The height of dysfunction: Liberal’s Victorian debacle will rebound on Scott Morrison

Victorian Liberal party leader Matthew Guy on polling day. Picture: David Caird

The emphatic Labor win in the Victorian election will lead to an urgent overhaul of the Liberal Party in a bid to scramble some campaigning credibility ahead of the federal election.

State president Michael Kroger was already going and attempts have been under way for months to find a replacement.

They include former Howard minister Nick Minchin and former premier Denis Napthine. Minchin, sources said, is not interested.

The party membership and senior organisation position holders will also demand a root and branch overhaul of the state parliamentary team.

The presidential-style campaign run by the party was a failure.

The deep factional infighting that pervades the party was not, in any way, isolated to one side of the ideological divide.

The war between the two groups was more about a battle to control the party than it was about any ideology.

It harmed Matthew Guy greatly, but some of his closest allies were at the heart of the infighting.

It was the height of dysfunction.

The battle over the $70 million Cormack Foundation clearly impacted on the state party’s ability to run a months-long election campaign but there also will be significant questions about the policies and direction

offered by Guy.

When such safe seats as the inner city seat of Hawthorn are on the brink then voters are telling the party something very clearly.

To that end, the federal leadership turmoil has had an undoubted impact on this result.

The Liberal brand has been absolutely trashed.

People are tired of the leadership roundabout and, in this case, no serious analysis can avoid the fact that what happened in Canberra has resonated in Melbourne.

Guy, despite all the criticism, did the best with what he had.

His frontbench was weak, he lacked sufficient resources at the start of the year and he was up against a campaign juggernaut.

The Liberal Party was swamped by Labor and must work out ways to deal with the ground war the ALP has embarked on.

This will require a lot of money and an acceptance that the organisation must urgently find a way to become more mainstream, devoid of foibles and personal obsessions.

Whoever runs the party after March will need to be a healer and an organiser.

They should be younger than older and not beholden to either faction.

But who would want the job?