John Pesutto elected to replace Matthew Guy as Victorian Liberal Party leader

John Pesutto has pledged to be a consultative, constructive and conciliatory Opposition Leader who will unite the Victorian Libs.

John Pesutto has pledged to be a consultative, constructive and conciliatory Opposition Leader who will unite the Victorian Liberal Party and hold the Andrews government to account, after narrowly winning the leadership.

The former shadow attorney-general – who regained the inner-city seat of Hawthorn at last month’s election after losing it to Labor in 2018 – received 17 votes to emergency services spokesman Brad Battin’s 16 in Thursday’s ballot.

With counting being finalised in the last two undecided lower house seats late on Thursday following the November 26 election, Labor has finished with 56 of 88 seats while the Coalition is expected to hold 28 and the Greens four.

Labor, the Coalition and the Greens will each have gained a single seat, with all three seats previously held by regional ind­ep­endents won by the Nationals, without whose success the Coal­ition would have gone backwards.

Asked to describe the task he faces to win the 2026 election, Mr Pesutto said it was “exciting”.

“I know how difficult it is, but understand this: When I got up on the Sunday after the last state election in 2018, I didn’t think that my pathway back looked easy,” he said.

“If there’s one thing you ought to know about me, I might have been knocked down but I know how to get up and fight my way back.”

The son of Italian migrants, Mr Pesutto grew up in Gippsland, completing his schooling at Catholic Regional College Traralgon before studying law and commerce at the University of Melbourne.

The 52-year-old, who has three children with wife Betty, worked as an industrial relations lawyer before running the productivity and employment unit at the Institute of Public Affairs and becoming a senior staffer in the Baillieu-Napthine government.

Mr Pesutto said the challenges confronting Victorians – including record debt, a health crisis, cost blowouts on major projects and multiple corruption inquiries involving the Andrews government – made scrutiny all the more important.

“The point of scrutiny is to get the best out of the government you’ve got, and I’m concerned about the scale of those challenges, and I just know how important it is to apply that scrutiny. But where agreement or bipartisanship is justified, I’ll be the first to that,” he said.

Liberal energy spokesman David Southwick was re-elected deputy leader, while health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier beat backbencher Bev McArthur for the upper house leadership, 21 votes to 12. Transport infrastructure and child protection spokesman Matt Bach was elected unopposed as Ms Crozier’s deputy.

Asked whether he believed the Victorian Liberals needed to move to the Left or the Right to achieve electoral success, Mr Pesutto said that the party’s biggest successes had been achieved “by recognising that it is a broad tent”.

“It brings people in from more progressive dispositions to more conservative dispositions,” he said.

“In our history of the party, whether it was Jeff Kennett winning in 1992, Ted (Baillieu) in 2010, John Howard in 1996, it was when the party was presented as a broadbased party, reaching a lot of Australians or Victorians, as the case may be, and that’s what we, as a leadership team, are committed to doing.”

Mr Pesutto pledged to offer Mr Battin, a former police officer, a position on his front bench.

“I hope and expect that he’ll have a senior role in my team. He’s too talented not to,” he said.

Mr Pesutto also defended upper house MP Renee Heath’s right to sit in the Liberal partyroom, despite backing former leader Matthew Guy’s promise to expel her during the election campaign following media reports linking her to the controversial City Builders Pentecostal church.

“The partyroom has come out of today realising and accepting the importance of unity,” he said.

“We are all together. Renee is a part of our team. She is a colleague, and I intend to work constructively with her and everybody else in my team, and I would say ‘Give Renee a fair go’.”