Andrew Bolt: Why a second wipe-out is looming for the Liberals
Do any Liberals still doubt, after the wipe-out in Victoria, that Scott Morrison’s federal government will get smashed, too? And they only have themselves to blame as the wipe-out looms, writes Andrew Bolt.
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Do any Liberals still doubt, after the wipe-out in Victoria, that Scott Morrison’s federal government will get smashed, too?
Then replay Labor Premier Daniel Andrews’s victory speech on Saturday — the part of it that explains exactly why the Liberals are dying.
“We live our values, we keep our promises, and we get things done,” growled Andrews, as scores of red-shirted volunteers cheered.
Could Prime Minister Scott Morrison say one syllable of that with Andrews’ mad-dog conviction?
What values do today’s Liberals even have? How many promises have Morrison’s Liberals kept? What things have they got done?
And could Morrison find mobs of party volunteers as committed and excited as Labor’s, backed by armies from the unions and GetUp?
The Victorian Liberals sure couldn’t find them. Watching the Sky News coverage, I saw several Liberal MPs speaking from halls almost empty of people or bunting.
No wonder. Where’s the fun of being Liberal these days? What’s the point?
Of course, deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg tried to deny that this Victorian debacle — Labor won at least two seats for every Coalition seat — should worry the Morrison Government.
“Scott Morrison and I and other federal colleagues didn’t play an active role in this campaign, and it was fought on state (issues),” he said.
True, up to a point. Victorian voters basically chose a tough and practical Labor Premier over a Liberal opponent, Matthew Guy, who seemed half his size and with half his gravitas.
They picked a man with a plan over someone with a few ideas. And they backed a Labor plan to spend $95 billion — 50 per cent more than the Liberals — on infrastructure for a crowded city and a growing state.
But only an idiot would think that’s the end of the story for Morrison.
Labor’s sure not that dumb — which is why it erected billboards showing Matthew Guy alongside menacing pictures of federal Liberals Morrison, Peter Dutton, and former prime minister Tony Abbott.
Leftist commentators say — aha! — that demonstrates the Victorian Liberals lost because the Canberra Liberals lurched to the Right and sacked nice Malcolm Turnbull.
But that’s more bull. Yes, Turnbull’s sacking in August was unhelpful, but the Victorian Liberals had by then already lost every Newspoll in five years. Five years! Not once in all that time did Victorians think Guy’s mob had the answers, whether Turnbull was prime minister or not. In fact, the Victorian Liberals were hurt less by losing Turnbull than they were by resembling him. That’s the real reason Morrison should be freaking out.
Under Guy, the Liberals in Victoria were just like the federal Liberals under Turnbull and now mini-Mal Morrison.
You know: wishy-washy. “Moderate”. Stand for little, and argue for less.
Ask what the Liberals under Guy really stood for. On global warming, for instance, they were just as confused as Morrison is now, even as the Andrews Government helped to force the closure of the giant Hazelwood power station and send power prices soaring.
Like Morrison, Guy did not once dare argue against the global warming scare. Instead, like Morrison, he just muttered about the cost of Labor’s schemes and then produced half-baked or half-hearted global-warming schemes of his own. He even promised a half-price rebate for new energy-efficient televisions (“Great for the environment,” he chirruped), and floated a vague scheme to underwrite a new power station that could use gas, wind, solar, or possibly (blush!) coal.
The Liberals must learn that they cannot win an argument that they never dare to put.
Nor can they win when they suggest that Labor is right about an urgent problem, and just nitpick that Labor is too keen to fix it.
All this risk-aversion and yes-but-no following of the Labor agenda — isn’t that exactly the federal Liberals, too?
Yes, Guy did campaign on law and order, a conservative staple. But his solutions didn’t quite seem convincing. (And why do the Liberals so often sound mean?)
The Andrews Government, by contrast, said that it was hiring 3000 more police. Simple.
Still, how could Guy make law and order his big issue, yet fail in a campaign that coincided with a terrorist attack by a man on bail, the conviction of three terrorists, the arrest of three more suspects, and mass brawls of African gangs?
In the end, Andrews seemed more serious on this, too, and left the Liberals looking exactly what they were — desperate, and with little to say on how to make your life easier.
Does that also ring a bell in Canberra?
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