Won’t someone just tell Ben Carroll to stop?

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Far from “saving the furniture”, Labor’s vote seems to drop further the more Victorians get to know him. The post Won’t someone just tell Ben Carroll to stop? appeared first on…

It was Jess Wilson’s campaign bus — the “Jess Express” — that crashed into a shop awning in Victoria on Friday, a common campaign mishap that nevertheless caused the Liberal leader to “grimace”.

But it’s Ben Carroll’s campaign that is starting to look like a slow-motion car crash, two weeks ahead of the election, with Labor’s Victorian primary vote hitting new lows in the polls — 18% according to DemosAU this week, down 7% since September, in what might become a “wipeout” result. It’s believed Carroll could even lose his own seat of Niddrie, as he moves to defend once-safe Labor territory like Kororoit, in a campaign that is perceived to be about “saving the furniture”, and may not even manage to do that.

It was me who grimaced when I saw the Ben Bus drive past on Saturday. “New premier, new direction” it says on the back, alongside a picture of Carroll and a wooden smile.

No wonder the best his own friends could come up with when asked to sing his praises by The Age was a “backhanded compliment”, in one of the more brutal political headlines of the year (with friends like these, etc). Carroll has a difficult role here, taking over the leadership of a tired and scandal-plagued government four months before an election. But far from “saving the furniture”, Labor’s vote seems to drop further the more Victorians get to know him.

The past fortnight has seen key unions turn on Labor, with the Australian Services Union running ads claiming “Ben Lied” (over an agreement he tore up to lift a cap on council rates and therefore staff wages). The Electrical Trades Union is diverting campaign funds to instead support witnesses to the royal commission into the Big Build scandal, called by Carroll upon taking office, with the ETU citing polling that put Labor in a worse position than under former premier Jacinta Allan. The public sector, education and firefighters’ unions have also withdrawn support, with the latter in fact urging Victorians to “put Labor last”.

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