00:01I'm joined by retired ABC election analyst Anthony Green, and it is great to have you
00:06with us this morning, Anthony.
00:08Now, this change of leadership, which we're expecting to hear from very shortly, this
00:13would be a late change by any measure, wouldn't it, given how close the state election is?
00:18Yeah, I mean, there's probably half a dozen examples in the last 40 years where a premiership
00:24or a leader has changed very late, just before an election campaign.
00:27None of them have been particularly successful.
00:30I think the Labor Party will be hoping that at least minimising losses.
00:33There would be a hope that a new leader, Jacinta Allen, did have poor preferred premier ratings.
00:39They'd be hoping that Mr Carroll would do better with those, Ben Carroll would do better with
00:45those ratings, and that might drag up some of the Labor vote.
00:48The news poll that was released this week was rather better for Labor than some recent ones
00:53that had been a decline in One Nation support.
00:55So Labor will be hoping for some benefit from that.
00:58But Labor does have a really tough task.
01:00They've been in power essentially since 1999, for all but four years since then, because
01:07of their ability to hold those regional seats in Bendigo and Ballarat.
01:11That's been so important for their continuance in offence.
01:14If they start to lose those Bendigo and Ballarat seats, and of course Jacinta Allen was one of
01:18those MPs that was part of that wave into office for Labor in 1999, when they won those, when
01:23she won the Bendigo seat for the first time, they've got a hold of those, and that's where
01:28One Nation may be a real wild card for Labor in some of those seats.
01:33You've then got the suburban seats.
01:35There's been a lot of unhappiness about where money's been spent.
01:38Some of those western suburbs seats like Melton, there's a sense that they haven't been receiving
01:43as much of that capital works projects that marginal seats in the southeast have done.
01:48There's a sense that after 12 years in office, everything that's gone wrong for the previous
01:53is now the fault of the current government.
01:55And it's very difficult to move on from what is seen as not enough has been done about
02:00various projects.
02:01They did a lot of...
02:02The Andrews government did very well with this project to remove the level crossings,
02:08improving transport, building sky rails to get around level crossing problems.
02:12So they've done a lot to improve that.
02:14But they were sort of...
02:15A lot of those were small-scale projects.
02:17It's when they've gone on to the bigger projects, the suburban rail loop.
02:21They're the sort of things which people have begun to question, and that's where those
02:24arguments about corruption in the building projects has become a problem for them.
02:29Yes, Anthony, you outlined, you know, what Labor would hope from a leadership change here.
02:34But given the evidence of what we've seen, I mean, can these late changes pay off?
02:39And by paid off, what are we talking about here?
02:42Oh, look, I mean, I always think back to Russell Cooper becoming Premier of Queensland 73 days
02:48before the 1989 election.
02:50That was an attempt to save the heartland.
02:52They knew they were going to lose.
02:53They brought someone in to hang on to a few seats.
02:55Is that Labor's strategy, or do they have a realistic hope of trying to win it?
03:00There would...
03:00You know, no government ever admits it's a good time to lose an election, but if they
03:04were to lose the election, they'd want to make sure they've got a good, solid number
03:08of members in Parliament.
03:09When John Brumby lost the 2010 Victorian election, the Labor Party was still very strong when it
03:14went into opposition and had an experienced front bench.
03:17The Labor Party would be hoping, if they do lose the election, that they've got a good,
03:21solid caucus after the election.
03:24And they'd be hoping that a change of leadership will help them do that.
03:27They might turn a rout just into a heavy defeat.
03:30So that's what I presume is some of the thinking.
03:33Maybe some think they will win.
03:34That's always, I think, is a little bit hopeful after 12 years.
03:37And we've seen a few times over the last few decades, Tasmania in 2010, New South Wales
03:42in 2007, where a three-term government won a fourth term, and the fourth term turned out
03:48to be the worst of all.
03:49So there'd be some in the Labor Party thinking, like John Brumby when he lost in 2010, a narrow
03:55loss would be almost a win for the Labor Party.
03:58Because with the Liberal Party win, they've been out of office for 12 years.
04:01There's a problem of one nation.
04:02Does one nation win seats?
04:03It's, is there a majority government to replace Labor after the election?
04:09So I think there'll be lots of issues like that coming up towards the election campaign.
04:12But it's still, Labor's been in office for 12 years.
04:15Just the change of leadership might change some of the atmospherics, but probably won't
04:20change the overall result.
04:21And when you say a win is hopeful, where is polling at at the moment?
04:27And how is the One Nation vote really complicating those predictions there?
04:32Well, I mean, this week's news poll looked a little clearer, is that One Nation had dropped
04:36to 19%.
04:37Some polls have been showing them ahead of both Labor and Liberal.
04:41If that was the case, you'd have a three-cornered contest all across the state.
04:45The lower the One Nation vote, and it's astonishing that One Nation can lead in an opinion poll when
04:50they have no leader, no state policies and no candidates.
04:53And at this stage, it's only four months of the election.
04:55Perhaps they'll name a leader in a team and that'll sort of garner that attention, which
04:59has sort of gone out of them in recent months.
05:01But I think that's the great unknown, is can the Liberal Party, if One Nation is still in
05:08the field, is it going to complicate?
05:09Is the National Party and the Liberals in rural areas going to lose seats to One Nation?
05:13And if that happens, can they actually win a majority government after the election?
05:18Because it's not just forming government after the election.
05:21With fixed-term parliaments, you have to form government which is going to last
05:25for four years, because the mechanism for getting another election is very difficult.
05:29And Victoria, it was once considered Labor's strongest state.
05:34Has something fundamentally changed there?
05:37No, I don't think so.
05:39It's still, you know, you look at federal results, Labor has still been quite dominant.
05:42I think what happens is all governments, after 12 years in office, you look and you compare
05:46the Labor government today to when it came to office in 2014, a lot of front bench talent
05:51has moved on.
05:52I mean, there was a lot of ministers who left after COVID.
05:55It was just such a rugged time to be a minister of government.
05:57And there was a big turnover of ministers in that period.
06:00I think they've hit the end of their term.
06:02And I think there's a lot of MPs now who haven't experienced opposition.
06:07I mean, Jacinta Allen built her name in opposition.
06:09She was, I remember, in the last year of the Naphthine government, challenging the Speaker
06:14day after day as they sort of brought the government undone on the floor of Parliament.
06:18She was very impressive in that era as just a hard person in running the procedures of
06:24Parliament.
06:25She's spent a long time as leader of the Labor Party in the Parliament, running all those
06:29parliamentary procedures.
06:30So she's got a lot of experience.
06:32She's been there for 27 years.
06:33Some of the members who've come in since 2014 have only ever been in government.
06:38And I think some of them have sort of taken that.
06:39I think all MPs in long-term governments get caught out that they haven't had that experience
06:44in opposition.
06:45So, look, it'll be an interesting election.
06:48It'll be tough for the Labor Party to win, 12 years in office.
06:51The Liberal Party has had a lot of internal problems over the last four years in particular.
06:56They look like, under Jess Wilson, they've actually sort of managed to paper over the
07:01cracks of what's gone on for the last few years.
07:03And then you've got One Nation, how will they perform in the election campaign?
07:07It could be a very interesting election campaign.
07:09And it's the last one before the next federal election.
07:11So I think it's...
07:13No, the New South Wales election is next year, of course.
07:15But it's an important state for Labor at the federal election because they hold so many
07:20seats.
07:21It's important for Labor that they're able to federally hold on to their Victorian seats.
07:26So that's why there'll be a lot of interest in it.
07:28And if One Nation does get the balance of power...
07:30To date, One Nation has just been a small party on the crossbench in the upper house.
07:34If they get the balance of power in the lower house of parliament, potentially have some
07:39role in the functioning of government and who governs, it'll be a very different role
07:44for them.
07:44And if they have to perform in that situation, they'll be watched closely from other states.
07:49Labor is on the nose in Victoria.
07:51I mean, we saw in South Australia Labor won that election easy because it was a first-term
07:55government with a popular premier.
07:57There was One Nation out-polled the Liberal Party.
07:59That's very different to Victoria, where there's an unpopular Labor government and the Liberal
08:03Party has had its internal problems.
08:05So it's a very different situation.
08:06There will then be the New South Wales election, where optional preferential voting will work
08:11against any attempt for the coalition or One Nation to win that election.
08:14Labor would be better positioned.
08:16But everyone else will watch how One Nation performs if they have an important role in
08:22the balance of power.
08:23Because to date, they've been a party of protest.
08:25If they end up in the parliament with an important role in who governs and how, they can't just be
08:31a party of protest.
08:33They're suddenly a party that has a role in government in some form.
08:37Retired ABC election analyst Anthony Green, great to get your insights on this this morning.
