James Campbell: Victoria looms as dangerous but rewarding battleground for next election
The rumours doing the rounds may be rubbish but they do speak to the fear and anger Victorians are feeling as we stare down the barrel of an even longer lockdown. But will voters take out their frustration at the ballot box, asks James Campbell.
James Campbell
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These are exciting times to be a Victorian voter.
For the first time since the early 1990s — the last time Victoria’s economy was flat on its back — we are going to hold the fate of the national government in our hands.
Ignore the tough talk coming from Canberra about the Victorian government, Daniel Andrews has Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg over a barrel and they know it. Let me explain.
For most of the past 30 years, Victoria hasn’t really figured much in Canberra’s thinking. At each federal election, despite being the second most populous state, we never seem to get the same love as NSW and Queensland.
And why would we? Although there are 38 seats in Victoria — soon to be 39 — at most polls very few of them are up for grabs.
The typical Victorian election story is a furious fight over three or four marginal seats. At one election, three Labor seats will be under pressure; at the next, the Liberals will be fighting to hold onto two or three of theirs. The vast majority hardly ever change hands.
The other perennial feature of Victorian politics is that at any given time most seats will be held by the Labor Party. Last year local boy Bill Shorten got the chocolates in 21, while Scott Morrison had to content himself with 15 (the other two seats are held by a Green and a left-leaning rural independent).
But though Shorten added three seats to the ALP’s Victorian pile, Labor folk were disappointed with the result.
In the aftermath of Malcolm Turnbull’s sudden departure in August 2018 and the state election Danslide three months later, some of them had dared to dream the federal election might be won in Victoria.
A lot has been written about how the election was won for the government in Queensland. Far less attention has been paid to the important part Victoria played. Because if Bill Shorten had got as many votes as Daniel Andrews did six months earlier, he would be Prime Minister now.
We don’t know where the AEC will put the extra seat at the next election but the expectation is it will go into the north or west of Melbourne, which will mean if nothing else changes Labor will have 22 out of 39.
Those who speak to him about such matters say that even before coronavirus Scott Morrison was acutely aware of this, as you would expect him to be given his government currently has 77 out of 151 seats in the House of Representatives. He is also said to be acutely aware of the dysfunctional state of the Victorian Liberal Party.
If Labor were to do better down here and get another three — perhaps Chisholm, La Trobe and Higgins — as well as a bit better in Queensland, it would be hello Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
As one senior Liberal said this week, the government can’t afford to lose any more seats in Melbourne and Labor can’t win without the ballast of Melbourne. That was before COVID struck.
Suddenly, both sides can see Victoria is going to be even more central to the next federal election and there is suddenly both danger and opportunity. The opportunity for the government is fairly obvious.
If Victorian voters blame Daniel Andrews for their predicament, history suggests they will punish federal Labor, just as in 1990 they took their anger at John Cain out on Bob Hawke. Frustratingly, we don’t have any data on what I suspect is a fast-moving situation.
No doubt like the rest of us, you’ve heard all the rumours in the past 48 hours: that the Premier is going to be deposed by the Treasurer Tim Pallas; that the federal government is planning on some kind of coup to install him as premier; that the Governor has been in discussion with the federal government about removing the Premier. It’s really crazy stuff.
But it’s also telling. The rumours spread like wildfire because people are frightened.
I’ve no evidence to back this up but I suspect they’re frightened not just because we are staring into an economic abyss but because after the hotel quarantine and tracing fiascos, a lot of people have decided that these people really just aren’t up to it.
Interestingly, the last time there were this many wild and paranoid rumours floating around Melbourne was, well, back in the early 1990s, when you couldn’t get into a taxi without hearing some far-fetched conspiracy.
If the Liberal Party can surf this wave and make Labor own this “unnecessary lockdown” as Labor made them wear “cuts”, they can redraw the political map in Victoria.
Daniel Andrews has gifted them a once-in-a-generation opportunity as the smarter ones can see. So much for the opportunity, but there is danger too.
Roughly 60 per cent of the coronavirus-related federal assistance is presently coming to Victoria — more than the rest of Australia put together. In other words, the national debate about how long these emergency measures last is now a national debate about how much the rest of Australia is prepared to help Victoria. If Morrison and his ministers get this wrong, they will be punished brutally.
Victoria has never before been a mendicant. For the foreseeable it will be. How will Victorian voters respond? Will we punish the people responsible for this catastrophe?
Or will we sink into a cycle of self-pitying, unthinking, Labor-voting welfare-dependency, blaming others for our predicament — basically Liverpool with better weather?
James Campbell is a Herald Sun columnist