Time running out for flailing party

IT is five minutes to midnight for the Napthine government.

With fewer than 100 days to the election and the polling ­evidence ugly for the Coalition, government staffers will be dusting off their CVs and contemplating a future outside Spring Street.

It’s the worst Newspoll two-party-preferred result for the ­Coalition under Denis Napthine, and the Premier has fallen for the first time into negative territory on the net satisfaction rating; all this while Labor has endured its only
real political scandal and rebel independent Geoff Shaw
has been quarantined in Frankston.

The Coalition’s best hope is that voters have a good hard look at policy and the budget, which are the government’s clear strengths.

While the two and a bit years of the Baillieu government were marked by indecision and ineptness, the government’s direction under Napthine has been broadly sound.

But there is a strong view that Napthine has been strategically outflanked by Labor.

As one Liberal sage noted yesterday, the government is characterised by “lots of tactics but no strategy’’.

Conversely, Labor has stuck to a relentless plan of copying Tony Abbott’s strategy book from ­opposition.

There is obvious potential for the gap between the government and opposition to close between today and November 29.

The contest is not over.

With a Liberal primary vote languishing at 32 per cent it would seem the only way is up.

But there is no running from the fact the political doomsday clock is ticking for Napthine and that a rising number of people are unhappy with the way he is doing his job.