Libs at risk of being lost in the wake of Can-Do Daniel Andrews

For all of Daniel Andrews’ faults, laziness is not one of them, as he hurtles towards the November 24 Victorian election.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, left, and State Transport Minister Jacinta Allan. Picture: AAP

For all of Can-Do Dan’s faults, laziness is not one of them.

Labor’s Daniel Andrews is offering voters everything but a set of steak knives as he hurtles, toot-tooting, towards the November 24 Victorian election.

Reeling after the federal leadership explosion, the Victorian Coalition must confront the politics of Labor advancing the biggest infrastructure spending program in many decades.

Victoria has seen nothing like this since the Kennett government was in power in the 1990s and Andrews is ironically capitalising on the torpor of the former Baillieu government, which did too little but saved a lot of cash.

Andrews wants to make this election a referendum on delivering infrastructure projects and it is fair to say he has done a whole lot on this front. The question is to what extent voters will believe the government.

The $50 billion suburban rail loop comes with all sorts of questions.

By its own admission, the government can’t say where the stations will be, where the tracks will go, what trains will be on it, who will pay for it, when it will be finished or how many endangered frogs and insects will be squashed in the process of building it.

There is no rolled-gold business case, but as far as the vision thing goes, it probably gets a big tick.

So how does the Coalition fight this?

In the short term, with great difficulty.

The Liberal Party must first let the federal leadership debacle wash through, which will take weeks.

Then it must choose whether a nuclear-strength negative campaign that focuses on law and order and Red Shirts gets it over the line or there is a combination of mainly negatives with some significant positives.

Can-Do Dan will remain highly susceptible to a negative campaign, given his relentless bungling of the politics of government.

This week, his hypocrisy was writ large when his government netted almost $3bn for selling the Land Titles Office, just days after the Premier slagged off privatisation. He’s the same bloke who burnt $1bn by dumping a road that would have gone well for those living in Melbourne’s east.

His redeeming quality is that he doesn’t mind having a crack.

To that end, this mega rail project, with all the doubts and lack of detail, will go well with the ALP narrative.

He’s Can-Do Dan. Toot toot.