Rita Panahi:
Let’s bring in the panel. Joining me now is Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow Colleen Harkin and Women’s Forum Australia Head of Advocacy, Stephanie Bastiaan. Stephanie, I’ll start with you. Jacinta Allan leaves behind a mess. Ben Carroll has 123 days before the election to bring the party together.
Stephanie Bastiaan:
I’m not sure that he’ll be able to convince the Victorian people that a change of face is going to be a change of government. Having said that, he has just announced a royal commission into the corruption on the build site. So that is, I suppose, a tick in the right direction. But in terms of his ministry and everything else, he’s really going to have to think carefully about what he puts on the table. He’s going to have to be very blunt and honest about the crime rates, about the government waste, about the government manipulation that Jacinta Allan has fronted day in and day out. And he’s going to have to address these if he wants to convince the Victorian public that the Labour government isn’t just a brand new face on a dead horse.
Rita Panahi:
Colleen, she may be the most delusional politician in this country. Just have a listen to this.
Jacinta Allan:
I will leave knowing I made a difference, fighting for working families, making life easier, safer, more affordable, as one part of a proud Labour team.
Rita Panahi:
Incredible. She said that with a straight face.
Colleen Harkin:
Hey, I know. I think she’s living in a different state to me.
Rita Panahi:
Different planet to the rest of us.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. I listened to that and I just sort of think, where has she been and how could she honestly say that with a straight face?
Rita Panahi:
Does she think her party essentially forced her to step down because she’s doing a great job? Because this is across the board. Obviously Labour voters are absolutely appalled by her time in office. Otherwise, she would be fighting the election coming in 123 days.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. Well, she’s the most disapproved premier ever in Australian history.
Rita Panahi:
Incredible.
Colleen Harkin:
71%. The only person ever to have a higher disapproval rating was Keating at 75. So when you’ve got that level of dissatisfaction, you can’t turn around and say, “I’ve done a great job.” It’s just an outrageous thing to stand there and claim.
Rita Panahi:
And perhaps some of what she said today, you’d let go through to the keeper if there was at least, Stephanie, some acknowledgement of the mistakes she’s made, some acknowledgement of the harms she’s caused. If she said something about the crime rate that was actually accurate, if she said something about the debt we are facing and the cost of living pressures, the energy prices. But there was no acknowledgement of any errors at all. It was just one boast, Stephanie, after another.
Stephanie Bastiaan:
Not an apology. There won’t be an ounce of sympathy out there from the public. Everyone knows that she’s been pushed out, she knows she’s been pushed out, and no amount of blustering from that podium is going to change the fact that her legacy has been terrible for Victorians. And as a result, she’s been sacked by her own party a few short months out from the election. They didn’t trust her. I mean, Ben Carroll has tied himself to the front of a freight train that’s going to crash, but he’s decided to do that because the result is perceived to be so much worse with Jacinta Allan there.
Rita Panahi:
Now Stephanie, I want to play you what she said about championing women and women’s health.
Jacinta Allan:
I want to finish on women’s health. I’m a woman, I’m a mom. I’ve lived with endometriosis and I almost lost my daughter at birth. You all know I’m a bit of a crier, so. These experiences not only defined who I am, they defined what I believe government should do for working women. For too long, women’s pain was dismissed. I was one of those women. I was just a girl. And if I want to be remembered for one thing, it’s this. II led a government that listened to girls about their health.
Rita Panahi:
Stephanie, what’s your response to that?
Stephanie Bastiaan:
I felt a hint of sympathy about her own personal experiences, especially losing her daughter. But watching that, I actually feel outraged because she did, she spent millions of dollars on an inquiry into women’s health and allowed men to participate, anyone who identified as feminine or a woman. The outcome of that, those dollars resulted in an inquiry with findings that talked about biological stereotypes. What is that? That only women can give birth or that men can as well that’s stopping men who identify as women from receiving maternity care? I mean, the whole thing is a joke. She will actually go down in history as a worse female leader than Julia Gillard who destroyed the Sex Discrimination Act and women’s rights. Her legacy is women being housed with violent male offenders in female prisons.
Rita Panahi:
Mm-hmm.
Stephanie Bastiaan:
Her legacy is girls in bathrooms no longer having the privacy without having to share with their male peers, losing sport. She has been a shocking female leader for women and she’s pulled the ladder right up behind her.
Rita Panahi:
Now, Victoria has also led the nation’s housing crisis. Much of what we are seeing nationally now after the May budget, we’ve been seeing in this state for years. But Jacinta Allan couldn’t be prouder of her record.
Jacinta Allan:
I said getting millennials into homes would be the fight of my life. That fight is incomplete. But my reforms are no longer a dream, they are the law. Removing these laws an inch and you make housing more expensive. It’s that simple.
Rita Panahi:
Colleen, it’s that blindness, that lack of perspective, lack of respect for the objective truth that to me is the most alarming. She really thinks what she’s done for housing in this state is the way forward and any deviation from it is going to be a disaster.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. The astounding part of this is that Victoria has so many regulations and they’ve made doing business here so hard and development so difficult that that has added to the cost of building houses and for getting people in their first home buyer. So to sort of stand there and say that she’s been a champion of this cause, she may well have spouted the words, but the actions did the exact opposite of what she’s claiming.
She keeps talking about what she inherited. I’m not sure whether she means she inherited that from Dan Andrews or whether that was 11 years ago because either of those are not okay. You had 11 years to fix things that you inherited or you inherited from Dan Andrews and so you should have done something about that scenario. So we’re still sort of hearing this blaming someone else, even after all of this time that she’s had an opportunity to do some things about the problems that we’ve got.
Rita Panahi:
Now let’s talk about the impact One Nation has had in this state and on the decision of the premier to step down. Victorian Trades Hall Council Secretary Luke Hilakari told Labour delegates last Friday that One Nation are on track to win up to 34 seats. Stephanie, polling this month also found One Nation leading both major parties with a primary vote of 27%. Do you see their impact in Victoria and some of these polls we’ve seen recently leading to this decision today?
Stephanie Bastiaan:
Oh, certainly. I mean, One Nation was the talk of the Federal Labour Conference we’ve just had here in Adelaide. They’re terrified and they should be, because while Labour runs around boasting about being the party of workers, they are taxing and putting reforms in red tape against the employers that pay pay rises and everything else to their employees. It’s pitting workers against their bosses, it’s destroying businesses and it’s also destroying the likelihood of employees doing better. So I think that without any sort of serious reform, IR reform, wage reform, tax reform from the major parties, One Nation’s going to continue to rise and no amount of shitcanning Pauline in the papers and in the headlines is going to change that.
Rita Panahi:
That is so right. Every time they attack her and the attacks are unfair or based on half truths, it boosts her popularity. They still haven’t learned that after 30 years.
But I want to ask you about Ben Carroll. He’s from the right faction of Labour. The socialists left control the party, so it is highly unusual for him now to be leading the party into an election. How much of an impact will we have? We talked about how unpopular Jacinta Allan has been. Will we see a boost in Labor’s primary vote with a new leader?
Colleen Harkin:
Look, I think it’s going to be an interesting time because he has already announced the Royal Commission and increasing the IBAC power. So he’s kind of taken away already some of the sting of those two big issues. He’s apparently already met with the police commissioner. So there’s a couple of big ticket items that he’s trying to manage the voter expectations about who will do what, but at the end of the day, he is just [inaudible 00:09:36]. He’s been there all the way through. He’s been her right hand man. So he’s trying to say, “I’m not just into Allan and I’m not Dan Andrews,” but he’s part of that team.
Rita Panahi:
Well, he almost didn’t become premiered today. They had a screaming match after that press conference, Jacinta Allan. There was media outside hearing shouting. Certain MPs were accusing others of trying to blow up the whole party, blow up the joint. And he saw challenge just with minutes to spare.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. And the other thing is that he already declined the offer a few weeks ago. So is it really a case that he’s not really supported by them or he doesn’t have the ticker? He finally got permission from his daughter, presumably.
Rita Panahi:
Yes, I remember that.
Colleen Harkin:
So there’s all these machinations that we’re not usually… The public are not usually this privy to internal Labour Party machinations and how things play out. But it is an interesting time as to how much support he actually has because Sonya Kilkenny only withdrew her application with moments to spare. So we’ll see.
Rita Panahi:
That would have been a disaster for Labour.
Colleen Harkin:
Oh, sure. Yeah.
Rita Panahi:
That would have been an absolute disaster to have weeks of this infighting, determining who the leader is. And so they’ve seen that off. I think the liberals have got something to worry about here. I think Jacinta Allan was a anchor around the necks of Victorian Labour. And with her gone, it may not see a significant boost to their support, but they will have a lot of disgruntled voters giving them perhaps another shot.
Colleen Harkin:
A shot. Yeah.
Rita Panahi:
Because one of the things in this state, no one really knows who this Ben Carroll is. He’s been her deputy, but I think if we went around and polled people in the street and showed a picture of him, 90% wouldn’t have a clue who he is.
Colleen Harkin:
No.
Rita Panahi:
And I think that works in his favour.
Colleen Harkin:
Yeah. Yeah. And he’s been the minister for education. And so it’s been a very specific portfolio that most people don’t have too much access to. He’s dealt with the teacher strikes reasonably well and their demands and things. So he’s from the right faction of Labour, so he’s not this hard left antagonistic social [inaudible 00:11:46].
Rita Panahi:
And that’s what they will be trying to impress upon the Victorian electorate. Colleen Harkin, Stephanie Bastiaan, thank you so much for your time tonight.
This transcript of Colleen Harkin speaking on The Rita Panahi Show News24 from 28 July 2026 has been edited for clarity.
