Backroom Baz: The inaugural Freeze Parliament is looming and MPs are preparing to get chilly — but the Premier isn’t one of them
MPs will soon take an icy dunk for the inaugural Freeze Parliament to raise funds for FightMND. At this stage, Premier Jacinta Allan won’t be among them.
Victoria
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It’s an opportunity almost too good to be true: dunk a pollie.
It’s an opportunity almost too good to be true: dunk a pollie.
A dozen of Spring St’s most generous MPs have agreed to participate in the inaugural Freeze Parliament event to much-needed funds for FightMND, and support Pakenham MP Emma Vulin who is living with Motor Neurone Disease.
Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, Transport Infrastructure Minister Gabrielle Williams, minister for fun Steve Dimopoulos, Opposition Leader Brad Battin, and Strictly Ballroom star turned MP Paul Mercurio are among a host of politicians to agree to be dunked in a tank of icy water in the depths of winter at Parliament House on June 16.
Premier Jacinta Allan has rejected numerous invitations to take part, but Baz won’t give up. More than $10,000 of a $50,000 target has already been raised, perhaps she’ll agree if the target is exceeded? Premier?
Big donors so far include Ringwood MP Will Fowles, who has chipped in $1000.
Awkward Labor no-show at cop show
After ending an almost two year pay war with Victoria Police you’d think the Allan government would be working a bit harder to repair relationships along the thin blue line.
It seems not.
Almost 500 police veterans gathered for the annual Police Veterans Victoria lunch this week, but missing among them was a single government representative.
Baz is told invitations to Police Minister Anthony Carbines and other representatives weren’t even politely declined, they were ignored altogether.
It has caused huge tensions inside the relatively new organisation which has been around since 2014, but under its current name since just 2021, and is aimed at ensuring police veterans and their families are valued and supported beyond their service.
Insiders say attempts to eek some funding out of the government have fallen on deaf ears, and this week’s no-show cemented a view that they just don’t care.
Perhaps the dire state of the state’s economy is making it hard for the government to put its money where its mouth is.
On the other hand, former cop and now Opposition Leader Brad Battin received a rock star reception at the event, where he spoke of his journey from policeman to politician.
Colleague Moira Deeming also received quite the welcome, in stark contrast to her fellow western region MP Trung Luu who united the room in a strange moment of silence when he was introduced.
Can’t get to sleep? Baz has just the thing
The annual snooze fest that is the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee probe of the state budget hit Spring St again this week.
Baz wonders why the charade continues.
Ministers are hauled in to answer questions from a bipartisan group of MPs that, in reality, amounts to little more than a farce.
Questions from Opposition MPs are routinely ignored or deflected, while prepared questions from government MPs are answered by ministers shamelessly reading from a script with colleagues furiously nodding in agreement and pretending to really care.
It’s an exercise in theatrics over politics. And it’s probably well overdue for a serious overhaul.
Nepo babies of the LNP
Talk of replacing Liberal Party president Phil Davis isn’t dying down, with more names being thrown into the mix.
The latest, Caroline Inge, a previous staffer and friend of former Liberal MP Tim Smith. Sources say Inge is being very intensely lobbied to again throw her hat in the ring, with some hoping it will be third time lucky for the former vice-president of the federal division.
Inge ran against Davis in 2023, losing by just a handful of votes after campaigning to block any attempt by then Opposition Leader John Pesutto to access party funds to defend defamation threats by Moira Deeming. Davis later matched the pledge.
Which is perhaps why senior party figures who have been working to orchestrate a deal to help Pesutto pay his $2.3m debt owed Deeming, for court awarded legal costs, say Davis has been particularly reluctant to see a deal done, or at least to be publicly advocating for one. Especially with an election looming. Watch this space.
Another Liberal ticking time bomb
The potential change of president might not be the only change at the top, either? Could state director Stuart Smith be on the way out, too?
Smith appears to be in more trouble than the early settlers at the moment, given the thoroughly scandalous allegations made by former staffer Nadine Jones who has accused him of bullying in an unfair dismissal case that could blow up party headquarters.
Smith has been at pains to beg the media not to report the allegations, swearing they’re not true.
And so far they have been kept quiet. Liberal powerbrokers have suggested the party quickly pay Jones to make the allegations go away, because aired in court, true or otherwise, would spell the end of Smith.
Some say consideration is already being given to forcing him out of the job, which has prompted the question of who could come next.
Former Ripon MP Lousie Staley has previously applied for the job. Stuart Eaton, currently working in Opposition Leader Brad Battin’s office, has also been keen previously.
Whoever it is will want to know a thing or two not just about elections, but how to win them. A seemingly foreign concept to Victorian state directors.
Guess who?
Which Labor backbencher has been described by colleagues as seriously on the nose with constituents and at threat of losing their seat?
Overheard
“It is often said the Labor Party is the House of Medici, so it logically follows the head of the house would be the Premier. The premier is the head of Medici.” Minister Danny Pearson compares the Allan government to Renaissance rulers during a budget estimates hearing.
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Originally published as Backroom Baz: The inaugural Freeze Parliament is looming and MPs are preparing to get chilly — but the Premier isn’t one of them
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