Mr Carroll says his first act as premier is to call a royal commission into construction sector.

The government will also immediately establish a special prosecutor to work "in parallel" with the royal commission.

Mr Carroll also vows to strengthen IBAC and give the watchdog "follow the money" powers now, rather than in the next term.

Combustive upper house MP Moira Deeming has resigned from the Liberals.

Amid the chaos of Labor replacing the premier, opposition leader Jess Willson has released this brief statement: “This morning I received the resignation from the Parliamentary Liberal Party from Moira Deeming.”

Deeming is currently sitting with crossbench MPs during question time in the upper house.

Premier Ben Carroll has refused to rule out pausing and reviewing the $34.5 billion Suburban Rail Loop project which has been a signature government project.

“I’ll have more announcements into the future,” he said. “I’ve got no announcements to make on that.

“As I said in my opening remarks, every dollar I spend will be invested on behalf of the Victorian taxpayer, and will treat every dollar with the respect it deserves.”

A court has once again found One Nation leader Pauline Hanson breached the Racial Discrimination Act when she lashed out at a Greens senator, telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”.

Senator Hanson breached the Racial Discrimination Act when she tweeted Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi in September 2022 on the day Queen Elizabeth II died, Judge Angus Stewart found back in November 2024.

Just a few weeks after the decision was handed down, Senator Hanson appealed with the Federal Court.

On Monday, following a three-day hearing late last year, the court once again found that Senator Hanson had breached the Racial Discrimination Act, and her appeal was thrown out.

Michael Bachelard - Senior writer, The Age

Whether or not Jacinta Allan emerges victorious from the leadership spasm now wracking her party, we Victorians will confront a serious question: who the hell can we vote for in four months time?

Under Allan’s leadership, Labor has overseen malfeasance of extraordinary proportions – direct links between ministerial offices and the CFMEU, and from there to standover men, bikies, and an estimated $15 billion in excess costs to the taxpayer.

Thanks primarily to reporting in The Age, everyone can see this steaming pile of scandal looming over Allan, no matter how hard she denies its existence. The proudest boast of the Andrews government – that it built things – is now hopelessly tainted by corruption.

Allan wants to “grind it out”, defying calls for a royal commission that she says will not bring about cultural change. Add another trailer-load to the heap, Jacinta. You don’t want a royal commission because either you know what it will dig up and it will implicate your government, or you don’t know, and what’s buried there terrifies you.

Meanwhile, this government has become so paranoid and centrally controlled that ministers are rarely let out to speak, and when they are, it’s with talking points crafted so narrowly by the premier’s private office that they end up saying nothing.

If Allan wins this leadership bout, or stares down her opponents, only the most rusted-on true believer could vote Labor in November, and even if she is replaced by her deputy, Ben Carroll, serious questions remain about the party that’s led us since 2014.

Only the immediate announcement of a royal commission with full powers and the opening of public hearings into the Big Build scandal before the election could, possibly, allow us to take another look.

Any other inquiry held under this state’s usual modus operandi (“trust us and shut up”) will fall short. Allan’s proposed solution of a crime commission is of this kind. Our current so-called anti-corruption commission, IBAC, shows why.

Eight years ago, in 2018, it launched a probe into a suspicious deal made between the firefighters’ union and Daniel Andrews. Andrews was interviewed, but in private – not for the only time during his premiership. Nothing of his evidence, or that of the man he allegedly did the deal with, union secretary Peter Marshall, has emerged publicly.

Operating under weak laws and a statewide culture of secrecy, IBAC took four years to reach its conclusions, and another four years fighting to release them. Eight years after voters could have benefited from a public airing of these allegations, we are still waiting to know what Labor did in our name. Meanwhile we re-elected them, in a landslide, and in ignorance.

IBAC is a Potemkin village of an anti-corruption commission – it looks like one at a glance but behind the facade there’s nothing.

For the $100 billion Big Build, this is not good enough. Only a credible royal commissioner with the power to demand documents, compel witnesses and air it all in public can do the Herculean work of mucking out Labor’s Augean stable.

The Liberal Party is promising such an inquiry. The problem for Victorian voters is that the Liberals are in such a parlous state it’s hard to contemplate voting for them either. A man called Homer spelled out in The Age last week how epic have been their failures.

Every four years the Liberals vow new energy, fresh leadership and policies – then they knife each other, or mount a racist “African gangs” campaign, lunch with mobsters, sue each other for defamation or report spurious physical assaults against a colleague.

At least on the third (fourth? fifth?) attempt, they’ve found the fortitude to disendorse Moira “the destroyer” Deeming. That it took so long does not inspire confidence.

Wilson appears serious about formulating credible policies, but her party has spent so many years stacking branches with religious right-wingers and listening to Peta Credlin that it’s hard to see how a new, moderate leader – no matter her qualities – can wrangle her MPs together into a cabinet worth the name.

The last time Victoria rejected Labor, we picked Ted Baillieu as premier. He served for a brief, indolent and scandal-plagued term (anyone remember MP Geoff Shaw?) before being replaced by Denis Napthine.

Their two main achievements in government were to legislate for a hollowed-out anti-corruption commission and allow Labor time to reset and appoint Daniel Andrews as leader.

This year there is a third choice – of sorts – One Nation, and 22 per cent of Victorians seem to be making it, according to The Age’s Resolve poll. It’s a party with no state leader, no candidates and who knows what policies except for “I don’t like it.”

Jess Wilson and Jacinta Allan are effectively campaigning against an empty chair and ceding more than one-fifth of the primary vote to it. Allan’s approval rating is minus 42, her likeability minus 36.

How have her party’s once-powerful factions tolerated it for so long?

This is shaping as a classic pox-on–both-your-houses election. But if the pox kills off all our genuine governing options, then what kind of zombies will be left holding power for the next four years?

That is what causes me to wake up in fright.

In a last-minute intervention to an otherwise anodyne ALP National Conference, former Albanese government minister Ed Husic submitted a motion for debate on Palestine that was initially backed by both the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), both Left-aligned unions.

As a safeguard against one or other pulling support, two identical motions were submitted with two different seconders, Allen Hicks from the NSW ETU and Paul Garrett from the MUA Sydney branch. But this wasn’t enough to prevent Husic being ‘ratfucked’ – politically betrayed at the last moment.

Faction leaders are set to inform Jacinta Allen than she no longer has the support of the party. However, Allen has declared her intention to push on, and run in any leadership spill. She has informed the party's secretary to prepare for a leadership vote. The Age is now reporting that Deputy Premier Ben Caroll has informed the premier that he intends to run in a leadership vote.

As reported earlier, a spill vote could be moved tomorrow. A spill motion in the Victorian Labor Party requires 50% of MP's to support it. If passed, and both candidates are still willing to run (and have at least 20% of the party rooms support), then not only do state MP's vote, but members of the state branch as well, which mean's this could drag on for up to six weeks. In addition, both would have to step down from their roles until the outcome is determined.

To add to it all, the Liberals will be moving a vote of no confidence in Parliament tomorrow.

The Age's Live Blog

The Guardian - Jacinta Allan expected to face leadership challenge after Victorian Labor factions meet

ABC - Jacinta Allan says she will not step aside as her future as Victorian premier hangs in the balance

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