Victoria blocks out the noise and sticks with Labor

The Village Green Hotel, a pokies barn in suburban Mulgrave, is an unlikely place of Labor legend.

Yet, in this cavernous space where chicken parmas the size of tabloid newspapers are served beneath faux Greco-Roman columns, a statue of Daniel Andrews may some day be erected.

Labor supporters gathered at the Village Green Hotel on Saturday night.Credit: Joe Armao

It was here, in 2014, that a 42-year-old Andrews, his once dour political persona reframed by Giorgio Armani glasses and a sharp new wardrobe chosen by image consultants, strode to the stage as the first Victorian leader in 60 years to wrest government after just one term in opposition.

Four years later, Andrews’ wardrobe hadn’t changed, but his grip on power became a chokehold. In the fabled “Danslide” victory of 2018, won against the backdrop of Scott Morrison replacing Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, Labor reduced the Liberal Party to a rump. As the counting unfolded, a red shirt cheer of “four more years” became “eight more years.”

It turned out to be prophetic.

Labor might not have the same thumping majority after the counting is done in this election, but Andrews has claimed an even rarer thing in Victorian politics: a third term as premier. At 8.20pm on Saturday, the red-shirt volunteers erupted in lusty celebration when the ABC’s election analyst Antony Green announced that Labor would again form government.

As for the Liberals, having returned to Matthew Guy – the leader who took them to that crushing defeat four years ago – they are again a political movement in deep crisis. The party’s expectation leading into this poll was that it could regain much of the ground lost four years ago and potentially push Labor into minority government.

Instead, it appears the Liberals have gone backwards.

Guy told colleagues after his loss in 2018 that he never wanted to again call Andrews to concede an election. He finally made it begrudgingly, after 10.30pm, more than two hours after analysts called the election for Labor.

A short time later, Daniel Andrews took his familiar place on stage, with wife Catherine and their three children by their side, raised both fists in triumph and declared the result as a resounding endorsement for his government’s pandemic response and policy agenda.

Premier Daniel Andrews on the campaign trail on Saturday.Credit: AAP

“As a community, we were not as some would say divided,” Andrews said. “We were instead united in our faith in science and in our faith and care for and in each other.

“Friends, hope always defeats hate.″⁣

This night, the Village Green had a very different feel than previous elections. Labor supporters were nervous about whether residual anger from the pandemic – and against Andrews in particular – would redraw the electoral map. They were confident they would form government, but not necessarily on their own terms.

Former ALP state secretary Nicholas Reece, said the election result showed that, as fierce as that anger burned in places, it was largely confined to people who were probably never going to vote for Labor anyway.

He said the noise from that loud minority obscured the true mood of voters: a willingness to continue with a party which, by the time the next election is held, will have governed Victoria for 23 of 27 years, and a leader who will take his big building, big spending agenda into a third parliamentary term.

“There is obviously a group of people in the electorate who have been very angry,” Reece said. “That has created, I think, a distorted picture in the media and the broader community that this election was going to be close.”

Reece said the biggest lesson from this election was for the Victorian Liberals. “There has to be some profound soul-searching,” he said. Matthew Guy, in a perplexing concession speech which denied the extent of Labor’s victory, suggested this won’t begin under his leadership.

James Merlino, Andrews’ deputy leader for seven years and more recently, his campaign manager, was standing in the Village Green amid the euphoria of 2014 and again in 2018. This time, his overriding emotion was relief.

“This was quite a toxic contest in many respects,” said Merlino, who has retired from parliament. “Talking to friends and colleagues on the front line, pre-poll was really tough. This was a difficult fight. Third terms always are but this one was particularly tough.”

ALP volunteers who had spent the day at polling booths reported there was an edge to the day not normally seen in Australian politics. In Andrews’ seat of Mulgrave, an electorate that has become a magnet for discontent about Victoria’s pandemic response, it bordered on ugly.

The possibility of a “Dancapitation” in Mulgrave, although always unlikely, energised a motley crew of independents, agitators and Liberal supporters who throughout the two weeks of pre-poll voting, set up camp outside the seat’s only early voting centre. For all their fury, Andrews won about half of the primary vote in his seat.

Wade King, a 53-year-old accountant, spent the day handing out for Andrews at a Mulgrave polling booth. He described supporters of the Freedom Party and local caterer Ian Cook, who stood as an independent, as over-the-top and aggressive.

“The people have spoken,” he said. “They have said what happened in the last four years was the right thing.”

Tony Blake, a 65-year-old traffic controller, has served as a campaign volunteer for Andrews at the last three elections. “It was intense with the Cook supporters,” .he said of his experience on the polling booths. “They are feral. Some of them are thugs.”

He declared Andrews the best premier in living memory. The reason? “He gets shit done,” he said simply.

The best that can be hoped for is the ugliness of this campaign was a one-off reaction to the unprecedented public health crisis of the past three years, rather than a sign of things to come in Victorian politics.

In the meantime, Blake happily took his place beneath the stage in the Village Green, a beer in his hand and his grin obscured by a chest-length beard, and cheerfully echoed every line of Andrews’ victory speech.

And the Liberals? “They made their bed and now the Liberal Party have got to sleep in it,” said Merlino. For another four years and possibly longer, it will be uneasy sleep.

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