Two influential unions have distanced themselves from Victoria's Labor government with about a month to go before the state election. One has launched advertisements accusing Premier Ben Carroll of lying, and the other has withheld the campaign money it spent heavily on four years ago.
The Australian Services Union (ASU), which is aligned with Labor, has confirmed it will not doorknock for the party in the coming weeks. Its ads display the words "Ben lied. Labor lies" across a large image of the premier. The union has bought placements on news sites and Google in Carroll's own seat of Niddrie, in Pascoe Vale, which Labor holds by a 2% margin against the Greens, and in Bentleigh, a Liberal target seat. The ads will also appear in seats held by the deputy premier, the treasurer and the local government minister.
The dispute centres on the ASU's long-running push to lift a cap on the rates councils can charge residents, which the union says has limited their ability to pay staff more. The left-aligned union claims it had an agreement with former premier Jacinta Allan to lift the cap. It says Carroll quickly scrapped the plan after taking over the leadership, out of concern that it would add to cost of living pressures for workers outside local government.
"Premier Ben Carroll has chosen not to show up for workers and so workers can't show up for him this November," said Tash Wark, secretary of the ASU's Victorian branch. She said the union would normally be out knocking on doors this close to an election, but would not do so while the government ignores people who deliver council services. Wark added that the union would campaign for Labor if the government "does the right thing."
A Victorian government spokesperson said Carroll is "fighting for working people." The spokesperson said a Liberal-One Nation coalition would scrap penalty rates, sack 31,700 public sector workers, end paid parental leave and unleash $40 billion in cuts.
Separately, the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) state council resolved on Wednesday not to run a statewide campaign for Labor. A copy of the resolution seen by Guardian Australia says the union will "not run a third-party campaign at the 2026 state election." Money once set aside for that purpose will instead go toward preparing and defending the union and its members in the construction royal commission, and toward responding to what the resolution calls an "oncoming attack on blue-collar unions" from a majority Coalition government.
The resolution cites ETU-commissioned polling received at the start of October, which predicted Labor would win just 25 seats, 10 fewer than forecast before the July leadership spill that installed Carroll in place of Allan. At the 2022 election, the ETU spent more than $1.6m backing Labor. Its ads that year reached 2 million people on Facebook and 1.4 million on YouTube. No ads have been published this time.
The ETU was a factional backer of the former premier and strongly opposed a royal commission into alleged corruption on the Big Build, calling it a lawyers' picnic. In June it was one of three unions to launch an advertising blitz challenging claims that alleged corruption on government building sites cost taxpayers $15bn. One ETU source, speaking anonymously, said a lot of the union movement had been fairly muted toward Labor ahead of the election.
One Labor MP, who was not authorised to speak publicly, accused the ETU of "throwing the toys out the cot because they didn't get what their way." Carroll is seeking an unprecedented fourth consecutive term for Labor at the 28 November election. The latest polling puts Labor behind the Coalition 44% to 55% on a two-party-preferred basis, though the rise of One Nation could complicate the final result.
