About half an hour after Ben Carroll told the premier he’d challenge her leadership, the pair surrendered their phones and walked into a cabinet meeting with their bitterly divided ministerial colleagues.
The atmosphere in the room was variously described as icy, tense and bizarre by those in attendance.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan holds her first cabinet meeting as leader in happier times.
Once seated, they were each handed a thick red folder containing a 40-page cabinet submission to address the state’s problem with serious and organised crime. Developed between the Premier’s Private Office and Victoria Police command, the submission would prompt the second rebellion of the day.
Chief Commissioner Mike Bush had been invited to the meeting by Allan. He walked the ministers through the proposal for more police resources, powers and the creation of a new Organised Crime Command with access to top-level intelligence from national and interstate agencies to bring down serious crooks profiting from corruption on Big Build construction sites and fuelling the so-called tobacco wars.