Jess Wilson’s best hope is bridging the divide between new and old Victorian voters
It was 2010 and Frydenberg had beaten long-time Liberal John Pesutto in the preselection and finally had seen off the popular former member and state Liberal director Petro Georgiou, who died earlier this year.
The campaign office, which eventually became a Greek restaurant among an eclectic group of shops in Melbourne’s inner east, was at the centre of Liberal ambition and history, an area soon to be overwhelmed by the sort of demographic change that presents a risk to the party’s future.
A former young Victorian Liberal Party president in 2016 and daughter of ex-state frontbencher Ron Wilson, Jess Wilson had grown up in an unpretentious, deeply Liberal household, and helping out Frydenberg was a logical step for a young woman with ambition.
Wilson drove her own ambition, her father having spent years in the Steve Bracks period as an opposition MP or chief of staff to former Liberal leader Robert Doyle, understanding the disappointment that comes with politics.
Those who worked with Wilson on the 2010 Kooyong campaign said she presented from the start as “an old head on young shoulders” and maintained a long association with the former federal treasurer, who this week happily spruiked her strengths.
“I have seen first hand her ability to get across complex policy and to communicate ideas effectively and with empathy. She has, at all times, reflected the very best values,” he said.
As the Victorian Liberals mulled the change, their NSW counterparts were knee-deep in their own leadership transition as Mark Speakman quit the job to make way for former high-profile TV journalist Kellie Sloane, a likeable, modern politician.
Sloane is like Wilson in that she was elected to the parliament only at the last poll.
The Liberal brand federally will benefit if both Sloane and Wilson can create stability in their home divisions and broaden the appeal and perception of the party among young voters.
For Wilson, Frydenberg has been a key figure in her rise, along with her close association with rising federal star James Paterson.
Frydenberg eventually hired the 35-year-old to work as an adviser in his office. Wilson also had worked as the Business Council of Australia’s executive director of policy. In other words, it has been a career built on politics and policy.
Wilson, another senior Liberal said, had been “very good at building consensus” when she battled to win the Victorian Young Liberal presidency, her opponents bussing in voters to oppose her at the vote in the old headquarters at 104 Exhibition St.
“She was very good at managing people. She is definitely better than most of our people and has a toughness that’s essential in politics,” another friend offered after this week’s leadership battle, when she ousted short-term incumbent Brad Battin.
The consensus is that she is potentially very good, but whether she is good enough to turn around a state opposition that is expert at losing is another question. More so given she has been in the parliament only since 2022, making the task harder but not impossible.
The Victorian Liberals never really recovered after the 1999 state election, which Jeff Kennett lost to another Young Turk in Labor’s Bracks. The business community broadly lost interest in the party amid concerns Labor’s tribalism meant that siding with one side of politics was yesterday’s strategy. This effective divorce explains as much as anything about why the Liberals lost their way, being robbed of the intellectual and strategic grunt that was once automatically accessible via the major companies.
Where once there was instant access and influence, the state opposition in particular has shrunk inside itself as Labor super-sized its campaigning techniques.
The Andrews-Allan governments are, as much as anything, a giant marketing machine, much of its messaging aimed at younger Victorians. Which is where Wilson might have her best opportunity.
It’s no secret that the world is pivoting to the younger generation. The nearly 440,000 registered voters aged between 18 and 24 in Victoria at the last election made up 10 per cent of voters, the largest single demographic.
The second biggest grouping at just under 400,000 people was those aged 35 to 39, smack-bang in Wilson’s own grouping. The millennial grouping makes up roughly 1.2 million of the state’s 4.4 million voters, underscoring the potential political attractiveness of a young leader to a very big cohort of voters.
Demographically, it really started to slide downhill once voters aged 65 to 69 are counted at about 300,000, more than halving by the 80s, according to the Victorian Electoral Commission numbers reported at the time.
This profound shift in voter age and influence offers Wilson and the Liberals the opportunity to leverage young support but hopefully maintain the traditional conservative vote in the older demographics.
At 52, Labor’s unelected premier Jacinta Allan is not old but she has been around for a long time, first elected in 1999 as a 25-year-old MP and becoming a minister three years later.
There is a lot to argue against her policy decisions in particular but Allan remains highly energetic and motivated for the government she inherited from Dan Andrews. She has a very long ministerial CV.
Allan also has a phenomenally disciplined campaign machine, which went into action the moment Wilson was elected, transmitting a slick ad accusing her of planning big cuts to health and education, finishing with the statement, Jess Wilson: MORE LIBERAL CUTS.
For Labor, it doesn’t have to be true to be successful, although Wilson is under pressure from within to overhaul the state budget, which is forecast to hit nearly $200bn in 2028-29.
That can be done chiefly by cuts, tax increases or the flow-on effects of population growth.
It might sound good to cut the Victorian public sector – even prudent and entirely sensible – but when 10 per cent of all workers in the state are employed there, you start risking the alienation of a huge group of voters.
It’s a significant political challenge. This is not even taking into consideration the flow-on effect with federal public servants and the families of everyone connected to these households.
Then there is the Liberal Party itself and just how stark the difference is with its successful Coalition partner, the Nationals. Wilson inherits a basket-case political operation that voters have rejected all but once since 1999.
While the Nationals consistently produce strong local MPs, focus on their local communities and rural industry, the Liberals are a pathetic stain on themselves, having failed to properly scrutinise Labor’s many failures.
Labor has handed the Liberal Party the easiest ride of all to the next election, although the pendulum is unkind, with the Coalition needing 16 seats for a majority. The Greens may well be one of the beneficiaries of cuts to Labor’s vote, making it even harder for the Liberals to secure office, especially if neither major party secures a majority. The Greens would not horse-trade with the Liberals.
It’s traditional whenever there has been a leadership change for people to talk up the new leader’s prospects.
Wilson has opposed Victoria’s First Nations treaty, vowed to provide a better deal on housing and to deal with the budget.
Maybe Wilson’s biggest challenge will be the damage the Liberal brand has suffered and the extent to which voters are addicted to Labor’s largesse.
Fat and happy voters who see governments doing things such as building roads and underground train lines tend to keep voting for them, especially when the voter bribes are well targeted, as Labor’s often are.
Can Wilson convince the electorate it will be better off with her running the show?
History suggests it is quite possible that she can convince voters it is time for change, especially after Labor’s long and sclerotic rule. But don’t hold your breath. An opposition that seems to exist to destroy itself has a lot of work to do.
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