As the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, stood alongside the fresh faces in her reshuffled cabinet on Wednesday, she attempted to send her increasingly jaded electorate a blunt message: despite its 12 years in power, her government is – apparently – new. In her opening four-minute preamble to reporters, Allan - whose Labor government will in November seek an unprecedented fourth term - repeated the word 17 times.
In one sentence alone, she referred to her “new cabinet”, “new portfolios”, “new solutions” and “new areas that are going to drive this government forward”. It was followed only by her repetition of her government being a team (six times), united (four) and strong (twice).
While it’s politically clever to recast her long-serving government as renewed but steady at a time of global uncertainty (conditions that more often than not favour incumbents), it’s unclear whether the pitch will be enough to quell leadership rumblings from within, which disrupted the parliamentary sitting weeks in March. The reshuffle followed the resignations of ministers Mary-Anne Thomas, Danny Pearson and Gayle Tierney, who all announced on Monday they would not contest the November election and would step down from cabinet immediately.
They joined Natalie Hutchins, who moved to the backbench in December. Their departures strip more than three decades of experience from the cabinet and leave it almost unrecognisable from the one sworn in alongside Daniel Andrews after the 2014 election.
(Only Allan and Lily D’Ambrosio, the energy minister, remain). The opposition leader, Jess Wilson, was quick to describe the departures as a “shuffle the deck chairs” on the Titanic but large-scale turnover before an election is hardly unprecedented.