Victoria’s Liberal Party has moved quickly to turn Premier Ben Carroll’s embarrassing petrol station mistake into an election attack, rolling out digital advertisements at service stations mocking him for accidentally driving away without paying for fuel.
The ads, appearing on screens above petrol bowsers, use an AI-generated image of Carroll holding car keys while a service station worker appears to chase after him.
They carry the message: “Hey Ben, don’t forget to pay … because we’re sick of paying for Labor.”
Some of the advertising has been placed in Carroll’s own electorate, sharpening the political sting just weeks before Victorians vote on 28 November.
The campaign follows Carroll’s admission that he drove away from a petrol station on Monday night without paying a bill of about $90.
Carroll said he had been running errands near his home and had stopped for fuel after a demanding day that included receiving briefings following the alleged attack on federal independent MP Helen Haines.
“Monday was a tough day for a lot of reasons,” Carroll told reporters.
He said he had also agreed to return a pencil case belonging to one of his daughter’s friends and stopped for petrol while out.
“I said, I’d do it and I’d get petrol. And then I found out the following day I hadn’t paid for the petrol,” Carroll said.
The Premier said the bill was settled as soon as he became aware of the mistake.
The ABC reported that police contacted the Department of Parliamentary Services about the unpaid fuel before Carroll was notified of the error.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush subsequently said there was an important distinction between an accidental failure to pay and a deliberate petrol theft.
“If someone does something accidentally, non-deliberately, it becomes a very civil matter,” Bush said, adding that civil redress had occurred in Carroll’s case. No further police action is expected.
Carroll has described the episode as an innocent mistake and sought to make light of the embarrassment.
He told reporters that former Victorian deputy premier John Thwaites had contacted him after the story emerged and recounted his own petrol station mishap, in which he allegedly drove away with the bowser hose still attached to his vehicle.
Carroll said the exchange made him “feel a lot better”, adding that the incident showed “politicians are human beings and even premiers make mistakes”.
The Liberals, however, have seized on the incident as fresh campaign material.
The petrol station advertising links Carroll’s personal mistake with the opposition’s broader argument that Victorians are “paying for Labor”, transforming an individual oversight into a message about government costs and Labor’s economic record.
It is a deliberately visual strategy: voters filling their cars are being confronted with an advertisement about the Premier failing to pay for his own petrol.
The attack comes during an increasingly aggressive Victorian election campaign in which both major parties are competing for voters concerned about cost of living, housing, crime, infrastructure and the state’s finances.
The Liberal campaign has increasingly used digital and targeted advertising as it seeks to make Carroll personally responsible for Labor’s record in government.
But the petrol ads have also attracted criticism.
Some social media users described the campaign as childish or petty, arguing the opposition should focus on broader policy issues rather than an accidental petrol drive-off that had already been rectified.
Others pointed to past controversies involving Liberal politicians and argued that using the incident as an attack line risked humanising Carroll rather than damaging him.
The timing has also drawn criticism because Carroll said the mistake occurred during a difficult evening following the alleged attack on Haines, who was critically injured earlier that day.
That has not stopped the Liberals from pressing the advantage.
The advertisement represents another example of artificial intelligence being used in Victorian political campaigning.
AI-generated political advertising has already become a feature of the 2026 election, with outside campaign groups using digitally created scenes involving crime, state debt, hospitals and infrastructure to target voters online.
The latest Liberal advertisement brings that tactic directly into petrol stations, where rising fuel and household costs are already politically sensitive.
For Carroll, the underlying incident appears legally settled.
He paid the outstanding amount, police have indicated that an accidental drive-off without criminal intent is generally treated as a civil matter, and no further action is expected.
Politically, however, the episode is unlikely to disappear as quickly.
With just over a month until polling day, the Liberals have turned a forgotten petrol bill into campaign content designed to reinforce a much broader message: that Victorian voters have been left paying too much under Labor.
Whether voters see the advertisements as sharp political humour or an unnecessary personal attack will now become part of the increasingly combative contest between Carroll and Opposition Leader Jess Wilson as the election campaign intensifies.
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