🔴 UPDATED: 9:49am, 28 July, 2026
Jacinta Allan has resigned as Victorian Premier, quitting today shortly before a party room meeting where she would have faced a spill motion, and clearing the way for Deputy Premier Ben Carroll to take the state's top job.
For a full day Allan vowed to fight, daring her party to vote her out. In the end she went before they could and barely four months out from the November state election. Carroll, who declared his challenge on Monday only six weeks after publicly ruling out moving against her, is set to be elected unopposed unless another candidate steps forward. Allan said on this morning he would have her "unqualified support".
"It is clear that the premier has lost the majority of our caucus," Carroll said in a statement confirming his challenge. As such, I have since visited the premier to inform her that I will be nominating for the leadership of the Labor Party."
Only a day earlier, Allan had written to Labor state secretary Steve Staikos formally notifying him of her intention to stand as a candidate if a leadership election was required, a move that threatened to drag the party through a contest of almost two months, because both the Labor caucus and the rank and file membership would have voted. By Tuesday morning that fight was over.
Before that cabinet meeting, a delegation of MPs is understood to have gone to Allan's office to ask her to resign, believed to include Anthony Carbines, Gabrielle Williams, Ingrid Stitt, Luba Grigorovitch and Colin Brooks. Allan said no, and told those ministers they should resign instead.
Allan vowed to fight, then quit before the party room could vote
The collapse was fast. Over the weekend, in her home town of Bendigo, senior Labor figures told the Premier her position could not be guaranteed through to November. She rejected that verdict and dared her opponents to put it to a vote. By Tuesday morning the numbers had become unanswerable.
Some ministers arrived at Monday's cabinet meeting publicly backing her. Asked whether they supported the Premier's refusal to resign, one said simply, "I support the Premier", adding that a meeting had occurred the night before but they did not know who was there or whose views were represented.
Six weeks ago Carroll swore he would not move on Allan
Carroll's move is a sharp reversal. As recently as 15 June he ruled out moving on the Premier. Asked whether he would ask Allan to step aside, he answered "No", and when a reporter challenged him to look her in the eye and say it, he replied that he could. Standing beside Allan that day, having backed her for three years, he went further and invoked his own family.
"I've got a young daughter at home and I couldn't be more proud to make sure she grows up knowing that I supported Jacinta Allan."
Six weeks later, colleagues say repeated requests that he "stand up and give the party its best opportunity" have changed his mind.
One senior Victorian Labor source, quoted by News24's AM Agenda, described the Premier's position as "cooked like a charcoal chicken". The same source said the Deputy Premier was "now actively reconsidering his position after ministerial and backbench colleagues have asked him" to stand.
The polling driving Labor's panic
The trigger for the panic is a set of numbers Labor MPs cannot argue with. A Resolve Political Monitor survey had Liberal leader Jess Wilson well clear as preferred premier on 43%, with Allan back on 24%. With four sitting weeks left before Victorians vote in November, MPs decided they could not carry those figures into a campaign.
Ben Carroll sat around the table for everything Labor is now running from
Carroll is not an outsider riding in to clean up. He's been a minister without a break since 2017, first under Daniel Andrews and then under Allan, and he held Roads and Road Safety from 2020 to 2022 and Public Transport from 2020 to 2023, the years the Big Build ran hottest. Since October 2023 he's been Allan's deputy, bound by cabinet solidarity to defend all of it.
That's the case the Coalition is already making. As one federal MP put it, Carroll "plays an integral role" in the government and changing leaders "isn't going to make any difference". On the Big Build, the cost blowouts and the decisions that drove Labor's numbers into the ground, Carroll owns the same record Allan does. It's the same government and the same policies. Only the jockey has changed.
Carroll's answer to that is a short list of differences: he is understood to favour a royal commission into the Big Build, and has indicated he believes he can settle the pay dispute with public school teachers and rebuild the party's economic credentials.
The Big Build scandal hanging over the whole fight
Whoever comes out on top inherits a government still bleeding from the Big Build scandal. An integrity report into the state's major projects program examined alleged corrupt and criminal conduct on Big Build sites and pointed to about $15 billion in cost blowouts, with warnings that money had flowed to criminal organisations. Allan was referred to IBAC over the program, and as the minister responsible for transport infrastructure during the years in question, she owned it personally. She apologised for the criminal conduct uncovered but ruled out a royal commission, a stance understood to have put her at odds with MPs who believed the scandal could not be contained without one. The Liberals have said they will call one if they win in November.
That split is now out in the open. Environment minister Enver Erdogan, asked on Tuesday morning whether there should be a royal commission into Big Build corruption, answered "Yes", saying there was "a case for change" and the state needed "stronger action on crime and corruption".
Her defenders held the line until it broke
Allan did not lack defenders to the end. Attorney General Sonya Kilkenny said the Premier had her "full support" and dismissed the destabilisation as "idle gossip" that "doesn't help Victorians", who she said were "hurting right now". On Tuesday morning the loyalists were still holding: energy minister Lily D'Ambrosio said Allan had her full support, and retiring former health minister Mary-Anne Thomas said she would not back a spill because Allan had "served this state with real leadership". Shortly after, the Premier resigned.
Carroll says he is doing it to stop One Nation
Carroll's justification for the strike is telling. He argued the stakes were too high not to step up, warning that a Labor loss in November would open the door to "a three-way coalition between the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation". The man moving on his own Premier is pitching himself as the last thing standing between a surging One Nation and a seat at the table in Victoria.
A no confidence motion lands tomorrow
The timing could hardly be worse for Labor. Parliament returns on Tuesday, the day after the delegation moved on Allan, and the Liberal opposition will lodge a motion of no confidence in the government. Opposition leader Jess Wilson said she had "no confidence in this Labor government" and invited the Labor MPs "doing the numbers against the Premier" to join the Coalition, vote for the motion and "bring on an early election". Federal Liberal senator James Paterson has argued a change of leader will not revive Labor's chances.
Allan leaves office with Labor trailing badly and its polling collapsing. Carroll inherits the same numbers, the same Big Build scandal and the same four months to turn it around.
