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One of the most audacious undertakings in Victorian politics is Jacinta Allan’s attempt to repackage her 12-year-old Labor administration as a government of new solutions.
“New solutions”, a buzz phrase Allan used seven times in her first speech to her caucus colleagues to kick off this election year, is littered through her public statements, parliamentary statements and press releases. London to a brick says it will be a campaign slogan in November.
When you have been in government, as Allan has, for 23 of the past 27 years, it requires a stretch of imagination and no small amount of chutzpah to sell yourself as bringing fresh ideas to the same workplace you’ve been swiping into since last century.
It is also difficult for any government, whether young or old, to come up with policies that are genuinely new.
So far, Allan’s new solutions include authorising pharmacists to dispense contraceptive pills without a doctor’s script and diagnose and treat ADHD – ideas both pioneered in Queensland – and a “Servo Saver” app to help motorists monitor fuel prices, which is a variant of Western Australia’s Fuel Watch scheme introduced in 2001.
Free public transport for everyone for a month is certainly novel – previously Victoria has only opened its myki gates to kids and on the weekend to senior cardholders – although Queensland went near enough with its 50¢ fares. A pressing question for Allan and her Treasurer Jaclyn Symes is whether the $70 million freebie can be extended beyond April 30.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson’s big idea announced this week – to provide financial and fast-track training incentives to recruit experienced police from the UK and New Zealand – is another policy import from WA. The most creative thing about it is the accounting used to put the cost of hiring an additional 3000 police at just $565 million. The government in 2017 costed the same number of extra cops at $2 billion.
Whether ideas are something old, new, borrowed or blue matters less than whether they will work. As German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe noted: “Everything has been thought of before but the problem is to think of it again.”
The same adage applies to newspaper journalists. Many years ago, then ABC chairman David Hill provided a withering retort to a certain scribe by feigning surprise at his presence at a press conference. “I thought you died years ago and they were just recycling your columns!” Hill quipped. If, while reading this one, you are getting a sense of deja vu, please drop a polite note to my editor.
In the meantime, it is worth reflecting on this week’s changes to Allan’s executive team which, whether by accident or design, remind us that governments – even stable, long-terms ones – are constantly changing.
The impending retirements of three experienced ministers – Mary-Anne Thomas, Danny Pearson and Gayle Tierney – when added to the already announced departure of Natalie Hutchins, an OG member of Daniel Andrews’ first cabinet – will remove a combined 60 years of parliamentary service and experience in 36 portfolio areas from the government.
It also opened four frontbench vacancies which, after the customary factional machinations, were filled by Luba Grigorovitch, Michaela Settle, Paul Hamer and Paul Edbrooke; a former union boss, a sheep farmer, an engineer and a teacher who have been waiting between four and 12 years for a crack at a ministerial post.
Pearson, in reflecting on his time in parliament, channelled Elton John. “It’s like a circle of life,” he said. “It is now my turn to give someone else a go. We have got a lot of energy. We have got a lot of really bright young people who want to have that opportunity.”
Thomas also spoke of making way for young, energetic MPs. While she had some difficult times as the health minister of a government running out of money, her post-political ambitions can’t be faulted – she says she plans to spend more time with her mum and cheering on the Saints.
If you look at the team photo taken of Labor’s original cabinet in December 2014, only two of 22 freshly minted ministers are still in office – Jacinta Allan and Lily D’Ambrosio. It is a ratio both remarkable and unsurprising when you consider the demands and restrictions of ministerial life. It is also sad to be reminded of two staunchly principled Labor women who died in office, Jane Garrett and Fiona Richardson.
If Allan is to keep true to her slogan, she needs more than fresh faces around her cabinet table. So far, her boldest policy since taking over as premier has been to legislate a right to work from home. The idea for this new trick came not from a Gen-Z adviser but rather, an old dog.
Kane Chapman, a political strategist in the premier’s private office who dates back to the Bracks era, is the fellow who in the aftermath of Peter Dutton’s disastrous federal election campaign is credited within Labor circles with first uttering the words: “Why don’t we just legislate work from home?”
Business owners and constitutional lawyers could give Chapman plenty of reasons why no government should, but in Victoria, the promise of spending an extra two days a week in tracky dacks is being touted as a solution to the rising cost of living, spiralling global oil crisis, flagging productivity and poor mental health.
Who in Goethe’s day would have thought that?
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
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