Heartlands under fire: Victorian Liberals dig in for trench warfare

Steve Martin doesn’t look like a man feeling the pressure as his election campaign gets into gear.

But the fresh-faced Liberal candidate for the seat of Indi is carrying the hopes of his state party on his shoulders.

For a start, Indi is no ordinary country seat - it's a place that gets noticed in Australian politics.

The Liberal Party's candidate for Indi Steve Martin.Credit: James Wiltshire

Stretching from Kinglake in the south to the Murray River in the north, it is traditionally  conservative country. And now, after two terms in the hands of high-profile independent Cathy McGowan - who is stepping down - the Coalition wants it back.

But times are tough in Victoria for the Liberal Party.

The drubbing inflicted by Daniel Andrews’ Labor government in November’s state election starkly illustrated the damage done to the Liberal brand by the internal turmoil that three months earlier swept Malcolm Turnbull from the party leadership.

A re-jig of federal electoral boundaries last year made life even harder for several of the party's MPs, who saw the margins over their Labor rivals reduced or even wiped-out.

Liberal insiders eyeing the opinion polls fear the loss of up to six of their 14 Victorian seats if things go badly in the coming weeks.

The seat of Dunkley, on Melbourne's south-east fringe, starts the campaign "underwater" after the electoral commission re-distribution made it a notionally Labor seat with a margin of 1.3 per cent, while Corangamite on the other side of Port Phillip Bay now sits on a knife-edge of just 0.03 per cent.

Liberals are very worried about Chisholm, another city-fringe seat, which made headlines last year when Liberal member Julia Banks dramatically quit her party, while La Trobe, Casey and Deakin are also all under serious threat from Labor.

In Melbourne's leafy inner-east, blue-ribbon Higgins is now the scene of a genuine three-cornered contest with the resignation of popular sitting Liberal Kelly O'Dwyer giving both the Greens and Labor a sniff of success there.

That is a lot of seats on the edge in Victoria, by historic standards.

It casts the state in an unfamiliar role - as a genuine battleground where the fate of the nation’s leadership could be decided in May.

Even traditional eastern suburb Liberal strongholds such as Kooyong, Goldstein and Flinders, which saw big swings against incumbent Liberals in November, are under attack from Labor, the Greens and independents.

Most in the Liberal Party are confident their heartlands will hold - just.

Labor, meanwhile, has no intention of messing with the formula that was so successful in November.

Andrews, and his "getting things done" brand will be used extensively to campaign for a Bill Shorten victory in the coming weeks.

Labor considers Prime Minister Scott Morrison a major liability to his party in Victoria, a perceived weakness the opposition intends to exploit to the full while stoking voter anger at the ejection of Malcolm Turnbull, who was popular in the state.

But Victorian Labor must also shore up its left flank against challenges from the Greens, who are again expected to be a threat in the inner-Melbourne ALP-held seats of Wills, Cooper and Macnamara.

Liberal planners, surveying the strategic circumstances, have plumped for a generally defensive posture aimed at repulsing Labor and Greens raids on conservative territory rather than attempting to capture a lot of new ground.

Expect to see a Liberal campaign in Victoria that talks more about Shorten, who is perceived as Labor's Achilles heel, and the ALP's tax plans, than about Morrison.

Labor leader Bill Shorten is hoping his home state of Victoria delivers him the keys to The Lodge.Credit: Joe Armao

The onslaught on Shorten will be complemented by hyper-localised efforts in individual Liberal-held seats, leaning heavily on the profiles and records of the party's local members.

It’s familiar ground to Victorian Liberal backroom planners, who are long accustomed to political trench warfare for the state’s federal seats, which have proved less likely in the past to change hands than electorates in other states.

The hope for the men and women in blue is that this time will be no different.

Liberal state director Simon Frost left no doubt that he and his colleagues were digging in to fight Labor to a standstill in Victoria.

"The federal election is a referendum on tax," Mr Frost told The Age.

"The Morrison Liberal government has a plan for lower, simpler, taxes."

Victoria was the only state where the Coalition picked up a seat from Labor in the 2016 election, and the Liberals believe this year they have two chances of gaining ground; Indi and Macnamara, the inner-Melbourne seat formerly known as Melbourne Ports, where the retirement of Labor veteran Michael Danby has raised both Liberal and Greens hopes.

But it is Indi that is regarded as the best shot at glory in this election, although Martin, a 40-year-old engineer who lives in Wodonga, says he is not feeling the weight of expectations.

"I’m just focused on trying to do what I can to make my case in the electorate," Mr Martin told The Age.

"I find that people are willing, at least on a personal level, to give me a chance to demonstrate what I’m all about and will give me a hearing. I certainly don’t get the impression that they have crossed any of the candidates off."