Victorian Libs don’t need a messiah, they need clear policies
In every area where Victoria is failing, making a difference requires more than just a press release, a new spending announcement or a new study. It requires a detailed plan, and the one thing the Victorian Liberals have never had in 11 years of opposition is a plan to make a difference rather than a hope to change the government and a plot to change their leader.
But this is not confined to Victoria. The NSW Liberals, likewise, seem more focused on changing their leader than on working out what they would do differently to make their state better. And while the Liberals in South Australia and Western Australia appear happily bereft of any imminent moves against their leaders, probably because they’ve been reduced to such a rump there are few options left, they seem equally devoid of a vision to make their states more economically dynamic and socially cohesive.
And after an epic struggle over whether to dump the commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, a policy straitjacket that was driving up power prices, closing down heavy industry and threatening to fundamentally change the way we live, rather than embark on what would have to be a years-long campaign to counter a generation of climate brainwashing, the federal Liberals look set to begin their own round of political cannibalism. If this is about finding a leader with the warrior instinct needed for the fight ahead, that’s one thing.
But rolling through leaders without doing the policy work and hoping that will be enough to shift votes is a recipe for permanent opposition.
Memo to Liberals all around Australia: successful political leadership is not about finding an individual with a bright personality from the right demographic – although that might sometimes help at the margins. It’s about working out what most needs to change and then working out how that change might best be brought about.
Even in a democracy where successful leaders ultimately have to secure a parliamentary majority, good leadership is more than working out what voters want and offering it to them; it’s working out what the country needs and then persuading people to vote for it.
Leaving aside Tasmania, where the electoral system makes political success as much about coalition-building inside a fractious parliament as winning political arguments, the Liberal Party’s general instinct in recent years has been to engage in political management rather than to create a political contest. I’ve been on the inside of the operation the last time a federal Liberal leader campaigned his way out of opposition and into government, and the inescapable reality is that you can’t avoid picking fights. You don’t have to fight the other side on everything but you do have to find something to fight them on, that matters to you and that matters to voters; where you have a plausible plan to make change for the better.
Too often recently, the Liberals’ instinct at every level has been to seek a consensus between irreconcilable positions, to pursue incompatible objectives (like higher spending plus a balanced budget) or to leave difficult decisions for successors to make.
Perhaps that’s human nature, but it’s not leadership.
It has been obvious for years that Victoria is a failing state after almost three decades of Labor rule, other than a brief one-term spell of Coalition government where they knifed their newly elected leader and promptly imploded. Once the jewel in the Liberal crown, Victoria has Australia’s highest taxes, the highest state debt, the most bloated and politicised public service, the worst cost overruns on public sector projects, and the state institutions most tainted by leftist ideology such as the trans movement.
Then there’s the crime crisis that’s the result of years of politically correct policing and a woke judiciary. In the 12 months to June, the crime rate was up 13 per cent, with 150 home invasions on average a week. Retail theft was up almost 30 per cent and vehicle theft up more than 40 per cent.
Victoria Police recently revealed that 60 per cent of home invasions in the state were driven by a cohort of just more than 1000 children, aged between 10 and 17, who’ve been arrested more than 7000 times in the year to June.
By successfully making this an issue, former cop Brad Battin – the leader they just dumped – had put the Victorian Liberals into an election-winning position for the first time in many years. A Freshwater poll over the weekend put the Coalition in front 51-49, with Battin on a net favourability rating of 15, a whopping 43 points ahead of Premier Jacinta Allan. A series of belated “tough on crime” announcements showed Labor’s mounting panic and had even prompted insider commentary that the government could install a fresh face as premier to contest the election due in 12 months.
Instead the Liberals – not Labor – blinked, worried that Labor’s announcements had neutralised crime as an issue and that Battin, supposedly a one-trick pony, would not be able to pivot on to the other big issues facing the state. I’m not convinced this is right and, in any event, where are the repercussions for the shadow ministers who’d made little impact in the politically fertile areas of taxes, debt, infrastructure, waste and the public anger against the state’s Indigenous treaty? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Battin was rolled by lazy colleagues, angry that he hadn’t managed to do their jobs for them or simply bought off with promised advancement with a change of leader.
For too long the Victorian Liberals have had a messiah complex expecting that changing the leader would somehow get them into government when they have not done the work to create a contest and to become a credible alternative. They’ve campaigned in their leafy comfort zones, and tried to out-teal the teals rather than reach out to the aspirational working class. They’ve preselected lacklustre candidates, in part because of a declining and factionalised membership base, and have struggled to run professional campaigns given the increasing challenge of fundraising. In something out of bad fiction, the Victorian Liberals have even turned themselves into a bank of last resort to pay a former leader’s defamation debt and are headed off to the Supreme Court as a consequence.
Last week, the party appointed a new campaign boss from outside Victoria after they sacked the last one and most of Battin’s office will walk, too, meaning Wilson starts from scratch with an election 12 months away.
It is not impossible to turn this mess around. Tony Abbott was elected in December 2009 and fell one seat short of victory six months later. But we worked like dogs; campaigning 24/7, writing policy papers past midnight most nights, backed up with morning media calls at dawn, endless rounds of radio and doorstops, relentless pressure and with the support – by and large – of a frontbench that pulled its weight under a leader who had a vision, having been a successful cabinet minister for more than two decades.
I will leave it there.
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The new leader of the Liberal Party in Victoria is smart, industrious and presentable. And no one is in any doubt that Jess Wilson will work hard to present herself as the change Victoria needs to get taxes down, boost business confidence, address the state’s debt bomb, end the crime crisis, fix hospitals, and deal with housing and infrastructure demands. The trouble is that all of this requires more than just the wish to make it happen, and her pathologically lazy colleagues are but one albatross around her neck.