This is part one in an explainer series about the important issues in the Victorian election.
Whether state or federal, every election tells a story.
In Victoria 2010 the story was — according to received wisdom — one of a Liberal-National coalition so used to the opposition benches that its narrow win caught even the incoming premier by surprise. Four years later, it was the reckoning inspired by that lack of preparedness for government that had the Liberal-Nationals making history as the first one-term government in the state for nearly 60 years.
In 2018 it was the Danslide, when the gravitational pull of traditional bread-and-butter issues threw Victorians’ disdain for law-and-order, fear-based politics into sharp relief (African gangs, anyone?) and, in the process, delivered Andrews a thumping victory. And notwithstanding rumours of a tightening race, the prevailing consensus is that the Andrews government is most likely to walk it in on November 26.
Intuitively, the story of this election might therefore lie in voter recognition of Daniel Andrews’ achievements or commitments across infrastructure, social reform (think family violence, mental health, assisted dying) and progress on Indigenous reconciliation.
But to anyone with a nodding familiarity of the legion of (current) transparency and corruption probes into the government — its exodus of senior ministers, the attacks on environmental activists, spiralling debt, not to mention a health system on its knees and the lack of infrastructure in growth corridors — that is not the story.
To help make sense of all this, from now until election day, Crikey will unpack the key issues confronting the election, beginning today with integrity and transparency.
The big picture on integrity in Victoria
In a shift from the last election, integrity and accountability in government are firmly on the ballot papers of many voters, who — unprompted — have consistently ranked it as one of the most important issues in the election.
Analysts say this is probably unsurprising, given the incomparable deftness with which the former Morrison government gave voters a crash course on the importance of convention and transparency in a functioning liberal democracy.
But it’s also front of mind because of the slew of embarrassing investigations into the Labor government by IBAC — the state’s corruption watchdog — and the Victorian ombudsman.
These extend to rampant branch stacking, allegedly corrupt property dealings in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, the government’s relationship with the United Firefighters’ Union and — as emerged last week — Andrews’ apparent involvement in awarding two grants worth millions of dollars to the Health Workers’ Union on the eve of the last election.
Add to this the misuse of public funds in the red shirts scandal, independent calls to urgently reform the state’s freedom of information system and separate probes into the politicisation of the public service under Andrews by the ombudsman and the public service commissioner.
The premier has, as a matter of public record, been interviewed by IBAC no fewer than four times. There well could be other investigations on foot, but we simply don’t know about them courtesy of the singular inability of the watchdog to conduct public hearings absent “exceptional circumstances”.
And therein lies voter angst about potential corruption and lack of integrity in Victoria. Compounding this, recent debate on the proposed federal anti-corruption bill has sheeted home to Victorians the marked limitations of their watchdog, which extends to its constrained jurisdiction to investigate soft corruption, including pork-barrelling.
Why it matters: while the opposition is unlikely to carve any particular advantage out of this state of affairs, given Matthew Guy’s implication in a donor scandal involving his now former adviser Mitch Catlin, and his forever bond with lobsters, it could spell trouble for the government elsewhere.
In several seats and in the upper house, independents, teals and minor parties are running hard on integrity, seemingly buoyed by the results delivered at the federal election. Given the preference system in Victoria, anything could happen.
What’s on the table: the opposition has advanced a wide range of integrity reforms, including openness to calls to make funding of accountability bodies independent of government. (See, however, disclaimer above.) The Andrews government, meanwhile, has not responded to that call, and has indicated little willingness to move beyond its recent (and generally well received) reforms to donations laws.
The bottom line: it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the result might be one of voter pushback against what Princeton University Professor Kim Lane Scheppele calls “democratic erosion by law”: the weakening of liberal democracy from within via measures that, for instance, limit the power of oversight bodies and checks on executive power.
