If Jacinta Allan can't handle being depicted as a dark sorceress on a truck, she shouldn't be in politics

I have been covering state politics in this country for longer than most of my readers have been alive, and if there is one thing I have learned from my countless off-the-record lunches at the Melbourne Club, it is this: true leadership requires the grace to let a truck drive around the city depicting you as a satanic hag without throwing a tantrum.

Unfortunately, it seems Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan missed that memo.

For several weeks now, a mobile billboard has been bravely navigating Melbourne’s congested arterial roads. On its side is a rather striking piece of modern political art: an AI-generated image of Premier Allan sporting a black pointed hat, accompanied by the catchy, historically resonant slogan, "ditch the witch."

Now, in a bygone era of political giants—the Keating years, the Howard years, the times when men were men and political discourse consisted of hurling parliamentary epithets that would shatter a modern HR department—a premier would have simply laughed this off. They would have commended the grassroots organizers for their entrepreneurial use of high-resolution digital displays.

But Allan? She has instead chosen to play the victim, breathlessly categorizing the campaign as "sexist, misogynist, hateful" commentary. She has taken to the airwaves to complain that political opponents are barracking for bullies.

Thankfully, the adults are still in the room. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, a woman who understands the fundamental democratic right to hurl 17th-century peasant accusations at female elected officials, correctly advised Allan to "suck it up, sweetheart" and noted that "if the shoe fits," one should wear it. Or, in this case, if the black pointed hat generated by a neural network fits, one should strap it on and get back to managing the state budget.

I had coffee just yesterday with a very senior federal shadow minister—I won't name him, but let's just say he understands how the sausage is made—and he was absolutely shaking his head at Allan’s fragility. "It’s just a massive truck with a highly visible digital rendering of her as a practitioner of the dark arts," he told me over his macchiato. "Why does she have to make it about gender? When I was in state parliament, someone once drew a mildly unflattering cartoon of my chin in the Herald Sun. You didn’t see me crying about it."

He is entirely right. We have lost all sense of proportion.

Let us examine the facts of the "ditch the witch" billboard objectively, as I always do. The phrase itself is a classic piece of Australian political rhyming slang. It was used against Julia Gillard, and it is being used against Allan today. To claim that a phrase historically deployed exclusively against female political leaders to invoke the imagery of women being burned at the stake is somehow "misogynist" is a staggering leap of logic.

It is simply a robust critique of Allan's infrastructure policies. When a frustrated motorist sees a 14-foot AI image of the Premier in a witch costume, they do not think about gender dynamics. They think, "Ah, yes, a nuanced repudiation of the Suburban Rail Loop’s cost blowouts."

Furthermore, we should be applauding the technological ingenuity on display here. The creators of this billboard did not rely on crude Sharpies or MS Paint. They utilized advanced generative AI to craft a photorealistic image of the Premier in occult garb. Do you know how hard it is to get Midjourney to correctly render the facial features of a Victorian Labor Premier without giving her six fingers on one hand? It takes prompt-engineering of the highest order. These are exactly the kind of tech-savvy constituents the Allan government should be trying to court, rather than alienating them with accusations of hate.

When Pauline Hanson says "if the shoe fits," she is speaking to a profound truth about modern governance. The electorate is angry. Cost of living is up. Housing is unaffordable. And when the electorate is angry, they have a constitutionally implied right to drive a truck around the CBD demanding the ceremonial drowning of the state’s most powerful woman. To deny them this outlet is the real anti-democratic action.

I have sat on countless panels discussing the "decline of civility" in politics, and I can tell you exactly who is responsible: politicians who refuse to be casually dehumanized with a smile. The social contract dictates that we, the media and the public, get to project our deepest, most primal rage onto elected officials, and they, in turn, are supposed to collect their six-figure salaries and pretend it doesn't hurt.

By calling out the "ditch the witch" billboard, Allan is breaking that contract. She is demanding a level of basic human respect that simply has no place in the Westminster system.

If we follow Allan’s logic to its natural conclusion, where does it end? Will we no longer be allowed to project 50-foot holograms of female MPs as gargoyles? Will it become "inappropriate" to use deepfake audio of female senators cackling over a boiling cauldron of new taxes? This is a slippery slope to a political landscape where we actually have to debate policy, a chilling prospect for the vital cottage industry of professional political grievance.

I remember clearly when this specific brand of high-level discourse was first introduced into the federal sphere. It was during the tenure of Julia Gillard. The "ditch the witch" placards outside Parliament House were a masterclass in concise, policy-oriented feedback. At the time, I wrote a column praising the protesters for their brevity. Why write a 5,000-word submission on the carbon tax when you can simply accuse the Prime Minister of communing with the devil? It saves paper. It saves time. It is peak efficiency.

For Allan to now claim that reusing this classic slogan is "misogynist" shows a shocking lack of respect for Australian political heritage. We recycle our plastics, we recycle our greywater, why shouldn't we recycle our gendered slurs? It is environmentally responsible protesting.

At a dinner party in Toorak just last weekend, I was speaking with several prominent business leaders about this very issue. The mood was one of profound disappointment in the Premier. One logistics CEO—a man who moves thousands of tons of freight across this great state every day—was nearly in tears. "I just don't understand it," he said, swirling a 2018 Shiraz. "We pay our taxes. We employ people. And when we want to express our mild dissatisfaction with payroll tax harmonization by digitally grafting the Premier's face onto the wicked witch of the west and driving it past her office, she calls us bullies. Where is the empathy?"

Where indeed? Allan’s complete inability to center the feelings of the men operating the harassment truck is a glaring leadership failure.

Let us deeply analyze Pauline Hanson’s intervention in this saga. By telling the Premier to "suck it up, sweetheart," Hanson has delivered a masterstroke of Churchillian statesmanship. It is a phrase that belongs in the pantheon of great political oratory, right alongside "Ask not what your country can do for you" and "We shall fight on the beaches."

Hanson, a seasoned veteran of the political arena, understands that the only correct response to targeted, misogynistic harassment is to internalize it completely and then weaponize it against other women. That is the kind of sisterhood this country needs. When Hanson says "if the shoe fits," she is not being cruel; she is offering Allan a practical wardrobe consultation. If the AI-generated pointed hat of generalized male rage fits perfectly upon your head, the most dignified thing to do is tie the chin strap.

We must also consider the chilling effect Allan's complaints will have on the burgeoning artificial intelligence sector in Victoria. The state government claims to support innovation, yet the moment a group of visionary entrepreneurs uses a large language model to generate defamatory occult imagery of the Premier, she threatens to shut it down with her complaints.

This is a devastating blow to the creative economy. The prompt engineers behind the "ditch the witch" billboard likely spent hours refining their inputs. I can only imagine the sheer technical skill required. "Prompt: Jacinta Allan, Victorian Premier, but evil, dark sorceress, pointed hat, riding a broomstick made of mismanaged Level Crossing Removal project budgets, photorealistic, 8k resolution, cinematic lighting." To dismiss this digital artistry as mere "bullying" is philistinism of the highest order.

Let us expand on the sheer logistical effort of the billboard campaign. Procuring a truck in this economy is no small feat. The supply chain issues alone would have deterred a less committed group of misogynists. But these brave patriots persevered. They navigated the complex web of commercial vehicle leasing, they sourced a high-definition LED screen capable of withstanding the unpredictable Melbourne weather, and they mapped out an optimized route to ensure maximum visibility of their AI-generated masterpiece during peak hour traffic.

This is the kind of logistical competence and project management the Allan government has been sorely lacking. Frankly, instead of condemning the creators of the "ditch the witch" billboard, the Premier should be offering them the contract to manage the next phase of the West Gate Tunnel. If they can deliver a rolling, 360-degree digital monument to gendered hatred on time and under budget, just imagine what they could do with a major toll road.

And what of the children? I frequently speak with parents at my local yacht club, and they are terrified of the example the Premier is setting for the next generation. We are raising a generation of young women who might look at Jacinta Allan and think, "If I achieve the highest office in the state, I too should be allowed to object when people publicly fantasize about drowning me to see if I float."

Is that the kind of fragile, entitled mindset we want to instill in our daughters? I think not. We want our daughters to be like Pauline Hanson: tough, resilient, and perfectly willing to throw other women under the bus if it secures a few seconds of favourable airtime on Sky News. That is true empowerment.

I urge Premier Allan to take a long, hard look in the mirror—assuming, of course, that as a witch, she still casts a reflection. She should heed Pauline Hanson’s sage advice. Suck it up, sweetheart. Embrace the hat. Commend the truck driver on his fuel efficiency. And for heaven's sake, stop whining. It’s making those of us who support the billboard feel very uncomfortable about our choices.