On Labor's pitch for working from home, Allan finds her cause
Where Dan Andrews was both a central cog and its chief engineer, it has taken a while for Allan and the other moving parts on Victorian Labor's election-winning assembly line to fully understand each other and how best to roll the finished product into the November 2026 state poll.
At Moonee Valley Racecourse on Saturday, the venue for this year's ALP state conference, we saw the pieces coming together.
The premier walked in and left the conference main hall to a standing ovation, the room having been primed by a slick campaign video marrying Allan's voice and image with the 'On your side' slogan the party will use in the lead-up to the election.
When the video started playing before Allan's putative rival, Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, had finished his speech, it was further evidence that Labor gods are now smiling on a state leader who, only a few months ago, was put in deep freeze by her own party during the federal campaign.
The change in Allan and Victorian Labor from the dog days of late summer, when senior party figures were reeling from the results of a Resolve poll published by this masthead showing only one-fifth of voters intended to vote for the party at the next state election, goes beyond the atmospherics on the conference floor.
The centrepiece of Allan's speech was a promise to legislate the right of people to work from home two days a week in jobs where this is possible.
This is very much Allan's policy, developed by her advisers and approved by a cabinet subcommittee of senior ministers she chairs, rather that going to full cabinet or caucus for debate.
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