In challenging times, Victoria needs more from a leader under pressure

March 21, 2026 — 5:00am

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“We just have to keep the show on the road.”

This remark, from an anonymous senior figure in the Victorian Labor Party’s Right faction, came in a week when the steady months-long drip of questions about what Premier Jacinta Allan knew and when in relation to CFMEU conduct on Big Build sites became a torrent.

As the political and actual costs of that scandal become clearer, and as Victoria’s debts mount, “the show” becomes more and more difficult to maintain.

This week’s revelations that the Department of Transport and Planning presided over a $136.8 million blowout on the implementation of the myki ticketing system prompted a government spokesperson to respond with the usual boilerplate about “delivering the projects Victorians need”.

But are we are getting value for money? The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office says running the myki scheme could absorb 26¢ of every $1 it collects in fare revenue, when schemes around the world cost far less. Who in this government is prepared to explain why that is? While they’re at it, they could explain why another auditor-general report this week revealed the government is still stiffing small businesses on payment times at an industrial level.

One Labor MP contacted by The Age this week believed that it would only take one more genuinely bad story to precipitate a challenge to Allan’s leadership.

Labor’s experience of the Rudd-Gillard years and the spectacle of the Victorian Liberals’ revolving-door leadership turmoil mean there are high procedural and political hurdles facing any would-be challenger. But with just eight parliamentary sitting weeks before the election on November 28, time is also a factor.

While polling published by this masthead, showed only one in five of those asked preferred Allan as premier, far behind her Coalition opponent, Jess Wilson, it also highlighted that large numbers of Victorians remain undecided when it comes to leadership.

It is into this atmosphere that a challenge from far beyond Victoria – and indeed Australia – has landed to upset all calculations.

Liberals can’t lay a finger on Labor. Now there’s someone who can – Pauline Hanson

Chip Le GrandState political editor

State political editor

For a government whose reputation rests increasingly on building infrastructure – even as questions mount over billions cut from funding for health and education – it is difficult to imagine a more disruptive event than the war on Iran, which has seen that country close the shipping lane through which a significant chunk of the world’s oil and gas flows.

As our reporters Daniella White and Patrick Hatch write this weekend, the fuel price shock created by the war affects prices and availability of steel, concrete and bitumen, as well as fuel itself, putting new strains on the state’s already hyperextended budget. Tony Aloisio, of road construction industry group the Australian Flexible Pavement Association, says it could add millions to the cost of North East Link alone.

Predicting when the Iran conflict and its effects might end is a fool’s errand. But talk of “scallywags” aside, Allan and those considering a challenge to her leadership know that should rising prices for fuel and fertilisers result in major mark-ups on supermarket staples and even a change to the state’s already weak AA credit rating, the opposition’s message that Labor financial mismanagement is to blame will be amplified.

“Food production is heavily reliant on diesel,” dairy farmer Mark Billing told our regional editor, Benjamin Preiss. “Farmers and farm businesses can’t keep absorbing these costs without passing them on to consumers.”

‘The last thing you want’: Victorian budget, credit rating threatened by Iran war

In the past, questions over Allan’s position and polling have been muted by the absence of a functioning opposition. But she remains personally identified with many tainted portfolios, from the Suburban Rail Loop to the Commonwealth Games. Would her deputy Ben Carroll, from Labor’s Right faction, or current Transport Infrastructure Minister Gabrielle Williams, from the dominant Left, be able to gain some separation from those debates and credibly promise a reformed approach to the state’s finances?

These are the questions that Labor MPs in marginal seats across the state will be asking as the days to November count down. All of them know that “the show” is larger than any individual political leader.

David Hayward, RMIT emeritus professor of public policy, likened the current budget volatility to Victoria’s financial crisis of the early 1990s, with the state again facing high debt while interest rates rise to combat global inflation.

In those days, Joan Kirner succeeded John Cain after his three election victories. Then, as now, there was controversy over the public transport ticketing system. Could history be about to repeat itself?

It seems unlikely, not least because the major parties no longer enjoy a duopoly when it comes to voting intentions.

The pandemic created a disengagement from conventional politics, the effects of which are still being reckoned with. That new reality will be highly apparent at this weekend’s poll in South Australia.

If Allan wants to keep her show on the road she will need to drastically improve her steering, and the conditions are only getting harder.

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