This MP never met with Daniel Andrews. He’s already had two meetings with Jacinta Allan

Victorian upper house and Libertarian MP David Limbrick didn’t once have a meeting with former premier Daniel Andrews in the almost five years they were in parliament together.

Yet in the seven months since Jacinta Allan assumed the state’s top job, the free market, low tax champion has twice been invited to chat.

Victorian crossbench MP David Limbrick.Credit: Darrian Traynor

“I now have a dialogue with the government where I never used to before,” Limbrick says. “The new premier has a different style and it’s quite noticeable.”

Other upper house MPs have noticed it too, but in a different way, with the more progressive end of the crossbench – the Greens, Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis – saying relations have chilled since September.

Whether the change in Labor’s approach to the crossbench is conscious and strategic or a reflection of a more conservative social policy agenda under Allan is not completely clear.

In the last parliament, Labor needed just three upper house votes to pass legislation and was often able to rely on support from Reason, Animal Justice and Greens MPs.

Premier Jacinta Allan.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

Now the government needs six votes out of a crossbench of 12, making a more flexible relationship with a wider group of MPs – including those once shunned – politically useful or necessary.

Nonetheless, MPs point to a pattern of what they say is a trend to socially conservative decision-making under Allan.

Discontent among the progressives was evident last month when the government failed to head off a Greens’ successful call for an upper house inquiry into Labor’s controversial plan to redevelop Melbourne’s high-rise public housing towers.

Limbrick described the relationship between Labor and the Greens as “at rock bottom”. Allan has not met the Greens leadership since becoming premier.

Greens leader Samantha Ratnam says her party “stands ready to work with Labor and others in the progressive crossbench to deliver real reforms that will benefit Victorians”.

“But we remain concerned if recent decisions made by Premier Allan to abandon promised justice reforms and go quiet on drug harm minimisation are revealing a more conservative approach by Victorian Labor.”

The Greens motion on the public housing inquiry was supported by Animal Justice MP Georgie Purcell and the two Legalise Cannabis MPs David Ettershank and Rachel Payne, MPs whose votes Labor had more or less taken for granted since the 2022 state election.

Ettershank says there is “tension” over the government’s approach and they are failing to pick up on “issues of interest to the crossbench” including duck hunting and a second safe injecting room for Melbourne.

Legalise Cannabis MPs David Ettershank and Rachel Payne.Credit: The Age

“So if the government is happy to take its relationship with the Legalise Cannabis Victoria for granted then what arises from that should not come as any surprise.”

On law and order more generally, Allan has upset progressives outside and inside Labor including in October when the government abandoned part of a long-awaited bail reform package.

While Andrews was widely viewed as politically pragmatic on law and order, senior government insiders describe Allan as more conservative.

Limbrick said his meetings were about the overturning of the government’s opposition to locking away Frankston serial killer, Paul Charles Denyer.

The MP, who was in a relationship with Natalie Russell when she was murdered by Denyer, notes: “We’d [The Libertarians] been campaigning on that since 2021 and I thought the government was never going to do anything. That’s why the premier asked me for a meeting. I was quite surprised.”

Purcell was also surprised when the government allowed duck hunting to continue despite a government inquiry in August backing a ban. She says the government’s decision undermined trust and respect among crossbenchers, not just herself, especially given the findings of its own inquiry.

Purcell said she had been “so easy to work with” and “potentially taken for granted”. But no more. “I’ve voted against them much more consistently than I used to since then.”

By contrast, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Jeff Bourman has sensed a positive change in government dealings with the crossbench. “I’ve felt the ministers are now able to engage much more freely than under the previous leadership, and it is showing,” he says.

A looming test of the temperature in government and crossbench relations is the vote on Labor’s election promise to enshrine the resurrected State Electricity Commission in the Victorian constitution.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party MP Jeff Bourman.Credit: Joe Armao

The Coalition is opposed to the amendment, leaving the government struggling to secure the ‘super majority’ of 60 per cent of MPs it needs in both houses – 24 of 40 in the upper house – necessary to pass the bill.

Legalise Cannabis is refusing to commit and is in negotiations with the government. But its two MPs along with the Greens, Purcell and former Labor minister and now independent Adem Somyurek, are expected to ultimately support the amendment. Labor will need one more vote.

In November four of the 12 upper house crossbenchers – Limbrick, Bourman, One Nation’s Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell and independent Moira Deeming – flagged they were unlikely to support the bill.

Now Bourman says he has an open mind. “I’m still contemplating the benefit of putting it in the constitution,” he says.

The government did not respond directly to questions but issued a statement from a spokesperson: “We engage with all members of the crossbench in the Legislative Council to keep delivering what matters for Victorians.”

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