Jacinta Allan appointed Victoria’s 49th Premier after chaotic caucus meeting

Allan’s appointment followed a day of frantic factional talks and hushed conversations in hallways.

Premier-elect Jacinta Allan leaves a caucus meeting in Melbourne. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

It was a day of frantic factional talks and hushed conversations in hallways.

Less than 24 hours earlier, the resignation of Victoria’s long-serving Premier Dan Andrews, sent shockwaves through the nation’s political landscape.

Transport Infrastructure Minister and then-Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan emerged as the early favourite to replace him.

By the early evening, she’d thrown her hat in the ring and her Socialist Left faction were locked in.

“I‘ll be putting myself forward to lead our party and continue the extraordinary work of our Labor government,” Ms Allan posted on social media.

On Wednesday morning, Victorian Labor’s right faction was scrambling.

Public Transport Minister Ben Carroll and Police Minister Anthony Carbines were in the mix to challenge for both Premier and deputy, but the numbers weren’t there.

By the time members arrived for a caucus meeting, Carroll appeared to be the only other horse in the race.

But a two-horse race is still enough to trigger a longstanding Labor rule: that leadership nominations need to be open for three days.

The Socialist Left had tried – and failed – to get the party’s national executive to waive the rule.

It started looking like the whole thing would drag on for days.

And then: chaos.

Days started looking like weeks, maybe months.

One senior Labor figure told The Australian it was “World War Three”.

Because the leadership ballot was contested by two people, eligible party members – all 12,000 of them – were entitled to a say. And that means it might have been more than a month before Victoria got a new Premier.

But when Jacinta Allan emerged from the caucus room just before 2pm, she did so as Victoria’s 49th Premier, with Carroll as her deputy.

“I have been elected unanimously, endorsed unanimously by my caucus colleagues to replace the fabulous Daniel Andrews as leader of the Victorian Parliamentary Labor Party and, in turn, follow in his footsteps as Premier of Victoria, and will be heading over to Government House shortly for the official part of that proceeding,” Ms Allan said at a press conference.

“I‘m delighted to be joined by my parliamentary colleague Ben Carroll, who has been also endorsed by our caucus colleagues as Deputy Premier.”

WHO IS JACINTA ALLAN?

Jacinta Allan has been a politician for precisely half her life.

Elected as the member for Bendigo East at just 25 years old, she was the youngest woman ever to win a seat in the state parliament.

A year later, in 1999, her Country ALP crew would send then-Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett packing, cementing Victoria’s status as a Labor heartland.

By the time she turned 29, Allan had been called up to the Cabinet by Victoria’s 44th Premier, Steve Bracks.

Like her Predecessor, Dan Andrews, Allan has never seen the backbench.

She held a number of positions in the Andrews government, but she’s had the most impact in the infrastructure space.

Her appointment as Andrews’ deputy was controversial among some ALP factions thanks, in large part, to her hard-nosed approach to governing.

Allan’s ascension to Premier makes her just the second Victorian woman to hold the position.

“She‘s been brought up under two significant Premiers: first, there was Steve Bracks, who sponsored her and mentored her. And then most recently, obviously, Daniel Andrews,” says The Australian’s Victoria Editor, Damon Johnston.

“Caucus colleagues would probably describe her as sharing more character traits with Daniel Andrews than the more likeable Steve Bracks. And this will be her major challenge internally. We‘ve already seen that she doesn’t command 100% respect and loyalty of her own caucus, so I think this will test her.

“She has been over the last six months launching what Labor figures have told me was a charm offensive.

“Some have described her as abrupt, others ruthless, some belligerent. Some have described her as not being particularly team-focused or team-oriented. And some have even said that she has not shown the younger members of parliament the same pastoral and mentoring care that she received from the likes of Steve Bracks and John Brumby, another former Labor premier.

“She does have many supporters. They described her to me as being fun and being good company. However, they also are very quick to acknowledge – and these are their words – that she can be a political animal. Now, that‘s not a detraction or a criticism. It’s just that you also have to temper that, I think, with some charm and some collegiate bridge building with your colleagues.”

HOW WILL JACINTA ALLAN PERFORM ON THE NATIONAL STAGE?

Jacinta Allan has become Premier as one of the last pandemic strongmen exits stage left.

Dan Andrews’ management of the COVID-19 pandemic made him loved and loathed in equal measure.

For 100 straight days, as Melbourne endured the world’s longest lockdown, he fronted press conference after press conference.

In Western Australia, former Premier Mark McGowan took a similarly hard line, isolating the state from the world for months.

In May, the wildly popular McGowan stepped down.

The dual departures of McGowan and Andrews means only two members of the national cabinet have been there for longer than a year and a half.

In Victoria, the caucus is similarly inexperienced – and that means the newly minted Premier faces a tough task ahead.

“She is a very experienced minister,” Johnston says.

“However, despite all her experience, when you‘re the actual leader, I would imagine that requires some pretty quick learning as well as to her personality and what sort of dominance she might bring to a national setting. We’ll have to wait and see.

“The biggest challenge for Jacinta Allan is the budget. Over the next four years, essentially in the lead up to the next election, Victoria‘s state debt will head towards $200 billion. Our daily interest bill by then will be approaching $25 million. That’s money that can’t be spent on police, ambulances, schools and hospitals.

“So she has to come up with a debt strategy. It can‘t just be a taxation strategy. Andrews has already imposed that: we’re the highest tax state across a range of areas. So she’s going to have to come up with a way of growing the economy, increasing jobs, and therefore increasing revenues without increasing the tax burden.

“So I think how she manages the state‘s finances will make or break her over the next three years.

CANCELLATION OF THE 2026 COMMONWEALTH GAMES

One of Dan Andrews’ last – and most-controversial – decisions as Premier was the cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth Games, which were to be held in and around regional Victoria.

Before Andrews pulled the pin on the Games, a handful of major infrastructure projects were in the works – construction of things like athletes’ villages and stadiums.

That was the remit of newly minted Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan – and it came with conditions.

“There‘s one aspect of the Commonwealth Games which way revealing today, and that is the industrial arrangements that the Government was trying to set in place with regards to the construction of the four regional athlete villages,” Johnston says.

“What we‘ve got is a project document that was sent to the companies who were going to be bidding for this lucrative and expensive work. That document explicitly states that the CFMEU was going to be given the inside running. They’re named and listed in this document as a likely industrial partner for the bidding companies.

“Critically, it‘s not just the construction industry that’s raised concerns with The Australian about this, but rival unions have also said this was unusual and it speaks to favouritism within the then Andrews government with regards to the CFMEU.”

The strict conditions of the deal meant that the all-important cost of the construction would have blown out by an estimate of between 30 and 50 per cent.

“They‘re estimates that building industry figures have given me,” Johnston says.

“They said that when you get a workplace agreement with the CFMEU, it is more expensive because it contains more generous allowances, more generous staffing, less flexibility around overtime, less flexibility around working on public holidays and weekends. So the projects tend to get dragged out and the additional allowances and sometimes overtime can quickly add up when you‘re building for athlete villages.”

The revelation that Allan expected bidders to sign deals with the CFMEU presents an early challenge for her time in the top job.

“One of the challenges that Jacinta Allan is going to face is the legacy of the bungled 2026 Commonwealth Games,” Johnston says.

“Daniel Andrews was the Premier and he was publicly associated with the decision to prematurely bid for those games and then cancelled them. But Jacinta Allan was the Minister responsible for delivering them, so she has yet to sufficiently explain everything she knew, when she knew the problems were emerging and how deliverable these games were in the first place.

“Victorians have paid $380 million in compensation to the Commonwealth Games Association to not host the Games. That doesn‘t even include the money that we’ve already spent, which is probably another two or $300 million preparing for the Games. So the real cost of cancelling these games will hopefully emerge at some point in the next year.

And now she is the Premier. She was the minister charged with delivering this. It was a catastrophic bungle. I‘m not saying it will cost her job, but it will certainly damage her in my view, when hopefully the full story emerges.”

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This is an edited transcript of our daily news podcast The Front, where our journalists speak candidly about their stories. Hear it now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in The Australian’s app.