Ben Carroll can abolish the 1 per cent transport levy, but he cannot abolish the questions surrounding how it came about or the record of the government he has been part of.

Victorians have every right to be angry.

For more than 18 months, public transport fares have included an additional 1 per cent levy, introduced without being properly disclosed to the public. Now Premier Ben Carroll has announced that the levy will be scrapped and says his government needs to be more transparent.

Good.

But marketing the decision as ’transparency’ does not make the original conduct transparent.

It does not explain why Victorians were not clearly told they were paying a levy. It does not explain who knew about it, who approved it and why it was buried within fare increases.

And most importantly, it raises a question that goes directly to the credibility of the man now sitting in the Premier’s office.

How could Ben Carroll not have known?

Carroll was part of the Andrews Government. He was part of the Allan Government. More importantly, he was the Minister for Public Transport when the levy was approved.

If he didn’t know about it, as claimed, how can Victorians trust him to run the state when he apparently didn’t know what was happening in his own portfolio?

This is not some obscure bureaucratic decision. It was a levy attached to the public transport portfolio Carroll was responsible for, designed to raise billions of dollars over decades.

Yet now we are expected to believe that simply changing the Premier and scrapping the levy somehow resets the clock.

It doesn’t.

And Victorians should remember that we have been here before.

Victorians rewarded Daniel Andrews with another term of government in 2022 after his extraordinary handling of the Covid pandemic and the state’s unprecedented lockdowns.

That was a mistake.

Melbourne endured 262 days of lockdowns across six lockdown periods, an extraordinary burden imposed on families, children, workers, and businesses. The consequences did not simply disappear when the restrictions were lifted.

Businesses were damaged. Children lost valuable years of education and social development. People left Victoria. Melbourne’s population experienced a significant interstate migration shock as residents moved elsewhere during and after the lockdowns.

Yet voters rewarded the government with another four years.

Victorians should learn from that mistake.

Because once again, Victorians are being asked to believe that changing the person at the top means the problems of the past have disappeared.

They haven’t.

Ben Carroll was not an outsider who arrived to clean up someone else’s mess. He was part of the governments that created much of Victoria’s current predicament.

He was there under Andrews and then under Allan.

And now he wants Victorians to believe that his premiership represents a fresh start.

It doesn’t unless the culture changes too.

You can change a leader. You cannot change a rotten political culture simply by changing the leader.

Carroll says Labor needs to ‘be better’. Really, after 12 years?

Victorians deserve better.

We need accountability.

Who authorised the levy? Who knew about it? Why wasn’t it properly disclosed? Why did it take an Auditor General’s investigation for Victorians to understand what they had been paying?

And if the Premier genuinely didn’t know about something this significant while he was responsible for public transport, why should Victorians trust him with the much bigger responsibilities of running the entire state?

These are not unreasonable questions.

They are the bare minimum questions voters should be asking.

The political temptation will be to declare victory: the levy is gone, the new Premier has promised transparency, Labor has promised to do better, and everyone can move on.

We shouldn’t.

Because if that becomes the standard, political parties learn a dangerous lesson.

They learn that they can make serious mistakes, lose public trust, change the leader, rebrand the government and ask voters for forgiveness.

We cannot reward that behaviour.

Changing a leader cannot become a political reset button.

Labor has governed Victoria for 12 years. Ben Carroll has been part of that government for much of that period. He cannot claim credit for its successes while distancing himself from its failures.

This is precisely why Opposition Leader Jess Wilson has been calling for a fresh start for Victoria.

The latest scandal only strengthens that argument.

Victoria does not need another change of leadership within Labor followed by another promise that things will be different.

It needs a genuine change of government.

A government prepared to tell Victorians the truth before it is exposed by an auditor.

A government that respects taxpayers enough to explain every new charge.

A government that understands that public trust is earned, not marketed.

And a government that accepts that after 12 years, voters are entitled to judge the entire record not just the latest Premier. Changing the icing on a cake does not change the cake itself.

Victorians have already made the mistake of rewarding a government after an extraordinary period of restrictions and disruption.

We should not make the same mistake again by rewarding Labor simply because it has changed its leader.

Ben Carroll can abolish the 1 per cent levy.

He cannot abolish the questions.

He cannot erase his role in the Andrews and Allan governments.

And he cannot simply ask Victorians to forget.

It is time to vote Labor out and give Victoria the fresh start Jess Wilson is calling for.

Not another rebrand.

Not another apology.

Not another promise to ‘do better’.

Not another marketing ’transparency’ slogan.

A fresh start.