John Pesutto should stand against efforts to strike a treaty with the Indigenous population

Even as conservatives around the country celebrate an against the odds victory in the race-based referendum, the Vic Libs are finding new ways to appear out of touch with mainstream voters.

The hapless Victorian Liberals are proving to be about as useless as an umbrella in a hurricane.

Even as conservatives around the country celebrate an against the odds victory in the race-based referendum, the Vic Libs are finding new ways to appear inept and hopelessly out of touch with mainstream voters, particularly those who would ever see fit to cast a ballot for a Coalition candidate.

After 55 per cent of Victorians voted ‘no,’ the John Pesutto-led opposition should’ve immediately and unequivocally withdrawn their support for a state-based treaty, something they should’ve never backed in the first place.

Pesutto must make it clear that the opposition has heard the Victorian people and will stand firmly against any efforts to strike a treaty with the Indigenous population.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto should never have backed the state-based treaty in the first place. Picture: Getty

It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the most politically astute move he could make.

Yet in classic Vic Lib fashion, the party leadership is too gutless to make the call.

This despite pressure from federal counterparts and a decision by the party’s state council last month backing a motion for the State Parliamentary team to oppose a Victorian Treaty with Aboriginal Victorians.

Pesutto was too weak to commit to a position on the Voice until it became clear that it was going to be defeated.

To be pro-treaty and anti-Voice is simply an incoherent policy position.

It’s like refusing to go on a date with a dude but then agreeing to marry him. Just the sort of wackadoodle tomfoolery that only the Vic Libs could pull off.

NSW and Queensland’s Labor governments have reversed their plans for a treaty, acknowledging they have no mandate after the clear referendum result.

But in Victoria the Libs are refusing to challenge Labor by withdrawing their support, preferring to sit on the fence.

When gifted a political opportunity, they manage to remind the electorate why they’re an unelectable rabble.

In short

Premier Jacinta Allan was playing the victim on Tuesday after a Herald Sun cartoon depicted her as the ‘emperor with no clothes’.

Mark Knight’s emperor with no clothes cartoon.

What is a tried and true trope in satirical cartoons is suddenly sexist but none of the hypersensitive souls upset by Mark Knight’s illustration said a word when Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Dan Andrews and Joe Biden, just to name a few, were similarly depicted.