Jacinta Allan says ‘housing, children and strong economic growth’ will be new focus

New Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan is sworn in on Monday. Picture: David Crosling

Jacinta Allan’s cabinet reshuffle offers the first glimpse of the new Premier’s policy priorities, and how she may seek to differentiate her own legacy from that of Daniel Andrews.

While Allan was at pains on Monday to stress that areas she deemed to have been key priorities of the Andrews government — such as infrastructure, transport, health, education and social policy reform — would not change, she highlighted three new areas of importance, listing “housing, children and strong economic growth”.

The Andrews government’s unveiling of its housing policy statement a week before Allan took over from Andrews – outlining a plan to build 80,000 houses a year for the next decade — provides the Allan government with a key new focus in an area of public policy which has never been more important, nor more challenging.

Close Andrews ally Harriet Shing has essentially been put in charge of the project in what constitutes a massive promotion for her, and a sidelining of Right-aligned but factionally homeless Colin Brooks, who will assist with the task with responsibility for ­Development Victoria and development precincts.

Also key to the delivery of the ambitious policy will be Sonya Kilkenny who becomes “Minister for the Suburbs” alongside her existing planning role.

The creation of a “Minister for Children”, with the Education ­Department to be come the ­“Department of Education and Children” seeks to capitalise upon one of the Andrews government’s most popular and revolutionary reforms, as well as signalling that the Allan government recognises the desperate need for reform in Victoria’s abysmal child protection system.

Lizzie Blandthorn keeps her child protection responsibilities, but also takes responsibility for Labor’s “Best Start, Best Life” policy – matched in NSW by the Perrottet Liberal, and now Minns Labor governments – of delivering 15 hours a week of free, universal three-year-old kindergarten by 2029, and 30 hours of “pre-prep” for four-year-olds by 2032.

Perhaps most interestingly of all, given Victoria’s woeful economic trajectory – which sees the state headed for $171.4bn of net debt by 2026 – were Allan’s comments about Tim Pallas’s ambitions for what will be his tenth year as Treasurer.

The Premier said the new portfolio of “Minister for Economic Growth” had been created for Pallas to enable him to work with investors and innovators to find ways to grow the state’s economy — a task most can agree is desperately needed, but one which may not be as easy to achieve as it sounds.

With major economic challenges facing the state, Victorians have rarely been in more desperate need of a competent government – a plight made only more stark by the dysfunction of the opposition, whose key move on Monday was to exhume twice defeated former opposition leader Matthew Guy from the backbench.