Major parties dodge minority government reality as Victoria shifts to multi-party politics

Victoria is heading toward an election on November 28 that most voters believe will produce a parliament no single party can control alone. Yet the two people who might lead the next government are pretending this is not happening.

Premier Ben Carroll was asked on Monday whether he would accept support from the Greens to stay in power if the numbers fell short. His answer was blunt: he would hand back the keys. A day later, opposition leader Jess Wilson faced the same question about One Nation. She refused to engage with it at all, insisting repeatedly that she was running to form a majority government and that the only arrangement she cared about was the existing coalition between the Liberals and Nationals. Two leaders, two different tones, same message: we will not negotiate with minor parties, because we will not need to.

The disconnect is stark. Nearly every opinion poll conducted over the past six months, including successive surveys by Resolve Political Monitor for The Age, suggests Victoria's next government will need support from other parties to run the state. A Resolve survey of 1,100 Victorians in May and June found that 45 per cent believed the two-party system was finished. Only 13 per cent disagreed. The rest were uncertain. Among One Nation voters, two out of three said the old binary choice was dead. Even 40 per cent of Labor voters agreed. Yet Carroll and Wilson continue to campaign as if majority government is inevitable.

Bob Brown, the former Greens leader who negotiated the 2010 minority government agreement between Julia Gillard's Labor and the Greens, says this is standard practice during campaigns. But he argues Victoria has reached a point where the premier and opposition leader owe voters a more honest conversation. "I think they do need to be mature enough to say if we don't have the numbers, we will work with the most like-minded parties or independents to form government," Brown told The Age. "That's not a difficult thing to do." He calls Carroll's position a "spoilsport approach"—refusing to accept the people's verdict and throwing back the keys rather than governing responsibly with the hand voters have dealt.

Carroll disputes this. He said on Tuesday that he was being respectful to the electorate by making his intentions clear, comparing his stance to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's position before the 2025 federal election. But the comparison does not hold. Albanese ruled out minority government when Labor was ahead in the polls. Carroll is doing so while trailing. The most likely outcome, according to polling analysis, is either a Coalition government supported by One Nation, or a Labor government supported by the Greens. Neither major party leader will say which arrangement they would accept.

Susan Davies, a former independent MP, knows how this actually works. After the shock 1999 state election result, she and two other independents held the balance of power. The morning after the election, Davies rang Joan Kirner, a former Labor premier she trusted, and asked for help. Kirner connected her with Peter Wellington, a Queensland MP who had supported the Beattie government in minority after One Nation surged in 1998. Before negotiating with either major party, the three independents wrote a charter setting out principles for better government: greater accountability, democratic reforms, and specific targets for rural Victoria, which had suffered under the previous Kennett government. That charter became the basis for their decision to support Steve Bracks's Labor. The resulting memorandum of understanding lasted until 2002, when Labor won a majority. It did not require the independents to vote as a bloc or support every government bill.

Davies says neither Carroll nor Wilson will admit what is coming because they cannot afford to. "The majors can't afford to speculate on that," she said. "They will never do it, so it's a pointless question to ask. They will never willingly say that they will form any sort of arrangement with any minor party. The reality is that when they see which way the vote goes, they will." Robert Hoffman, a politics lecturer at Swinburne University, notes that major parties give themselves wiggle room by ruling out a formal "coalition"—a signed power-sharing agreement. But there are other ways to govern: the Greens under Gillard supported Labor in exchange for policy commitments; in Tasmania, minor parties have accepted ministerial portfolios; most commonly, a minor party agrees to supply and confidence, meaning they will not bring down the government but retain freedom to vote on policy.

One Nation leader Warren Pickering says there are "diplomatic ties" between his party and the Coalition, though a senior Liberal, speaking anonymously, dismissed this as "smoke and mirrors." Pickering has ruled out supporting a minority Labor government and says One Nation will "work with whoever we must" to remove Labor. Pauline Hanson, impatient for negotiations to begin, told Channel Seven: "If it means that you actually have to put your tail between your legs and bloody work with One Nation to get rid of Labor in this state, then do it." For Wilson, that conversation has not yet begun. The election is less than seven weeks away.