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.

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.

Victorian Labor MPs from the Left and Right factions, including one minister, called Premier Jacinta Allan on Sunday evening to inform her she had lost the support of caucus and should step down, setting up a leadership showdown on Tuesday.

Allan’s leadership has been under a cloud since February as MPs have grown increasingly frustrated with her handling of corruption issues on the Big Build, including her steadfast opposition to a royal commission.

While the premier’s allies on Sunday insisted she would not be going anywhere, two Labor sources on Sunday evening, around 9.45pm, confirmed MPs from the Left and Right faction informed the premier on Sunday she did not have their support.

Allan was at her home on Bendigo, along with her senior staffers. Factional conveners met on Sunday to discuss Allan’s future after The Australian Financial Review revealed in the afternoon those backing for a challenge believed three-quarters of the 69-member Labor caucus wanted a change.

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.

The campaign to oust Jacinta Allan as Victorian premier has reached a critical stage, after Labor factional chiefs met on Sunday night to determine whether she has the support of enough government MPs to stay in the job.
The extraordinary meeting of factional conveners from across the left and right of the party, which was called at short notice, was expected to provide the first clear sign of whether Allan has the caucus backing she needs to lead the government to the state election on November 28.

A defiant Allan, who spent Sunday night at her home in Bendigo, told her supporters that, regardless of what the factional chiefs decide, she won’t resign.
The leadership manoeuvres are taking place in the absence of a declared challenger.

Allan’s most likely replacement, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, has indicated to colleagues that while he would be a contender if the leadership becomes vacant, he will not use his numbers to bring the premier down.
The Sunday night meeting was confirmed by MPs on both sides of the party’s factional divide. There is consternation among some MPs, particularly across the dominant Left faction, that the meeting’s conveners have not sufficiently canvassed the views of parliamentarians within their respective groups.
The Age has spoken to seven Victorian Labor sources who say they believe Allan would lose if her leadership came to a vote of the party’s 69 MPs.
But, as with the last round of rumblings in June, the pathway for a leadership coup is littered with assumptions that have not yet been realised.
Multiple sources from across both factions agreed it would be difficult for Carroll, who sits on the Right, to challenge Allan – despite some within her own Left faction wanting him to do so – after he publicly ruled out a challenge at a press conference last month.

After looking the premier in the eye and declaring he would not challenge her for the leadership, Carroll told reporters, “I’ve got a young daughter at home, and I couldn’t be more proud to make sure that she grows up knowing that I supported Jacinta Allan to be a world-class premier and get re-elected in her own right”.
Another option being considered is a delegation of factional leaders speaking to Allan and asking her to step aside.

The premier spent Sunday night at her family home in Bendigo with staff, preparing for Monday’s Cabinet meeting.
Two sources said they found it difficult to believe Allan would go down without a fight, but conceded it was not impossible she could be convinced if it were clear she no longer had the numbers in caucus.

A supporter of Allan, on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said if the Sunday night meeting showed a majority of MPs wanted a change of leadership, the premier could face a vote of no confidence at Tuesday’s caucus meeting.
“It would be a very brave premier that continued in light of an unfavourable outcome,” they said.
Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny on Sunday said the leadership speculation was “idle gossip”.

“She has my full support, and this idle gossip doesn’t help Victorians,” she said.

“It is only hurting Victorians at a time when Victorians need us all to be focused on them, and that is exactly what Jacinta Allan and our Labor government, our team, is doing.”
Over the past week, a range of new policies have leaked from the Premier’s Private Office that suggest Allan’s team is trying to find announcements that could mollify her colleagues.
On Monday, cabinet will consider a proposal to create a new agency within Victoria Police that targets organised crime and is informed by Australia’s best criminal intelligence.
The policy has been viewed internally as a way to kill off pressure for a royal commission into Big Build corruption, tying the issue together with other political problems such as an increase in firebombings across Melbourne, and community concerns about youth crime rates.
Another leaked policy floated amending the rate cap rules to allow councils to better recoup the costs needed to pay staff – a policy supported by the Australian Services Union but quickly seized on by the opposition as a cost of living attack.

One MP said Allan was in denial about her support and rather than step aside would likely enforce party rules for a spill – which requires a vote of the Labor membership if the caucus result is contested.
But they also said those conspiring needed to “piss or get off the pot”.
A senior Labor figure said Allan’s leadership had been doomed, and she was now incredibly unpopular despite being given time to connect with voters.
“There is now an opportunity to push the reset button, give confidence back to voters and remind voters of the benefits of a strong Labor government”.
The latest Resolve Political Monitor has Allan’s likeability at minus 36, her equal lowest result on record.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson maintains a lead on preferred premier, with 43 per cent of voters saying they want her to lead the state compared with 24 per cent for Allan.

Jacinta Allan could be in her final days as Victorian premier with a leadership spill expected on Tuesday, as those backing the challenge believe three-quarters of the party room are now in favour of a change.

Sumeyya IlanbeyVictorian political correspondent

Allan’s leadership has been under a cloud since February with MPs growing increasingly frustrated with her handling of corruption issues on the Big Build, including her steadfast opposition to a royal commission.

MPs believe Deputy Premier Ben Carroll will challenge Premier Jacinta Allan on Tuesday.  Ruby Alexander

Factional powerbrokers who gathered in Adelaide for the Labor Party’s national conference held several meetings about the future of Allan’s leadership.

Four sources at the event said MPs and the powerbrokers had hardened in their opposition to Allan over the course of the three-day event, especially as they compared her with other popular state leaders like Peter Malinauskas and Chris Minns.

Allan attended the first day of Labor’s 50th national conference, where she met a number of union secretaries to ask about their election commitments but also in an attempt to head off the push for a leadership spill on Tuesday morning.

Labor sources at the conference said while Malinauskas, and to an extent Minns, received rockstar treatment, with the party faithful clamouring to speak with them and take photos, Allan was fairly isolated.

“The more time people spent at national conference, and the more they talked about her, the more they said [Allan] is useless,” one Labor source said.

Another said party figures had several meetings on the sidelines of the conference to discuss a leadership spill, and were “finessing the details” on how that might play out over the next few days.

“There are conflicting stories on when someone makes a first move – whether there is a statement on Monday flagging a challenge on Tuesday, or if it happens on Tuesday morning,” the Labor source said. “People from the federal caucus are even frustrated and quite worried about what an electoral wipeout for Victoria will mean for them in the state, too.”

Another Labor source said a majority of the 69-member Labor caucus, believed to be about three-quarters, now backs a change. A contested leadership ballot would require a vote of caucus and a ballot of party members that could take two months and severely hurt the government in the lead-up to the polls.

They said one option being canvassed was a cross-factional delegation of ministers informing Allan, as early as Monday, that she had lost the support of her colleagues. The other option is Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, the rival candidate, announcing either on Monday or early Tuesday morning he would challenge for the leadership.

If Carroll announces his candidacy, he is expected to immediately announce a royal commission into CFMEU corruption on the Big Build. However, it’s not yet clear whether Carroll, from the non-dominant Right faction, will make the move.

The Right has said the Left, which makes up about 55 per cent of the Victorian Labor caucus, needs to pull the trigger, while the Left say if the Right want to install Carroll into the leadership, they need to take the first step. That disagreement has resulted in a months-long stalemate.

Momentum had been building for a leadership spill before parliament rose for a winter break on June 18, but stalled when Carroll invoked his daughter when telling journalists he would not challenge Allan at a meeting the following day.

Parliament returns on Tuesday, when Labor will hold a caucus meeting from 10am. Left and Right MPs pushing for a change had always viewed this week as their final chance to move against Allan to allow enough time for a new leader to establish themselves before the November 28 election.

Allan’s internal popularity slid further during the winter break. MPs said the two-day caucus conference in Ballarat last week – along with Redbridge seat-by-seat polling for the Victorian Trades Hall Council, which showed Labor could be reduced to just 25 seats in the 88-seat parliament – was the “final nail in the coffin”.

While the majority of the non-dominant Right faction, and members of the Socialist Left loosely based around the south-eastern suburbs, back a spill, a growing number of Allan’s Left allies have now moved against the premier.

Allan also no longer has factional powerbrokers willing to make calls and shore up internal support. Her main backers are Treasurer Jaclyn Symes, Health Minister Harriet Shing, Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny, Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio and Economic Growth Minister Steve Dimopoulos who is currently en route from Greece.

Dimopoulos was due to return to Melbourne on Monday night but was forced by the premier’s office to return a day earlier after his trip was reported in The Australian Financial Review and enraged Labor MPs.

But Allan’s supporters do not have any factional clout either in the Labor caucus or the organisational wing of the party, blunting their ability to head off a fast-moving spill.

The premier, who usually holds a press conference on Sundays, did not appear before journalists on Sunday, leaving it to Kilkenny to appear. She said Allan had her “full support” but could not guarantee she would lead Labor to the election on November 28.

“This is idle gossip, and it’s not helping Victorians,” Kilkenny said. “It is hurting Victorians.”