For the Liberal Party, there is something rotten in the state of Victoria. It’s a stench that threatens Scott Morrison, his Liberal deputy, Josh Frydenberg, and the so-called unlosable federal election expected this year.
Ironically, it’s not Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews or even vanquished federal ALP leader and Melburnian Bill Shorten who are the source of this Shakespearean tragic outcome for the Liberals, but the Victorian Liberal Party itself.
It’s a telling failure that the Prime Minister, his Victorian Treasurer and the Victorian Liberal division have been unable to manage the orderly transition out of office of a 30-year veteran, Liberal loyalist, Father of the House of Representatives and a pragmatist who could have been encouraged to quietly announce a retirement at the next election.
A message has been sent from Morrison that he’s no longer wiling to effectively protect conservatives — despite his support for the far less revered NSW MP Craig Kelly — and that for the first time in 40 years sitting Victorian MPs have to be blasted from their seats.
The understandable, in some terms, removal of Kevin Andrews from his seat of Menzies in Melbourne has been coming for months, if not years, but its management has been illogical and self-defeating.
The Morrison government — with a one-seat majority — faces the next election effectively having to win seats to hold government and yet the preselection in Victoria has been held ahead of electoral commission redistributions.
Somehow an influential Victorian conservative who played a key role in the removal of Malcolm Turnbull as opposition leader, who provided Tony Abbott with a strategic climate change policy victory in the partyroom and served faithfully in two Liberal cabinets couldn’t be “managed” out of his seat.
Andrews is a loyal Liberal but he’s been treated disloyally more than once and Morrison, to restore the equilibrium, will have to intervene and do what should have been done months ago and organise an orderly transition.
This Coalition government is not a shoo-in at the next election — Victoria is still the key — and ham-fisted, knuckle-dragging efforts to remove loyal Liberals will not help Morrison to a second “miracle”.
Morrison is regarded as a pragmatist and faction-hopper. His failure in Victoria may pass unnoticed until election time but by then it will be too late.
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