Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu is likely to lose the next election because of his government's lack of action, a distinguished professor has told a labour conference.

Ron McCallum, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Sydney, said that while Victoria's former Labor government had introduced Australia's most modern health and safety laws in 2005, the incumbent coalition government was doing little to improve workplace laws.

"The Baillieu government ... they don't seem to do much, observing from this side of the Murray,"

Prof McCallum told the Sydney Law School's Labour Law Conference in Sydney.



Prof McCallum, the 2011 Senior Australian of the Year, had praise for 40-year-old Victorian Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews who took over the Labor leadership when the coalition came to power in December 2010.

"The young Labor leader looks bright and interesting," he said.

The latest Newspoll shows Labor's primary vote has climbed five points to its strongest position since February.

The figures, published in the Australian newspaper, show Labor's primary vote at 33 per cent, up from 28 per cent a fortnight ago.

It is the strongest result for the party since late February, when the figure stood at 35 per cent.

The Coalition's primary vote fell one point to 45 per cent.

A sunny winter’s day in Adelaide, not much happening in local politics, and the state opposition leader Isobel Redmond was surrounded by journalists outside Parliament House conceding she had thought about running for the Senate.

Yes, it’s a special gift to the media, the way she keeps putting her foot in it.
She doesn’t have to do it but she does, time and again.

The new damage done yesterday came on top of her ill-advised decision to back a losing candidate, Bev Barber, in the Senate preselection contest last month.

Redmond also generated national headlines when she told a CEDA luncheon earlier in the year that the best way to deal with gender discrimination was to ignore it and it would “just disappear”.

And to make matters worse, she is trailing Premier Jay Weatherill in the polls.

PREMIER Campbell Newman would lose his seat in the Queensland parliament due to an apparent backlash against his tough-love approach to slashing government spending and public service jobs, according to a new poll.