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18 Victoria

James C. Murphy

Key terms/names

constitution of Victoria, constitutional reform, cosmopolitanism and wowserism, demographic change, Dick Hamer, economic policy and social policy, electoral systems, party systems and the pattern of government, Henry Bolte, Jeff Kennett, Joan Kirner, John Cain, political economy, regional, rural and metropolitan Victoria, Steve Bracks

Victoria[1]

is Australia’’s second largest state by population (currently about seven million) and gross product (about half a trillion dollars). Its capital, Melbourne, served as the seat of the Federal Government from 1901 to 1927, and the Commonwealth Constitution was proclaimed in its Exhibition Building. It has produced some significant national politicians: Prime Ministers Menzies and Deakin – or been the adopted home of others, like Bob Hawke. It has at times been the capital of radicalism (home of Australia’s only civilian insurrection), or of liberalism, or has been considered conservative and ‘wowserish’. The state’s politics are fractious, byzantine, distinctive.

Having said this, Victoria’s political institutions are, as of 2025, far from novel. Like much of the country, it has a parliamentary system with a bicameral legislature and an executive drawn from legislature and based on the confidence of the lower house, the Legislative Assembly. that chamber is based on single-member electorates with full preferential voting; while the Upper House, the Legislative Council, is based on multi-member electorates and uses the Single Transferable Vote, much like the arrangements interstate and federally. Victoria’s party contest is not radically different to elsewhere: Labor has dominated the last few decades, but the Liberal–National Coalition has been relatively competitive, and Greens, as well as other minor parties have enjoyed a presence, particular in the Legislative Council. So far, so run-of-the-mill.

What is more distinctive about Victorian politics is its history of innovation: constitutional innovation, ideological innovation, policy innovation. Victoria was an early adopter of many institutions, ideas and public policies now taken for granted around the country. It adopted the secret ballot, payment of parliamentary members, and full male suffrage early in the game. It established vast public commissions to administer utilities and services, like transport, energy and water. It was the birthplace of ‘new protectionism’ in Australia, as well as the modern Liberal Party. It has had a radical or progressive liberal streak since the Gold Rush of the 1850s; a tendency lamented 150 years later by a disapproving John Howard, who dubbed Victoria ‘the Massachusetts of Australia’.[2]

This chapter provides an introduction to the politics of Victoria – it’s distinctive elements, as well as its commonalities with other Australian jurisdictions. It covers the state’s political history from colonisation to the present, its constitutional settings and recent reforms, and aspects of its political economy. It will also explore three major political issues on the agenda a year out from the 2026 state election: land-use politics, gender and sexuality, law and order.

Political History

Colonisation

Pre-European-invasion Victoria was occupied by Aboriginal people divided into several nations and many clans. The oldest unequivocal evidence from Victoria dates human occupation back a minimum of 34,000 years.[3] First recorded contact with Europeans was between the Boonwurrung and a British landing party from the Lady Nelson in 1801: it began with an exchange of gifts and ended in violent conflict.[4] Two years later the British returned to establish a small penal colony at Sorento, but the site was quickly abandoned, leaving behind an escaped convict, William Buckley, who was famously taken in by the Wathawurrung people. Unsanctioned settlements followed, by sealers and whalers along the Bass Coast, then by land speculators from Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania): the Henty family at Portland (Gunditjmara country) in 1834; John Batman and his Port Phillip Association on the banks of the Yarra River in 1835 – a settlement later named ‘Melbourne’, in an attempt to flatter a British Prime Minister.[5] Batman infamously ‘purchased’ land for his settlement in a treaty with clan leaders of the Kulin Nation – the only treaty proffered in the whole British conquest of Australia, and one quickly annulled by colonial government to preserve the doctrine of terra nullius.[6] The status of the treaty remains controversial: Batman has been regarded variously as a heroic founding father, a criminal swindler of First Peoples, or a more complicated political strategist, with both selfish motives and a genuine regard for First Peoples’ dignity and sovereignty.[7] Similarly, the motives and cross-cultural understanding of the Kulin signatories has been subject of historiographical debate: did they understand the meaning of signing a document, did think they were simply permitting temporary use of the land, or were they already aware of the threat posed by white colonisation, employing the treaty as a political strategy to contain the invasion?[8] If it was the latter, the strategy failed, and catastrophically, for once the Crown officially sanctioned the settlement on the Yarra, it also abandoned its policy of ‘limited settlement’, throwing open the floodgates to speculators and squatters to seize great chunks of territory – eventually, all Australia.[9]

By 1840 the Port Phillip settlement had become a major wool-exporting operation, with 700,000 sheep grazing on former Kulin hunting grounds, and twice that number by 1842.[10] Settler–Indigenous relations were relatively amicable in the first years of the settlement, but a full-scale frontier war attended the land-grab from the 1840s, with hundreds of white deaths in the period, and thousands of black deaths, many through settler massacres.[11] While this war was less obviously ‘genocidal’ than, perhaps, the Black War in Van Diemen’s Land,[12] Victoria’s Yoorook Justice Commission concluded that colonisation – not just the frontier violence of the 1840s, but also later violence, child removals, linguicide, and high rates of incarceration – did amount to an attempt at genocide.[13] It has only been through incredible strength, resistance and political leadership – from key figures like William Cooper, Margaret Tucker, and Doug and Gladys Nicholls, to name just a few – that their culture has endured, and, more recently, enjoyed a renaissance.[14]

Gold

The discovery of gold near Ballarat in 1851, and later at Bendigo and elsewhere, had transformative impact on the Victorian colony. Until then, it had been primarily a rural, English, wool-exporting outpost; a decade later, it had become a more urban, multicultural, industrialised economy. The population swelled: in 1851 Victoria counted approximately 76,000 people; by 1861, 540,000.[15] Migrants from Europe, America, China and more all joined the goldfields, often producing ethnic tensions – at times race riots, and more organised pushes to tax or restrict immigration[16] – but also established the beginnings of a less English, more cosmopolitan society.[17]

Many migrants were radicals exiled from the Old World: Chartists from England; dissidents from Ireland; 1848 veterans from mainland Europe.[18] Together they agitated for democratic reform in their adopted country, and on the goldfields, they mounted a short-lived insurrection, the Ballarat Reform League raising its ‘Eureka’ southern cross flag over a crude stockade in protest against the Crown’s taxing without representation.[19] The rebellion was crushed, but local courts dismissed treason charges against its ringleaders, and most of the Reform League’s demands were adopted in the following decade – including full male suffrage for parliamentary elections.[20] This was a radical advance for its time and marked the beginning of Victoria’s era as the ‘constitutional pace-setter’ of Australian polities, with early adoption of the secret ballot, payment of members, and significant land reform.[21] Reformers, such as the crusading Premier Graham Berry, even sought to directly attack the privileges of the Legislative Council, though this proved a bridge too far.[22] Indeed, clashes with the landed gentry over democratisation consumed vast energy, such that by the 1880s much of the reforming zeal had been exhausted. Radicals and conservatives buried their constitutional hatchets and increasingly came together in a consensus around advancing economic development.[23] This was the era of the corrupt ‘parliamentary land boomers’, with MPs and officials making frequent use of their positions as decision-makers on zoning or placement of infrastructure to make personal gains – or, when the land-bubble occasionally burst, as it did in the 1890s, catastrophic losses.[24]

A tri-polar polity

By the later nineteenth century, Melbourne had swelled into one of the world’s larger metropolises, with an increasingly industrial, manufacturing-led economy, and all the attending social problems and transformations.[25] Victoria’s politics by the 1880s and 1890s featured three key groupings. The old conservative gentry – merchants, financiers and great land-holders – maintained a position of privilege, particularly in the parliament’s upper house, the Legislative Council, thanks to malapportionment and property restrictions on voting and candidacy. They were challenged by the radical liberals of the urban middle class, advocating democratisation and protectionism for domestic industry from the 1850s to the 1880s.[26] Liberals had more luck in the lower house, the Legislative Assembly – more democratic, with a fuller franchise and without the rural bias of the Council. Radical liberals were strongly allied to the emerging working class through the 1870s and 1880s, but by the great strikes of the 1890s, the union movement came to the conclusion they required a political vehicle of their own, establishing the Labor Party.[27]

The result of this three-way divide between the gentry, the liberal middle class, and organised labour, was both extreme political instability – Victoria churned through governments in the later nineteenth century, with many lasting less than a year, brought down by ministerial splits or Upper House bastardry – and intriguing cross-class collaboration, including frequent liberal-labour alliances, moderate alliances drawn from the liberals and conservatives, and even occasional labour-gentry alliances.[28]. Despite the parliamentary instability, governments from the 1880s to the 1900s did adopt a level of consensus in pursuit of two programs: first, direct state support for industrialisation through transport infrastructure, public provision of energy and water, economic support for migration, and import tariffs; second, increased regulation of industry, through minimum wages, conciliation boards, and safety controls.[29] While in New South Wales the dispute between Free Traders and Protectionists was heated, in Victoria, Protectionism – and, indeed, a labour-flavoured Protectionism, or ‘New’ Protectionism – was more clearly ascendant. As Victoria entered the Federation, it continued along its ‘new protectionist’ line domestically and largely succeeded in foisting the model on the country at large.

Jewel in the Liberal crown

Victorian parliamentary politics remained fractious and unstable, caught in its three-way split, well into the twentieth century – right through the World Wars and on to the formation of the modern Liberal Party by Robert Menzies in 1944. From then, Victoria became a Liberal stronghold. Indeed, Victoria was regarded the ‘jewel in the liberal crown’, with Liberal governments elected at state level from 1955 to 1982, and Victorian Liberals leading the Commonwealth government from 1949 to 1971. They were aided by the catastrophic Labor split in 1955, and by the long post-war boom, but the advent of a more cohesive and organised Liberal Party, as well as the arrival of politically astute leaders – Henry Bolte as State Premier (1955–1972), Robert Menzies as Prime Minister (1949–1961) – played their roles in unifying a majority in post-war Victorian society and establishing a long era of single-party dominance. The Bolte government continued the policy of state-backed industrialisation, now on a massive scale, with the help of overseas corporations, to whom he travelled to personally court and woo, as well as a huge process of suburban growth.[30] Rupert Hamer, Bolte’s more liberal, less populist successor, drove social and environmental reform through the 1970s: liberalisation of abortion; abolition of the death penalty; decriminalisation of homosexuality; major conservation reforms.[31] Hamer won three elections, two with thumping majorities, and might have won more were it not for internal ideological disputes between Hamerite liberals and the emerging New Right, combined with the reorganisation of the Labor Party in Victoria, to favour more moderate – perhaps more ‘liberal’ – forces. Indeed, the latter point should be underlined, for some commentators have contended that, in fact, Hamerite liberalism has remained the ascendant ideological line of Victorian governments – Liberal or Labor – ever since, with the sole exception of the Kennett government.[32]

Labor stronghold

Liberal Party dominance of Victoria ended in 1982 with the election of Labor and John Cain Jr – the first Labor Premier since his father, John Cain Snr, lost office as a consequence of the 1955 split. Since 1982, Labor has spent only three parliamentary terms on the opposition benches: it has taken over as the dominant party of Victorian politics, with only short interruptions decade-long stints in power.[33]

The Cain government pursued a continuation of Hamer’s social reforms, with liberalisation of prostitution and liquor restrictions, alongside a neo-Keynesian program of economic management and state investment in industry.[34] His government ended in dramatic economic failure: the 1990 recession brought about the collapse of several Victorian financial institutions, and Cain resigned in the thick of scandal and bitter conflict with unions and Labor factions. His successor, Joan Kirner, Victoria’s first female premier, found herself forced to sell of major government assets and open up the floodgates to poker machines in an attempt to stem the fiscal bleed-out.[35]

In 1992 the Liberals returned to power under the leadership of Jeff Kennett, embarking on a period of radical neoliberal reform.[36] Massive privatisation, cuts to public services, and public sector corporatisation was pushed through, despite bitter contestation. Kennett was elected on a reduced majority in 1996 but appeared likely to settle in for a long period of renewed Liberal domination. Unexpectedly, the government was not returned in 1999, with a hung parliament favouring the conciliatory – even ‘Hamerite’ —approach of Opposition Leader Steve Bracks.[37] And so Labor returned to, and would remain in, power under Bracks and under his treasurer and successor John Brumby, for eleven years of ‘New Labour’, Blairite-style government.[38] This included a rare double-majority for Labor in 2002 – winning majorities in both the lower and the upper house. This enabled the holy grail of progressive reforms: the de-fanging of the Legislative Council, with its ability to block supply stripped.[39] Labor endured only one term out of office in 2010 – the ill-fated Baillieu–Napthine Coalition government – before returning to power under Daniel Andrews in 2014.

The Andrews government, and that of his successor and current premier, Jacinta Allen, has proved a significant reform government.[40] On top of the expected Hamerite social-liberal reforms – further liberalisation of euthanasia and prostitution; safe injecting rooms and a trial of pill-testing, and more besides – there were interesting repudiations of privatisation, with the state electing to directly provide or heavily subsidising child care, kindergarten, TAFE courses, menstruation products in schools, sick pay for casual employees.[41] Labor also initiated joint-capital schemes for first-home buyers, and even rebooted the State Electricity Commission as a government-owned clean energy wholesaler. Moreover, these governments have pursued a fresh treaty with Victoria’s first peoples – a treaty passed by the legislature in October 2025, the first formal treaty struck in the country.[42] It is a remarkable moment, bringing Victoria’s history full-circle. Whether this new treaty, unlike Batman’s, will inaugurate a more just and respectful relationship with Victoria’s First Nations is now the question.

Constitutional arrangements

Since 1836, Victoria has been a parliamentary system with the British King or Queen serving as head of state, and a local governor serving as the monarch’s representative. Historically, Victorian governors have exercised their powers to hire and fire governments frequently, if in a more subtle fashion than, say, Sir John Kerr.[43] However these powers have been constricted by statute a number of times, particularly in 1975 and in 2003, such that the governor’s ability to dismiss a government is strictly limited now.[44] The ultimate sovereignty underlying the Victorian constitution was, until the passing of the Australia Acts in 1986, the Westminster Parliament.[45] Since 2003, aspects of the state constitution have been ‘entrenched’ by a referendum requirement, making the Victorian electorate sovereign; however, some alterations can still be made through an ordinary act of Parliament, splitting power between the people directly, and their parliament.[46] Sovereignty is complicated further by the introduction of the aforementioned treaty, which suggests, implicitly if not explicitly, an overlapping sovereignty with First Nations in Victoria.[47]

As a constituent unit of Australia’s federal system, Victoria of course exists within a an overriding sovereignty represented by the Commonwealth Constitution. Above Victoria is the Commonwealth, and below, local government. The State government complains routinely of Commonwealth government overreach from above, about the limitations on its taxing powers,[48] and, until recently, about the redistribution of tax revenue from Victorian coffers to those states or territories less well off.[49] Perhaps hypocritically, it also intervenes heavily in the administration of local government, including through rate-capping, occasional sacking of councils, meddling in local council electoral systems, municipal amalgamations, requirements to contract services out, and more.[50]

The Victorian Parliament is bicameral, with two elected chambers: the Legislative Assembly – the lower house, in which, government is formed and budgets initiated – and the Legislative Council, the upper house; a house of review. Until 2003, Victoria qualified as having ‘strong bicameralism’, of the same sort as the Commonwealth Parliament, and so qualified for characterisation as a ‘semi-parliamentary’ system according to one analysis.[51] The 2003 reforms, which established a prohibition on upper house blocking of supply (amongst other things), render the Legislative Council a far more tame beast, and probably shifts Victoria more firmly into unambiguously ‘parliamentary’ status.[52] Thanks to the adoption of proportional representation, it has been rare for any party to hold a majority in the Council since 2006, allowing it to function as an effective House of Review, if not a House of Obstruction.[53]

Joining the Legislative Council in its scrutiny of the Executive are a set of ‘oversight agencies’, key amongst them the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission, the Victorian Ombudsman, and the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office. All have proven unafraid to investigate sensitive political matters, and at the highest levels (e.g., IBAC and Victorian Ombudsman, 2022). This has earned them the ire of the political executive and sometimes made them the target of neutralisation attempts, until their entrenchment in the Constitution by the Bracks government.

Victoria also features a Charter of Human Rights – the first Australian jurisdiction to adopt such a scheme. It affords relatively weak protection to citizens against its state government, requiring only that decision-makers document their consideration of compatibility with the Charter, rather than granting the courts power to intervene where governments fall afoul of its provisions.[54] Having said this, some complaints have been successfully brought to the Victorian Ombudsman – notably, a finding in 2021 that a hard lockdown of serval public housing towers to control for COVID-19 violated the human rights of the residents.[55] Protection for such rights as that to protest have been curtailed in recent years: various bans, strict regulations, and enhanced police powers have all been lamented by advocates of civil liberties.[56] Victoria has also led the nation in outlawing the use of egregious political symbols, including the swastika and the nazi salute.[57]

Political economy

Broadly Victoria would be considered a liberal market economy, as Australia is more generally.[58] Historically, however, the State, and the Colony before it, featured quite substantial state intervention in, and direct control of, the economy. In the earlier colonial period, state-led development was often directly administered by politicians, to disastrously corrupting effects, as covered above. Partly in reaction to the land boomer scandals, Victoria came to rely on large, semi-independent public agencies to build and control public utilities: the railways, water and urban sewers (the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works); later, electricity (the Victorian State Electricity Commission), roads (the Country Roads Board) and public housing (the Victorian Housing Commission). Enthusiasm for this state interventionism came just as much from the political ‘right’ as from Labor – state provision was seen as a necessary inducement for people and capital to come to or stay in Victoria.[59] These interventions were so significant that Albert Métin, a French theorist visiting Victoria just prior to Federation, remarked that the state appeared to have adopted ‘socialisme sans doctrines’ (socialism without doctrine).[60] The statutory authority model, however, was not without its complications: insulated as they were from direct ministerial control, accountability was frequently a problem, with some Commissioners holding vast power to invest money or make public policy decisions, with no means for the public to resist.

The Cain government of the 1980s made the first serious attempt at reforming these commissions, bringing many closer to the control of the minister.[61] The Kirner government, in its fiscal desperation, began corporatising and privatising some public utilities, most prominently the State Bank of Victoria.[62] Jeff Kennett went much further – a full-throated advocate of neoliberalism, Kennett privatised the Electricity Commission, the gas and water utilities, the public transport system, and more.[63] Neoliberalism continued, but with a human face under subsequent Labor governments, with the embrace of ‘public–private partnerships’ allowing the private sector to extract rents from service monopolies, while governments insulated them from risks – a situation that has been characterised as ‘rentier capitalism’.[64]

This ‘rentier’ model has continued right through to the present, with public–private partnerships the dominant model for major infrastructure, social housing, and delivery of key services. Having said this, the Andrews period has seen some interesting ideological developments, including some of the stark repudiations of neoliberalism cited above. Appetite for state intervention in markets, to regulate or to directly provide a range of goods and services, has grown over the decade, and previous aversions to use of public debt to fund largesse seem to have been overcome. Whether Labor adventurism in direct provision over the last decade has worked to set new, long-term popular expectations around the level of public provision, or will, upon a change in government, end up simply a flash in the ideological pan, remains to be seen.[65]

Contemporary issues

At time of writing – a year out from the 2026 Victorian State Elections – the top political issues in the state appear to be (1) land-use planning, (2) gender, and (3) law and order.

Land-use politics

Housing has been a hot political issue right around the country for some time: housing affordability has been low, and barriers to aspiring first-home buyers prohibitively high.[66] The Victorian government’s strategy to address this has for the most part focused on supply-side interventions, with controversial plans to loosen land-use regulations and focus densification in affluent ‘middle-ring’ suburbs.[67] Plans to upgrade and expand low-cost housing have involved the sale and slated demolition of public housing, and redevelopment as ‘social’ (or private but low-cost) housing. Both have been passionately disputed by community groups objecting to the developments. Sitting on top of the divide over the issue is a generational gap: between propertied baby boomers and millennials lacking the means to buy a home. Disputes have been intense over other forms of land-use development too: particularly large transport projects over the last decade – the infamous East–West Link;[68] ‘Sky Rail’ level-crossing removals;[69] the West Gate Tunnel[70] – and renewable energy infrastructure (wind turbines; transmission cables).[71]

Gender and sexuality

Over the last decade the Andrews–Allan Labor government has advanced a liberal agenda on many social issues, including dying with dignity, abortion, drug liberalisation and more. All have featured a level of controversy; however, it has been the government’s policies around LGBT rights that have encountered the most vocal resistance, particularly where those policies have intersected with children or schools. School curricula preaching gender and sexual equality and acceptance have inspired moral panics in the conservative media and religious lobbies, with bitter contestation of the ‘Safe Schools’ program, and more recently, complaints being raised about the Respectful Relationships program, with claims from anti-trans activists that it was establishing a ‘school-to-clinic’ pipeline.[72] Non-government schools have been prohibited from discriminating against LGBT staff on the basis of the school’s religious doctrine since 2021, and state schools have more recently been allowed to socially transition non-cis identifying students without parental consent – again, to the opprobrium of conservative parent groups.[73] Even children’s ‘story time’ sessions have been caught up in the culture war, with Drag Queen Story Times shifted online at one library due to violent threats, and the then-Premier, Daniel Andrews, organising for the event to proceed in the safer confines of Parliament House.[74] With increasing participation by religious conservatives in the state Liberal Party,[75] it seems likely conflict over LBGT rights will be the focus of the ‘culture war’ in Victoria for the foreseeable future.

Law and order

Despite prominent liberalism evident in other policy realms, the Andrews–Allan government’s orientation toward criminal justice has been right-populist. The trend has been for harsh application of justice, with the parole, bail and sentencing taps all being twisted tighter, often in reaction to outcry over high-profile crimes.[76] At times, the Andrews government had more cops on the beat per capita than any State or Territory, and the jurisdiction spends more on incarceration than on health or education.[77] The Allan government has more recently sought to appear tough on gang-related violent crime, introducing machete sale and possession bans.[78] Tis populist approach has come into direct conflict with the government’s social progressivism: 2023 reforms loosening bail, with the aim of reducing Aboriginal deaths in custody, were controversially reversed by the Allan government in the run up to a by-election;[79] the government raised the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 in 2024, but walked back plans to raise it further to 14 in the face of a ‘youth crime crisis’.[80] Crime remains one of the few points of Labor vulnerability in the Massachusetts of Australia – one area where the public seems to lean conservative, or at least this appears to be what politicians on Spring Street believe.

Conclusions

Victoria’s radical liberalism has been a through line from the 1850s to today. It is a tradition that at times sits awkwardly with more ‘classical’ liberalism: it has been a statist, and at times a left-populist liberalism, if there is such a thing: its focus has been just as much on public provision to create real equality of opportunity, and on demolition of elite privilege, as it has been focused on removing restrictions on individual liberties. This tradition has been taken up by populist democrats like Graham Berry in the 1870s; by modern liberals in the 1970s, like Dick Hamer; by Labor leaders across two generations John Cain Jnr in the 1980s; Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allen since 2014. Indeed, it is now probably more firmly a tradition carried forward by Labor than by the Liberal Party, who have seen a significant rightward drift over the last decade.[81] This is not to say, however, that all Victorian politics are radical liberal politics: liberal reformers have consistently encountered bitter resistance, and at times theirs has been a minority position, dominated by the forces of conservatism (during the Bolte government especially), or neoliberalism (the Kennett government), or other ideological tendencies. Clearly there are right-populist streaks in Victoria when it comes to crime, and a serious cleavage between the religious right and progressives on gender and sexuality. Still, radical liberalism is a surprisingly resilient current in Victorian political life, often the dominant line in contemporary debates, and it is a distinctive ideological tradition within Australia: one which leaves its mark not only on Victoria but on the nation.

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About the author

[to come]

  1. The original version of this chapter was authored by Nick Economou. Murphy, James C. (2026). Victoria. In Diana Perche, Nicholas Barry, Nicholas Bromfield, Alan Fenna, Emily Foley, Zareh Ghazarian and Phoebe Hayman, eds. Australian politics and policy: 2026. Sydney: Sydney University Press. DOI: 10.30722/sup.9781743329542. ↵
  2. in Strangio 2021. ↵
  3. Matchan andandand Phillips 2020. ↵
  4. Broome 2024. ↵
  5. Broome 2024. ↵
  6. Attwood 2009. ↵
  7. Kenny 2008; Attwood 2009. ↵
  8. Kenny 2008; Broome 2024. ↵
  9. Boyce 2012, xiii. ↵
  10. Broome 2024. ↵
  11. Broome 2024. ↵
  12. Ryan 2015. ↵
  13. Yoorook Justice Commission 2025, 218. ↵
  14. Broome 2024. ↵
  15. Beggs-Sunter 2008, 17. ↵
  16. Serle 1977, ch 10. ↵
  17. Goodman 1994; Messner 2000. ↵
  18. Serle 1977, 113–14. ↵
  19. Blake 2012. ↵
  20. Goodman 2024. ↵
  21. Bate 2010, 8. ↵
  22. Scalmer 2020. ↵
  23. Serle 1971. ↵
  24. Cannon 1966. ↵
  25. Proudfoot 2000. ↵
  26. Bates 2010. ↵
  27. The name of the Labor Party was not settled in Victoria for some time: it was sometimes called the Progressive Political League, or the United Labour and Liberal Party, or the Political Labor Council. Rickard 1974; Wright 1992, 107–110. ↵
  28. Bate 2010; Wright 1992, 82–92. ↵
  29. Lloyd 2017; Seltzer 2024. ↵
  30. Dunstan 2006. ↵
  31. Colebatch 2014. ↵
  32. Colebatch 2014. ↵
  33. Murphy 2025a. ↵
  34. Considine and Costar 1992. ↵
  35. Considine and Costar 1992. ↵
  36. Costar andandand Economou 1999. ↵
  37. Murphy 2019. ↵
  38. Dean 2015 ↵
  39. Costar andand Gardiner 2003. ↵
  40. Murphy 2025b. ↵
  41. see Murphy 2025b. ↵
  42. Galloway 2025. ↵
  43. Twomey 2014. ↵
  44. Economou 2024. ↵
  45. Twomey 2007. ↵
  46. Kildea 2022. ↵
  47. Hobbs 2025. ↵
  48. see for example, Chek et al 2023. ↵
  49. On which more generally see the Commonwealth–State Relations chapter, this volume. ↵
  50. On which more generally see the Local Government chapter, this volume. ↵
  51. Ganghof et al. 2003. ↵
  52. Costar andand Gardiner 2003; Tunnecliffe 2005. ↵
  53. Murphy 2025. ↵
  54. Solomon 2017. ↵
  55. Victorian Ombudsman 2020. ↵
  56. Kolovos 2025a; Ore 2022. ↵
  57. Gillespie 2023. ↵
  58. Bell andand Keating 2020. ↵
  59. Holmes 1984, 103. ↵
  60. in Homes 1984, 103. ↵
  61. Holmes et al 1986. ↵
  62. Curtin 2006. ↵
  63. Economou 2006. ↵
  64. Haywood 2023. ↵
  65. Murphy 2025. ↵
  66. Moore andand Doyon 2025. ↵
  67. Moore andand Doyon 2025. ↵
  68. Murphy 2022a. ↵
  69. Woodcock 2023. ↵
  70. Murphy 2022b. ↵
  71. Kolovos 2025b; Kirk 2024. ↵
  72. Baxendale 2025a. ↵
  73. Baxendale 2025b Millar andand Schieders 2021. ↵
  74. Dexter and Estcourt 2023. ↵
  75. see Scheiders andand Tomazin 2018; Symons et al 2022. ↵
  76. Moffa et al 2019; Weber et al 2021; Kolovos 2025c,2025d. ↵
  77. Illanbey 2022, 189. ↵
  78. Chwasta andand Wong 2025; Ore 2025. ↵
  79. Beatrice 2025. ↵
  80. Smethurst 2024. ↵
  81. Murphy 2018. ↵

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