change is on will dominate much of what we see from Allan and Opposition Leader Brad Battin until the 2026 election.
It might still be 677 days away, but make no mistake, we are now firmly in election mode.
Shortly after the by-elections we’ll have the federal election, a state budget, then a winter break.
Then we’re virtually 12 months out from the next Victorian election.
Allan wasted no time getting back into it on Monday, announcing a dramatic government intervention into fuel pricing.
She knows cost of living is the top priority for voters at the moment.
Under new rules, petrol stations would be forced to set a daily fuel price and announce it 24-hours in advance.
Allan pitched her Fair Fuel Plan as a major cost of living initiative.
It’s the sort of thing you do when you have no money to do anything else, and it seems to be a genuine attempt to do something.
Of course, there is the insurmountable risk that the policy actually encourages fuel companies to hedge their bets and lock in higher prices.
In 12 months time we’ll be able to gauge just what impact this policy has had.
I recently observed a focus group of voters who will decide the next state election.
The group was chosen from Melbourne’s western suburbs, with all participants among those who pay more than 50 per cent of their wages for housing.
It was heavily skewed in Labor’s favour, and the insights were not good for Allan.
The prevalent view was that politicians have no real understanding of what real people are going through.
They talk about the cost of living, but what do they do to change it?
MPs get their pay rises, the rest battle on.
There was no greater concern for this group than cost of living, consistent with months of polling across the country.
The Allan government would argue they’ve done much to help: the school saving bonus and energy bill relief are often cited.
No one in the focus group could name either.
They’ve stopped listening.
What’s worse, they can’t name anything positive Victorian Labor has done.
Asked about the government’s work the results are telling: “everything’s over budget” and “projects cost more” are the first two responses.
There’s “tax on top of tax on top of tax, why don’t they cut spending?” says another.
“Constant disappointment” and “wastage” come next.
Remember, these are Labor people, in the Labor heartland.
Politics is about momentum and it’s going to be a long run until the 2026 election.
Allan will be desperately hoping she can arrest the downward trend against Labor, and stop any mood for change.
She’ll need to do it fast.
Shannon Deery is the Herald Sun state politics editor
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