Jacinta Allan’s strategy to keep the voters Labor can’t afford to lose

“As premier, and as a parent, I want to see every young Victorian do well in life,” Jacinta Allan told her social media followers on Tuesday.

She had abandoned a Daniel Andrews-era progressive promise to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, and made her government’s third backdown on bail since October.

Somehow, Allan brought the reform back to her vision of leading for families.

Premier Jacinta Allan announcing free entry for children to round 24 of the AFL season.Credit: Simon Schluter

The May state budget, which delayed the election promise of expanded four-year-old kinder, was sold under the moniker “helping families”. Even her decision to back pill testing was framed as having been made as a mother.

She told us so from her kitchen in a social media video.

“As parents, my husband and I are always thinking about our kids growing up and making their own decisions. In a few years, they’ll be heading off to parties, to music festivals. Like all parents, I often catch myself thinking, ‘What if the worst happens?’”

Labor Party headquarters had heard from a portion of women – often mothers – that youth crime was a concern for them.

While some have cried out for a narrative during the 11 months of Allan’s leadership cutting up progressive reform, the premier’s office has been building her persona so this base of middle-aged working women with children keeps turning up for Labor.

“It is one of our biggest groups and one we can’t afford to lose,” one Labor source said.

This demographic took Andrews to three thumping election victories. When Victoria emerged from a long lockdown in 2021, one of his first photo opportunities was with a mothers’ group. He had a celebratory brunch wine with a toddler bouncing on his knee.

The hope for some in Labor now is that this voting bloc will see Allan as a representation of themselves.

Daniel Andrews at a mothers’ group brunch after a lockdown ended in October 2021.

Days into her leadership, one of her first moves was to establish a children’s portfolio in her cabinet. Allan’s first budget included a $400 school saving bonus and expanded free breakfasts at public schools.

A women’s pain inquiry has opened and consultation to ban non-disclosure agreements for sexual harassment in the workplace is also under way, promises first made under Andrews. Allan frequently talks up women’s sport (she calls her Instagram page the “Official Lauren Jackson stan account”) and has spoken forcefully about violence against women, having appointed the first parliamentary secretary for men’s behaviour change.

It hasn’t always looked like a consistent strategy. But insiders say it is part of a gradual process to reinvent the way Victorians think about their premier.

Minister for Children Lizzie Blandthorn, Allan and Local Government Minister Melissa Horne at a school.Credit: Justin McManus

At press conferences and in parliament this week, Allan took questions on access to the RSV vaccine and gambling advertisements as more opportunities to talk about family. One of her children was airlifted to hospital with RSV as a baby and her kids have started asking about betting because of exposure during the footy and the Olympics.

Redbridge pollster and former Labor strategist Kos Samaras said this framing worked for Allan and that she needed to do more of it to reach outer suburban and regional parents struggling with the cost of living.

That’s what angry voters are calling their local MPs about. And it is the focus of the government’s subcommittee on social cohesion – not tension over the war in Gaza.

Samaras said struggling voters no longer had an appetite for governments to spend their time on progressive fights, such as raising the age of criminal responsibility, if they did not directly address their circumstances. There were more votes to lose by continuing with the policy than there were to hold in Green-Labor contests in the inner suburbs.

“So why spend all this political capital for no gain?” Samaras said. “They cannot be caught going on a progressive jaunt when they can’t help [cost of living].”

Premier Jacinta Allan joined the National Rally Against Violence to protest violence against women in April.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Support for the government has hollowed out in successive polls since Allan’s ascension and Labor officials presented affordability as the issue the government would have to attack at a caucus conference in Torquay last month, where youth crime was the hottest topic for MPs on both sides of the debate.

Allan has been keen to own the new position to raise the age to only 12 rather than 14 (as is supported by medical evidence and backed by Aboriginal and human rights advocates). This is her agenda, not Daniel Andrews’.

“This decision has been made at a different time by a different government with a different premier,” she told reporters this week.

Some of her colleagues are not so sure. They view it as a reactionary acceptance that the government had lost control of the messaging and failed to calm the mood. After all, it was older teenagers committing the worst alleged offences but they were lumped into a single narrative about raising the age.

The Youth Justice Bill, which passed the upper house in the early hours of Friday, does provide further protections for children in the system and hopes to divert more away from prisons.

“Just … bleh,” one Labor MP remarked. Others were feeling “down” about it all. “I’d like to see her stand for something,” a party member said.

Andrews was able to sandbag seats in the suburbs with promises of infrastructure projects and simultaneously offer social policy that suited voters in seats at risk from the Greens. But those reforms aren’t washing with a struggling electorate and Allan doesn’t have the benefit of room in her budget to make outlandish promises.

Treasurer Tim Pallas now needs to find an extra $1.5 billion that Allan handed hospitals to top up their funding after the government abandoned a possible merger of health services.

The failure to control the message on that saga allowed voters to start connecting it to the state’s budget constraints. There was a growing sense in the community that this could hurt them, and now Pallas has put ministers on notice that the cash can’t keep flowing like it has.

“In terms of the agenda of my Labor government, it will always be on supporting frontline services, getting on with building the infrastructure, the homes that our community needs, creating and supporting jobs across our community and economy, and investing in our schools and hospitals,” Allan said on Thursday.

The government knows housing is in crisis and has hinted at more announcements on the way, after coming under scrutiny for the Big Housing Build, last September’s housing statement and a housing summit with stakeholders earlier this month. It’s another policy area Allan will want to pitch to families.

Framing the government’s new position on youth justice around families would be difficult to swallow for the leaders of Aboriginal organisations whose children are over-incarcerated. Ministers around the cabinet table were parents themselves, Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Nerita Waight pointed out.

“But their children will never be subjected to racist policing, never be denied access to the supports they need, and never be thrown away,” she said.

Premier Jacinta Allan was joined by justice ministers and Police Commissioner Shane Patton for the Tuesday announcement about not lifting the age of criminal responsibility beyond 12.Credit: Jason South

Some MPs were “devastated”. “Truly,” one said.

Many in Labor have viewed Allan’s backdowns – hospitals, youth justice, ditching the CBD safe injecting room and dumping the Arden hospital precinct – as making space for the premier to set her own agenda in time for 2026. She’ll have to show the public and caucus her plans for the future by next year to avoid being seen as running a tired third-term government.

It is “clearing the barnacles”, as one minister described it.

Policy backdowns since Allan became leader

• GP payroll tax
• Paul Denyer legislation
• CBD safe injecting room
• Arden’s hospital campus
• Hospital top-up funding
• Bail reform
• Raising the age

“That one-year anniversary is approaching, and she will need to make some decisions about what she wants to do in the lead-up to the election.”

But others disputed the idea that cutting up progressive credentials will give Allan clear air to focus on housing and the cost of living before the election.

“No,” one Labor MP said. “There’ll be something else. Always is.”

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