Victoria in strong hands for a challenging four years

As Daniel Andrews reminded Australians on Saturday night, leadership, Paul Keating once advised him, “isn’t about doing what’s popular, leadership is about doing what’s right’’. Mr Andrews scored an impressive win on Saturday and if he fulfils his promise to serve a full third term, he will become Victoria’s second-longest-serving premier behind Sir Henry Bolte, who served for 17 years. Given Mr Andrews’ strength of purpose and personality, and his unassailable position in Labor ranks, he should, in the interests of Victorians and the nation, invest some of his political capital in the economy of our second-largest state. Reducing its mind-boggling debt, which exceeds those of NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined, needs to be the priority. Within budget constraints, which he must address without further driving up taxes, Mr Andrews has an ambitious platform to implement. That includes the much-needed Melbourne Airport-CBD rail link. We wish him well in what will be an important four years for the state, with the Commonwealth Games in March 2026 to be held across regional centres including Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Gippsland and Shepparton offering important opportunities for growth outside Melbourne. In his victory speech, Mr Andrews promised to govern for those who did not vote for him. His opponents must hold him to account on that commitment. That includes its application to practising Christians, who have been forced to cop significant restrictions and even abuse under his watch for teaching and living their beliefs, as Greg Sheridan wrote last week.

After Matthew Guy’s second successive crushing loss to Mr Andrews, his decision to resign as opposition and Liberal Party leader was the right call. Despite some good policies, and residual anger among voters over the state’s excessive Covid lockdowns and curfew, and its economic problems, Mr Guy lacked the political strength to prosecute the case against the government and regain seats in the Liberals’ former urban heartland in Melbourne’s east. The party made headway in parts of Labor’s industrial heartland in the city’s west, but not enough. The Nationals campaigned well and performed strongly across their regional and rural base, winning back three seats from independents – Shepparton, Mildura and Morwell. Mr Andrews has put forward costly renewable energy policies, but the potency of climate change as an issue in inner-urban seats was evidenced by the Greens winning an additional seat, Richmond, while holding three other inner-urban seats – Melbourne, Brunswick and Prahran – and being competitive in several other seats. That said, leader Samantha Ratnam’s claim that the result was a “Greenslide” was an exaggeration.

Like the 2018 election and the federal election in May, Saturday’s result showed the Liberal Party needs a major rebuilding job in the state. From a federal perspective, however, the failure of the teals to make headway, especially in the seats of Kew and Hawthorn, which together comprise 90 per cent of the federal seat of Kooyong, should be a useful base to encourage Josh Frydenberg to consider recontesting Kooyong, which he lost to the teals’ Monique Ryan in May. State electoral laws in Victoria limit how much can be spent in individual seats, raising the profiles of new challengers, but Dr Ryan heavily backed the teal candidates in both state seats, attending campaign events and backing them in printed endorsements and on social media. The teals were highly confident, with their campaign manager in Kew, Rob Baillieu, boasting in a mailout that “we can almost guarantee an independent win’’. In the current febrile political environment, such idle boasting is foolish.

The contrasting priorities on major issues among voters in inner-suburban, outer-suburban and regional areas make election forecasting difficult but the Newspoll published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday accurately tipped Mr Andrews securing a historic third term. It correctly forecast a fall in the Coalition’s primary vote and a two-party-preferred swing against Labor. Labor would return a two-party-preferred result of 54.5 per cent, Newspoll indicated. On Sunday, the two-party-preferred count showed Labor at 54.3 per cent, with counting continuing. When the last votes are counted, the parliament may resemble that of the past four years, albeit with a different set of challenges to confront.