Allan’s apparent unpopularity with voters – although disputed by her supporters – has reached a point where the Liberal Party is planning to commission campaign billboards and pamphlets with her image alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Two Liberal Party sources familiar with election planning said the idea of linking the two leaders in campaign material came from internal party polling that indicated an association with Allan would drag down Albanese’s vote in Victoria. This masthead has not seen the polling.
Albanese is yet to campaign in Victoria this year despite the state being critical to his re-election prospects.
In a sign of the Albanese government’s plummeting fortunes in Victoria, the party has all but abandoned campaigning in Liberal-held marginal seats such as Casey, Menzies and Deakin, despite nearly snatching them at the last election.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, by contrast, is hopeful of breaking Labor’s stranglehold in the state by gaining half a dozen seats in Melbourne’s eastern and outer suburbs.
The damage to the Labor brand in Victoria, while evidenced most starkly in the Resolve Political Monitor poll taken over two surveys in December and January, was known to party insiders before the results were published on Friday by this masthead.
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Kos Samaras, a former ALP campaign director and political consultant with RedBridge, a polling company that tracks Victorian state politics, said he was not surprised by the collapse in support for the Allan government.
“We could detect it and see it in our groups,” he said. “It aligns with what we are seeing out there.
“There is a group of Melburnians who have copped two seismic economic events – the prolonged lockdowns and 12 interest rate rises. Clearly, something terrible is happening in the outer suburbs. The problem for the government is they have pivoted away from these people.”
While the Resolve Political Monitor poll showed Labor’s primary vote had crashed 6 points in December and January from when the previous poll was taken in November, the Allan government’s longer-term malaise is made clear by the relatively small percentage of respondents – between 11 and 14 per cent over the past year – who believe the outlook for Victoria will get better.
When asked to comment on the poll results, Victorian Deputy Premier Ben Carroll said there was no threat to Allan’s leadership and backed her to turn things around. “Every day she is working for Victorians,” he said. “Every day our cabinet and our colleagues are working hard … for Victorians.”
A senior ALP figure, speaking privately to discuss internal party matters, said the most alarming aspect of the poll was that respondents delivered such a damning verdict after weighing Allan’s performance for more than a year. “If these are the conclusions they are drawing, we are in more shit than a Werribee duck.”
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They added that the state party’s immediate focus was the seat of Werribee, where the retirement of long-serving treasurer Tim Pallas has triggered a byelection to be held on February 8.
Labor has held the seat since 1978 and won it with a 10 per cent margin a little over two years ago. If the party loses it to the Liberals or an independent candidate, there is likely to be a wholesale revision of the party’s priorities, policies and leadership.
Other ALP figures, also speaking on the basis of confidentiality, said the party needed to sharpen its attention on the most pressing problems facing voters: the cost of essential services; a breakdown of law and order evidenced by suburban crime; tobacco wars; weekly street protests; and massive state debt created by Andrews’ signature Big Build infrastructure projects, including the SRL. They also said Allan needed to make a clear break from her predecessor.
“She has to do something different to Dan, and we all know it is three letters: SRL,” one said.
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