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Eight years working at the checkout of a suburban Kmart can instil many things in a young man’s character.
Humility. Resolve. An ability to navigate conflict and wear criticism.
But perhaps endurance is the trait Ben Carroll developed behind the register that has served him best during his 14-year parliamentary career.
On Tuesday, that career could reach its pinnacle: a looming spill motion at a morning meeting of MPs may unseat Jacinta Allan and install Carroll as the 50th premier of Victoria.
Whether intentional or not, that was a reminder that Carroll sees himself as someone who can bide his time and go the distance.
Carroll was born in July 1975, the eldest of three children raised in Airport West. On the doorstep of Essendon Airport, the suburb is today part of his electorate, Niddrie, where he lives with his wife, Fiona, who is a lawyer, and their daughter, Madeline.
His mother, Kay, was born and raised in Texas before migrating to Australia and working at Glenroy West Primary School. Carroll’s electrician father ran a small business wiring up new homes around their growing suburb. The family business went under during the 1990s recession.
“Despite losing his business in the Keating recession, he, to this day, says Paul Keating was our greatest prime minister,” Carroll said of his father in a 2024 interview. “We saw the recession very closely in our family, but he was always thinking about those who were less fortunate.”
Carroll attended St Christopher’s Primary School in Airport West and St Bernard’s in Essendon. As soon as he reached the legal working age of 14 years and nine months, he got his first job, at the local Kmart. Eight years on the checkout helped him through an arts degree at La Trobe University.
Kmart was where he joined the conservative Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (known as the Shoppies), a union that holds significant sway over Labor’s Right faction. In some Labor circles that stint also earned him the moniker “Kmart Keating”.
If Keating loomed large in Carroll’s formative years, the “third way” centrism of Bill Clinton did just as much to inspire his move into politics.
In his first speech to parliament, he recalled being in his final year of high school when Clinton was sworn in as US president promising to deliver “more opportunity for all”.
Carroll later travelled by train and bus to Canberra when Clinton was visiting, and took up an offer of a Parliament House tour by Labor’s Simon Crean, whom he had met through their shared devotion to the North Melbourne Football Club.
“I did get that tour and was fortunate enough to shake President Clinton’s hand,” Carroll recalled.
Carroll joined the Niddrie branch of the Labor Party in his early 20s, and one of his first jobs after graduating was as a junior staffer for then-premier Steve Bracks. By 2012, Carroll was in Canberra advising then-senator Stephen Conroy on the National Broadband Network.
Rob Hulls resigned and triggered a byelection that year in the seat of Niddrie. Carroll beat his current cabinet colleague Jaclyn Symes for preselection and won the subsequent election, entering parliament at the age of 36.
“When a seat comes up … where you went to kinder, where you went to primary, where you went to secondary, where you got your first job, where your family have been part of the community … you have a crack,” he said in 2024.
He has never shied away from ambition, but Labor insiders have sometimes questioned whether he had the ruthlessness needed to rise to the top.
In 2022, then-premier Daniel Andrews named Allan as his deputy before Carroll could rally his own supporters.
Following the reshuffle, Andrews left Carroll waiting for more than an hour to receive his new portfolio, sparking intrigue in Labor circles from those who assumed it was deliberate punishment for his interest in the role.
When Andrews announced he was stepping down in September 2023, the premier hatched a plan to install his loyal deputy as leader and treasurer Tim Pallas as her deputy.
Carroll and his Right faction colleagues challenged this succession plan and threatened to formally contest the leadership. A peace deal with Allan installed him as deputy premier instead.
Andrews was said to be apoplectic. Tellingly, Carroll was the only sitting MP to publicly criticise Andrews’ subsequent photo op with Chinese President Xi Jinping and a rogues’ gallery of dictators last year.
Labor insiders, speaking anonymously to detail internal deliberations, say that as deputy premier and the leading Right faction MP, Carroll has been a voice of constructive dissent within the government.
His scepticism about Andrews and Allan’s pet project, the $34.5 billion Suburban Rail Loop East, is widely known. Carroll has instead championed the stalled $13 billion Airport Rail Link, and pushed for it to include a station in his electorate at Airport West.
Carroll called internally for tougher bail laws at a time of growing public concern about crime, and also issued veiled criticism about the closure of police stations.
As education minister he went head to head with Allan and then-treasurer Pallas in 2024 over their decision to pull $2.4 billion from state schools by delaying the government’s commitment to the Gonski reforms.
And if he ascends to the leadership, he is likely to announce a royal commission into corruption on state government Big Build sites – something Allan has steadfastly rejected.
These friction points indicate where a Carroll-led government could diverge from the past 12 years of Labor under Andrews and Allan. The hope for Labor insiders supporting his leadership push is that he will provide a sufficient break with the past to win back voters by November.
“Jacinta Allan has been unable to move past the CFMEU corruption issue,” said one senior Labor source. “Carroll gives the government an opportunity to reset on crime, integrity and the economy, and refocus on the issues that matter most.”
But after cycling through 11 ministries and three years as deputy premier, Carroll is not a clean skin either – a point laboured by the opposition on Monday.
The education portfolio has delivered some especially heavy blows. First he was the face of the 2024 VCE exam fiasco, in which questions for nearly half of the end-of-year tests were leaked online.
Just last week, public school teachers walked off the job for the second time this year and marched through Melbourne’s CBD demanding better working conditions, after rejecting a pay offer Carroll said would make them the nation’s best paid.
“Make no mistake, Ben Carroll has been Jacinta Alan’s partner in crime for three years,” shadow attorney-general James Newbury said on Monday.
Former federal opposition leader Bill Shorten worked closely with Carroll for almost 13 years on issues in their overlapping electorates in Melbourne’s north-west.
Shorten would not be drawn on the leadership contest, nor on the merits of Allan’s government. But he described Carroll as the epitome of a grassroots local member who could also work well with industry and business.
“If the party chooses him, he’ll be very good,” said Shorten, who is now vice chancellor of the University of Canberra.
“He would be very much in the Bracks-Brumby mould if he is successful. He’ll build consensus; he knows what he’s got to do but he’ll bring people with him. He’s a listener.”
Just six weeks ago, leadership rumblings broke out amid dire opinion polls and a catastrophic negative approval rating for Allan. Carroll publicly ruled out challenging the premier.
For some Labor figures, who think he should have challenged much sooner, this again raised questions about whether he had enough grit for the top job.
“The last six months hasn’t done him any favours,” one said.
But on Monday morning, Carroll said it was clear Allan had lost the support of her party room, and announced he would nominate for leader. Photos on his social media pages of him and Allan together were quickly deleted.
One cabinet minister, speaking anonymously on Monday, said Carroll’s hesitation to challenge reflected his character – although not unfavourably.
“He is earnest and honest and someone who will always try to do the right thing,” the minister said.
“He would have been very uncomfortable about challenging. But there has been a build-up of people who have come to him and said, you are the only viable alternative for the party.”
Despite all his ambition, Carroll, announcing his nomination on X, said it was a difficult step to take.
“But the stakes at the upcoming election are simply too high,” he said. “The prospect of a Liberal-One Nation Government that will cut schools, health and front-line services is simply too high a risk to ignore.”
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Patrick Hatch is transport reporter at The Age and a former business reporter.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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