For all that has changed in Ben Carroll’s life since he became premier in July – the title, the responsibility, the security detail, the pay rise – his approach to politics remains much the same as it was when the baby-faced 36-year-old ran for parliament for the first time.
Which is why Michael, a resident of Carroll’s north-west Melbourne electorate of Niddrie, opened his front door last month to find himself face-to-face with the premier.
Michael embodied one of the biggest threats to the premier’s re-election hopes. A lifelong Labor supporter, he was planning to vote for One Nation. He was angry about corruption in the CFMEU, accused Labor of promoting “woke” ideology in schools, and admired Pauline Hanson’s blunt style of communication.
Carroll heard him out. Then he pointed to his decision to establish a royal commission into the construction sector and his move to mandate phonics as the method for teaching children to read, while challenging some of Hanson’s more inflammatory claims.
By the time the premier moved on to the next house, Michael was willing to give Labor another go.
“You need to be able to explain to them that the government is on their side,” Carroll says. “These people can be won back, and you win them back ... by showing them that the government can work.”
That may be so. But many of Carroll’s Labor colleagues are sceptical – and the polls suggest they are right – that he has the time or the means to persuade Victorians to give a three-term government one more go.
Whether he can even convince enough of his own constituents is a similar question.
After 12 years in office, Labor is struggling to hang onto its power base. While the Coalition remains its principal opponent, One Nation is polling at 23 per cent, just shy of Labor’s 25 per cent primary vote, as Hanson’s party draws support from voters who once regarded Labor as their natural political home.
For Carroll, who took over from Jacinta Allan just over three months ago, his conversation with Michael also illustrates the difficulty of persuading voters across the state that he represents a break from the government they have grown tired of – and a government in which he has long been a central figure.
Carroll knows he is running out of time to convince Victorians he is different. It’s a point he has reiterated since his first speech as the premier in late July, when he sought to distance himself from Allan and Daniel Andrews.
“I am different,” Carroll tells The Age at Aberfeldie Salumeria, a cafe in his electorate.
“Can you get that through in four months? That’s the challenge.”
We meet four days before the writs are issued, sending his government into caretaker mode and officially kicking off the campaign. He is attentive and unhurried, taking time to shake hands with surprised diners stopping for a mid-morning caffeine hit.
While there are no outward signs of panic, there is also something subdued about him. A hint, perhaps, of the pressure of having just 123 days to make his mark – or lose the job he’s aimed for his entire life.
“This is the fight,” he says. “I was meant to be premier at this time, I was meant to get these changes done, and I am going to fight the election with every fibre of my body.”
There is one obvious complication to his “I’m different” pitch. Carroll has spent most of the past decade sitting around the cabinet tables of the governments he is now retreating from.
But he isn’t shying away from his party’s mistakes. Asked to nominate Labor’s biggest misstep, the reason why support for the government has plummeted since the last election, Carroll volunteers not one but two.
“We needed to live within our means more and be more financially responsible,” he says.
The second mistake, Carroll argues, came after the COVID-19 pandemic, when Labor failed to recognise the toll lengthy lockdowns had taken on Victorians, and consequently missed the opportunity to heal the community.
“We didn’t wrap our arms around the people of Victoria,” Carroll says.
“We went straight back to business as usual, and that was the time, a bit like after a bushfire crisis or a terrorist attack, it’s really a time when you bring the community together.
“I think if we could have our time again, we would be more financially responsible and really wrap our arms around the Victorian community after the pandemic. I feel like that lingers.”
It’s an interesting answer from someone who entered the ministry in 2017 and served under both Andrews and Allan. But a seat at the cabinet table didn’t always mean he had a say in decision-making.
Former Andrews government minister Philip Dalidakis, the premier’s long-time friend and former housemate, says Carroll was regularly sidelined from key calls and “punished” when he did stand up.
“Everything was highly centralised and decided by a very small clique of ministers,” Dalidakis tells The Age.
“Decision-making was restricted to a small clique who would rubber stamp what the premier wanted … It goes against everything that good government represents.”
In 2023, while serving as public transport minister, Carroll was on holiday in Bali when he learnt the Melbourne Airport rail link had been shelved. Even after he became Allan’s deputy, it took a year for him to be included in the Budget and Finance Committee of her cabinet – the renamed Expenditure Review Committee – meaning that, until recently, he had no oversight of key contracts and financial decisions.
With power centralised in the premier’s office under Andrews and then Allan, factional differences inevitably left Carroll on the outer, figuratively and literally. Andrews once made him wait for more than an hour outside his office to hear what ministry he had been allocated in a reshuffle, which their colleagues interpreted as a form of punishment for media reports that positioned Carroll as a future party leader.
But such a distinction is unlikely to matter to voters who have grown weary of Labor after 12 years in office.
According to the latest Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for The Age, Labor’s primary vote is down 12 points from 37 per cent at the 2022 election. Carroll’s personal approval rating has also taken a nine-point dive to minus 11, after voters initially sat on the fence about the replacement for the broadly unpopular Allan.
These numbers underline the mountain Carroll has to climb across the state, but also in his own electorate.
Labor has held Niddrie – which covers Keilor, Niddrie, and Essendon West – for its entire 50-year history. Carroll won a byelection for the seat in 2012. Its residents are old-school Labor: more than a quarter have southern European ancestry, with rates of Catholicism higher than almost any other seat. (Carroll has recently returned to church, describing himself as a “progressive Catholic” who finds the ritual “meditative”.)
He currently holds a comfortable 6.7 per cent margin. But senior Labor figures, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, are starting to contemplate a post-election scenario where the premier is turfed out as the state swings against the party.
That Labor’s leader could lose his seat – the same fate that famously befell John Howard and Peter Dutton – is a measure of how the party’s fortunes have deteriorated since the “Danslide” victory of 2018.
A senior Labor MP suggests Niddrie is a likely barometer of the party’s performance overall. If Carroll can hold on, Labor might avoid a statewide wipeout and retain a path back to power in four years. But if Carroll falls short, the damage elsewhere will be considerable.
“I intend to stay in parliament. I am not counting on not winning,” the premier says.
“I do believe this is the most consequential election for Victoria (which is) the most successful, multicultural state, and I am going to do everything possible to fight for working people.”
‘Ben always did the right thing’
Ben Carroll – or Benny, as his family and friends call him – grew up under the flight path in Airport West. He remembers laying awake at night listening to the planes overhead, imagining the stories of those coming and going from Australia.
Born in nearby Coburg in 1975, Carroll was the eldest of three children raised by Greg, an electrician, and Kay, a Texan who migrated to Australia as a teenager and went on to work at Glenroy West Primary School. Neither of Carroll’s parents finished high school but both valued education and hard work.
Politics was a regular subject at the dinner table. Greg was a union man from a long line of Labor voters. Carroll’s sister, Kate, the youngest of the three kids, recalls Ben and their father discussing politics and current affairs for hours.
Carroll’s first job was at Kmart at 14 where he joined the union covering the retail sector — the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association.
Kate describes her brother as the archetypal firstborn: responsible, diligent and protective. When their mother returned to full-time work, it was Ben, barely a teenager, who packed the lunchboxes for his brother and sister.
“Ben always did the right thing,” she says.
His friend, Anthony, who has remained close with Carroll since the pair met at St Bernard’s College, remembers him as a studious and conscientious teen – but with more cheekiness than the public gets to see.
“You could see where Ben was going to go,” Anthony tells The Age. “He probably comes across as straight, but he does have a good sense of humour. He’d get the giggles a lot.”
Carroll is now 51, but those friendships he forged at high school have endured.
Four days after he was sworn in as premier, Carroll was scheduled to meet his mates for dinner at Coda in Flinders Lane. The meal was long-planned, but given Carroll’s rather drastic change in circumstances, his friends were not convinced he would join them. He did – albeit with his new security detail.
“What you see is what you get with Ben. Doesn’t matter your walk of life,” Anthony says.
Carroll’s path from the St Bernard’s schoolyard to the premier’s office is a story of steady ambition. He went from high school to an arts degree at La Trobe University, and to his local Labor Party branch. After graduating, he worked in insurance until Steve Bracks won the 1999 election and a job opened up as a political adviser. He returned to La Trobe for a law degree, then worked as a lawyer at the Victorian Government Solicitor’s Office.
In 2011, Carroll moved to Canberra to work for Right-faction powerbroker Stephen Conroy, lured by Philip Dalidakis. They rented a house together in Manuka, in Canberra’s inner south.
Dalidakis describes his friend as “an incredibly hard worker” and “earnest”.
“He is not necessarily the most exciting person. He doesn’t walk into a room and light it up … but he is reliable and dependable,” Dalidakis says.
At the time, Carroll needed security clearance for his job, so he was put through the standard vetting process where applicants are grilled on their finances, relationships and private lives, as investigators look for anything that could leave them vulnerable to blackmail or coercion.
“When they asked him what websites he liked to visit after he got home from work, he told them The Age and Herald Sun,” Dalidakis laughs.
“His interview went for hours as they attempted to find anything at all … but he’s just very earnest.”
In 2012, Carroll returned to Melbourne when Niddrie was vacated by Rob Hulls, Labor’s deputy leader. It was a safe seat, but friend Anthony recalls him doorknocking and campaigning as if it were a marginal electorate. Five years later, he was elevated to the ministry with the portfolios of industry and employment.
“He has been on a big self-improvement, he is open to learning and hearing people’s perspectives,” his sister, Kate, says.
It’s an observation echoed by Carroll’s wife, Fiona Rothville, a lawyer who works as director at Deloitte. The pair married in 2015 after meeting when he was working as a Labor staffer.
“I was attracted to him because he was really easy to communicate with, and passionate. He was also really warm and personable,” she says.
“It’s hard to meet people that want to have those more in-depth conversations … I thought he seemed like the sort of person I should go out with. He had his life together, he was going somewhere.”
Carroll and Rothville were both in their 30s when they met. She made some discreet inquiries about whether he was single. He wasn’t. Two years later, they crossed paths again, this time at a law student alumni event. By then, Carroll’s circumstances had changed, and he summoned the courage to call the next day and ask her out.
“There are bigger personalities, but he is not someone that has that big ego, where he demands that love and attention,” she says.
“He is calm, he is methodical, he works through things, he communicates with everyone, and he wants to hear other people’s views.
“While some people might want to see a politician that does have that strong ego … he works towards an outcome and a result.”
Carroll’s cool temperament was tested in 2017 when they welcomed their daughter, Madeleine.
During Rothville’s pregnancy, doctors discovered their baby wasn’t growing as she should. They diagnosed a foetal growth restriction which meant she was struggling to get the oxygen and nutrients she needed. There were fears she might not survive.
Madeleine was just 1.8 kilograms when she was born in April. While she needed special care at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Rothville developed pre-eclampsia and became seriously ill.
“There were some real moments of panic and worry,” she recalls.
As his wife recovered in hospital, Carroll learned to feed and change their daughter, bathed her for the first time, and carefully monitored her weight gain while his wife and daughter remained in separate hospitals.
“He just absolutely stood up,” Rothville says. “He is very close to her, he really did look after her in those early days all by himself.”
Trying to find consensus
Carroll is acutely aware that his virtues – patience, steadiness and a quiet determination – aren’t necessarily ones that are rewarded in the current political climate.
“I am a consensus builder,” he says. But he worries about the rise of populist forces, particularly One Nation.
In his rare downtime, Carroll has been reading Why Populists Are Winning and How to Beat Them, by British Labour Party MP Liam Byrne.
“We should have foreseen it, we have seen it around the world,” Carroll says. He adds a prediction for Victoria’s election this month: “One Nation is going to win seats, both in the lower and upper house.”
As well as shedding voters to One Nation, Carroll believes Labor has lost touch with parts of the business community that once regarded the party as being on their side.
“The business community did feel like we had been at war with them,” he says.
Since replacing Allan, Carroll has been trying to find room for consensus, with a mix of new messaging and policy U-turns including tinkering with working-from-home laws, winding back land tax increases and strengthening the powers of Victoria’s integrity agencies.
“I have shown integrity. It’s not just about words, it’s about deeds,” he insists.
Should he be returned to power, he says he will lead a more financially disciplined government and rebuild trust with Victorians. He wants to accelerate the state’s renewable energy transition, rebuild the economy through the mining and processing of critical minerals, and boost advanced manufacturing jobs.
His ambition, he says, is for Victoria to become “the unofficial capital of Australia”.
“If I have the honour of being premier, you’ll see a real focus on continuing to pay down debt, budget repair,” Carroll says. “I’ll be a financially responsible, socially progressive premier.”
It is a clear pitch for the job he already has – a job he spent much of his life working towards, only to secure it with just four months to persuade Victorians that he deserves to keep it.
“He is up against it,” Dalidakis says.
“Given we are in the racing season, he is heading into the straight and he is 300 metres behind the other horse.
“But if the only thing he can do is restore trust, then that would be a wonderful reflection on him – win, lose or draw.”
Not everyone in Labor has sympathy for Carroll’s predicament. There remains bitterness in the party about Allan’s removal, and Carroll’s subsequent eagerness to distance himself from his predecessors.
The premier and his allies have rejected depictions of the leadership change as a coup. Instead, he attempts to frame it as a recruitment – that his colleagues approached him to say that Allan had lost their support, and that they wanted him to step up.
But Carroll’s ambition was no secret. He made a play for the leadership in 2023 following Andrews’ resignation, threatening a messy contested ballot against Allan that would have had to be decided by Labor Party branch members. The move infuriated Andrews, who unleashed in a tense caucus meeting.
While Allan was ultimately triumphant, it established Carroll as a credible successor when her popularity waned.
“I stood up in the party room three years ago with a vision,” he says. “I never had the numbers ... a big section of the Right joined the Left at the last election, so I was always a realist.”
This time around, when Carroll made his move, the numbers were never in doubt.
But pockets of opposition remain internally, including among Labor’s campaign team and government staff, many of whom remain loyal to other MPs who harbour their own ambition and resentment. Even some of Labor’s strongest allies in the union movement are refusing to campaign for the government’s re-election.
Inside the caucus, Carroll’s factional rivals are already privately discussing who will lead the party should Labor lose, according to party figures speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
It is a scenario the premier would rather not contemplate. So he keeps going door to door, trying to sandbag his party in the face of a political tide that is rushing in.
Read more on the Victorian election:
- Hot seats: Follow four key races that will shape the election
- See how your neighbours voted in 2022: And what it means for this election
- Chip Le Grand: This is why the airport rail is a mess
- Debt: Economists on how to put Victoria back on track
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald · Annika Smethurst
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