Why Jacinta Allan's resignation spells bad news for Liberals - and actually gives Labor a fighting chance: PVO

By PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICAL EDITOR, AUSTRALIA Published: 13:29, 1 August 2026 | Updated: 13:29, 1 August 2026 The Victorian Liberals have just lost their most valuable campaign asset. Her name is Jacinta Allan. For months, the opposition's strategy was simple: attach Allan's face to Victoria's debt, infrastructure blowouts, union corruption, youth crime and deteriorating services, then let an exhausted electorate do the rest. The polls suggested it was working reasonably well. Allan embodied a government that looked tired, defensive and incapable of correcting itself. A recent Newspoll gave the Victorian Premier the highest dissatisfaction rating ever recorded - 71 per cent. But now she's gone, and conservatives celebrating Labor's humiliation should pause to recognise the danger that goes with that. Ben Carroll hasn't erased Labor's record. But he has changed the nature of the election campaign. What was shaping up as a referendum on Allan's and Dan Andrews' legacies, is now a contest against a more capable politician with four months to appropriate the opposition's best arguments. Elections are choices, not court judgments. Voters can find a government guilty of failure and still refuse to install the opposition as a replacement. Especially with One Nation in the mix. Labor only needs to convince enough voters that Carroll represents a safer pair of hands than would be the case if they handed government to the Liberals, perhaps in coalition with One Nation. 'The Victorian Liberals have just lost their most valuable campaign asset. Her name is Jacinta Allan,' writes Peter van Onselen. (Allan is pictured as she arrives to give her resignation speech) That is the strategy behind Labor's decision to install Carroll and a last minute Premier, remembering that the state election is in November. A royal commission into the construction sector, a special prosecutor, stronger powers for the anti-corruption watchdog and the abolition of group voting tickets for the upper-house all amount to an extraordinary repudiation of the government Carroll has inherited. They also demonstrate political rat cunning. Carroll is conceding attacks Labor resisted under Allan for years, then claiming the solutions as his own. That's despite the fact that he was her deputy, and has sat in the cabinet since Andrews was Premier. The new leader is effectively campaigning against his own government, in the hope that by doing so he can secure an unlikely victory. A mandate to keep cleaning up Labor's own mess. Carroll is acknowledging just enough failure to validate the public's anger, and he also wants credit for removing the leader who carries most of the blame for current and past mistakes. But if his reforms are so necessary now, he must explain why he didn't act earlier. Why he was prepared to sit idly by as Andrews and then Allan acted as they did. Because that failure is a failure of character, not to mention unbecoming of someone who wants to lead. But the Liberals will make a mistake if they think repeating that fact is a complete campaign strategy. Carroll will be harder to defeat than Allan would have been. He's a more natural political communicator, comes from Labor's Right faction and appears less captive to the ideological preoccupations of its dominant Left faction.  Ben Carroll (pictured) presents a new challenge for Liberals  He can speak about integrity, crime, business and financial discipline with greater credibility than his predecessor, even if his record gives voters reason to doubt the conversion. If the Liberals simply insist nothing has changed, Carroll needs only a handful of visible departures from the Andrews-Allan era to make the opposition look unreasonable. Its task therefore is not to deny change, but to distinguish between a simple change of presentation and consequential change. The royal commission is the immediate example. Dismissing it as a sham before its structure is known risks allowing Carroll to pose as the only leader serious about uncovering corruption, as ridiculous as that might sound. Giving him unqualified credit, however, would be equally foolish. The smarter response is to establish clear tests. The commissioner must be independent. The terms must cover political decisions, not merely criminal or union conduct. Documents must be preserved, ministers available to give evidence, and the inquiry free to follow that evidence into the Premier's office, cabinet and the Labor Party. Daily Mail Political Editor Peter van Onselen (pictured) says Jacinta Allan's resignation actually gives Labor a fighting chance  If Carroll accepts those conditions, Victoria benefits. If he resists them, the claim of renewal collapses under its own weight very quickly. The same approach should be applied right across government. Rather than merely chanting that Carroll is responsible for the past, the Liberals must force him to reveal how much of it he intends to preserve. What expenditure will he cut to arrest the climb towards $200 billion in net debt? Which taxes and regulations will he remove to stop businesses looking interstate? What measurable changes will he deliver on youth crime, hospitals, schools and roads? Carroll's answers will show whether Victoria has a new government in substance or simply a new salesman. Then let the 'it's time' factor also do its work. But this is also a test for Jess Wilson. Since becoming leader she's brought urgency to a Liberal Party that spent way too long behaving as though opposition were a permanent appointment. Visiting all 88 electorates was impressive, as was Liberal headquarters' speed in exploiting Labor's early mistakes under Carroll. However, tactical sharpness isn't a governing strategy. Wilson can't win simply by proving that Labor deserves to lose. She must persuade Victorians that her side is ready to govern. That requires a disciplined division of responsibilities. Wilson should offer the optimistic case for change alongside a credible plan to repair the state. Her colleagues should prosecute Labor's record and prevent Carroll from escaping collective responsibility for decisions made around a cabinet table he sat at. They must also resist panic if Labor receives a new leader bounce. Kevin Rudd's return in 2013 improved Labor's position federally but it didn't reverse the result. A honeymoon is not a realignment unless the opposition helps turn it into one. The fractured right makes discipline even more important for the Liberals. One Nation will attack Labor without any need to demonstrate that it can run Victoria. The Liberals don't have that luxury. If they match One Nation in adopting a protest party approach they'll surrender the aura of competence that decides elections when major parties face off. Carroll's attempted pathway to victory is clear enough: adopt enough opposition policies to blur the choice and ask voters to choose controlled renovation from within (under new leadership) over wholesale repair that risks backfiring, especially if the threat of a coalition government including One Nation looms large. It's insanely audacious and deeply cynical, but it just might also be effective. Carroll doesn't deserve a clean slate, but if the opposition campaigns as though Jacinta Allan is still the Premier it may just hand him one.