Rita Panahi: Rudderless Liberals made themselves unelectable

Instead of vindicating Dan Andrews, the Victorian election win is an indictment on the weak, “small l” Liberals.

In the aftermath of the Victorian Liberals’ disastrous election result we have been treated to some of the dumbest and most delusional “analysis” imaginable, much of it about as divorced from reality as the Liberals who thought they had a chance of forming government.

Hate to say “I told you so” but I did; for more than a year I’ve been saying and writing that the weak, rudderless Liberals had made themselves unelectable and that Labor would win in a landslide despite a great deal of ill-feeling towards the Dan Andrews government, particularly among those disproportionately impacted by six lockdowns.

Politics is supposed to be about the contest of ideas.

Yet the Victorian Liberals were too terrified to formulate any policies that deviated from the Leftist, big-spending, identity politics-obsessed Victorian Labor government.

As one Liberal frontbencher told me a couple of months ago: “I can’t think of a major policy area where we offer anything notably different to Labor”.

The Matthew Guy-led opposition has lost another election. Picture: David Caird

The election result should surprise no one who has been paying attention but rather than being a vindication of Premier Andrews, it is an indictment on the weak, bed-wetting, smallest of “small l” Victorian Liberals who stood for nothing and suffered a humiliating loss to a government mired in multiple controversies.

Having learnt nothing from the Federal election, nor the South Australian and West Australian elections, the Matthew Guy-led opposition decided to veer so far into Labor-lite territory that the mere presence of a Christian within the party sent shockwaves through the leadership.

Meanwhile, the same commentariat who claimed after the 2007 Rudd victory that conservatism was dead in Australia are again crowing about another Liberal loss and interpreting the result as a rejection of “Right wing” politics.

Of course they cannot name a single Right wing or even centre-Right policies that the Victorian Liberals took to the election for the very good reason that not a single one exists.

Guy’s Libs were about as conservative or centre-Right as I am vegan.

But such indisputable facts haven’t stopped the dangerously dimwitted commentators, some of them partly responsible for the Liberal’s 2018 landslide loss, from claiming the state Libs need to be even more “moderate” as if they are currently some Trumpian/Thatcherite ideologues.

I’m not sure what cocktail of drugs these folks are mixing with their chardonnay but that sort of “analysis” belongs at the bottom of a budgie cage.

At the 2018 Victorian election the Liberals were by any reasonable measure “moderates” but they did have one decidedly conservative policy centred around law and order.

When they lost the election that policy was blamed for their abysmal performance. This time around the Libs did not have a single conservative policy, embracing every radical Labor social policy plus emission targets more ambitious than those of federal Labor.

Then there were the big spending plans that they failed to properly cost.

The Libs’ lack of courage wasn’t new.

Despite a great deal of ill-feeling towards the Dan Andrews government, the Liberals failed to land a punch on Labor. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

It was evident throughout the pandemic with the opposition consistently refusing to attack government overreach and saying they would enforce similar policies if given similar health advice. Never mind how destructive that advice may be.

This year the Victorian Liberals backed Labor 100 per cent on everything from radical trans policy (and Victoria has some of the most radical laws in this area), to a treaty with the Indigenous community to insane emission targets.

There were no bold ideological plans to reform state taxes, cut red tape in the energy sector to increase supply of cheap, reliable energy and drive down prices, and there certainly was no appetite to fight the culture wars even in areas were Labor was on shaky ground.

The Victorian Liberals veered so far Left that they stood for nothing other than high expenditure at a time of record debt and far Left social and cultural policies.

Guess what? We already have a Labor government delivering that, we don’t need Liberal impostors.

The Guy opposition stood for nothing and got the drubbing they richly deserved.

One can only hope that the next leader has a backbone and conviction.

We need an opposition that can hold the government accountable and give Victorians a real choice at the ballot box.

IN SHORT

The tweet of the week goes to the man who has been called the world’s most influential public intellectual, the brilliant Jordan Peterson, who took aim at Qantas’ incoherent and unnecessary corporate virtue signalling.

Jordan Peterson had some wise words for Qantas.

Peterson posted: “I could really do without the land acknowledgment propaganda delivered to me by a corporate behemoth @Qantas. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way. Stick to (1) flying and (2) making money. I don’t want or need moral lessons from you or any other corporation.” Hear, hear.

If only Qantas would focus on improving its deplorable service levels rather than grandstanding on divisive political issues.