Is history repeating itself in Labor’s fortress state of Victoria?
At the 1990 federal election, Bob Hawke’s Labor government had a near-death experience when it lost nine seats in Victoria. A furious Hawke laid the blame squarely at the feet of John Cain’s state Labor government, which was listing badly in its third term due especially to a series of financial calamities.
Less than six months later, a broken Cain, one of Victoria’s great reformist premiers, resigned. His successor was Joan Kirner, the state’s first woman leader. Despite battling gamely, she was unable to avert a landslide Labor defeat in 1992.
