Federal Libs warn Morrison faces a Victoria-style belting next year

Senior Libs warn the Coalition is on track for a “hammering” in Victoria at the federal poll.

A fresh-looking Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, discusses the election results in Melbourne yesterday. Stuart McEvoy

Senior Liberals are warning that the Morrison government is on track for a “hammering” in Victoria at the 2019 election, with up to seven federal seats in danger following a disastrous state poll result.

Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have called for calm and unity in the wake of a statewide two-party swing of 4.8 per cent away from the Liberals, but some federal MPs have conceded that instability and the removal of Malcolm Turnbull had alienated Victorian Liberal voters.

The warnings came as an exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows the federal Coalition’s primary vote falling for the third consecutive poll to a near-record low of 34 per cent.

The Coalition now trails Labor on a two-party-preferred split of 45-55 for the second consecutive poll as it heads into the final two weeks of parliament and potentially the last before the next federal election if an early poll is called for March.

After the worst state election result for the Victorian Coalition in 16 years, former Victorian Liberal premier Denis Napthine warned last night the federal party had to change course radically.

“If the federal Liberal Party doesn’t understand and learn from this, then they’re doomed to have similar results, and not just in ­Victoria but across Australia,” Dr Napthine told The Australian.

“And I think there has been, across the Liberal brand at both state and federal levels, the discussion and involvement of people from the further Right (that) has really damaged the brand.”

Premier Daniel Andrews was re-elected on Saturday and his Labor Party could hold up to 55 seats in Victoria’s 88-seat lower house, while the Coalition is likely to lose at least 10 seats.

Mr Andrews said Victorians had chosen a “positive plan” over the politics of fear and division.

Share of lower house seats nationally.

After a lacklustre campaign, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy is expected to resign, while longtime state president Michael Kroger has said he will step down in April after calls from former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett for his axing.

Mr Frydenberg, Victoria’s most senior Liberal, is backing a root-and-branch overhaul of party campaigning, with Senate president Scott Ryan and Victorian MP Michael Sukkar joining calls for an urgent assessment of the way the campaign was conducted.

Labor’s stunning gains on Saturday have guaranteed it will hold more than 50 per cent of lower house seats in parliaments nationwide for the first time in almost eight years. Since the 2013 federal election, the Coalition has lost about 110 lower house seats nationwide, dropping its share from 63 per cent five years ago to 43.5 per cent. With NSW due to face the polls in March, Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian indicated yesterday she would not ask Mr Morrison or his federal colleagues to play a role in the campaign. “I’ve never relied on anybody outside NSW and I don’t intend to start now,” Ms Berejiklian said.

Federal Liberal sources said that while the Victorian arm of the party bore the brunt of responsibility for the loss, there was “an overlay of federal issues” that meant key seats including Chisholm, Corangamite, La Trobe and Casey could all be lost. This could unseat MPs including Speaker Tony Smith, Jason Wood, Julia Banks, and Sarah Henderson.

Further analysis of state swings by The Australian indicates that more MPs in the Liberal blue-­ribbon heartland including Greg Hunt in Flinders, Kelly O’Dwyer in Higgins and Michael Sukkar in Deakin could also lose their seats, if ­Saturday’s swings against the ­Liberals were replicated in a federal election.

Victorian federal MP Tim Wilson said that, at booths “all day”, voters raised issues including the federal leadership change and the party’s failure to come up with a national energy policy. “Their vote was not accidental, it was a very deliberate message,” he said.

“We can either heed it and start finding how to advance our values through our diverse modern ­society, or keep trying to force ­reality through our priorities.”

Mr Wilson, the member for Goldstein, spent Saturday on the polling booths in Melbourne’s Bayside suburbs which overlay his own seat, where safe Liberal seats including Caulfield, Brighton and Sandringham suffered swings of up to 6.9 per cent to Labor. “Soft liberal voters raised the negativity of the campaign, the absence of vision, as well as the federal leadership change, emissions policy and many of the party’s priorities,” Mr Wilson said.

A host of Victorian state MPs said the federal party had cruelled its chances in the state election by dumping Mr Turnbull in the August leadership spill, while federal MPs conceded their infighting could have turned voters off the Liberal brand.

A senior Liberal figure said the Morrison government was on track for a “hammering” in Victoria in the next federal election, ­describing the problem as “exceptionally serious”.

“The party’s not united. There’s a lack of a clear sense of direction and they have not defined Labor or Shorten,” the source said.

Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg will meet Victorian federal MPs this morning and have urged the party to avoid bloodletting in the wake of the thumping defeat.

Mr Guy’s campaign focused on short, medium and long-term goals promising to crack down on law and order as a first priority, while addressing cost of living and power prices, and congestion in the city and decentralisation as the medium and long term objectives.

Mr Andrews promised big spending on transport infrastructure, health care, schools and solar panels. His government made a commitment to introduce a 50 per cent renewable engergy target by 2030. “We are the most progressive state in our nation,” Mr Andrews said.

Cities Minister Alan Tudge said that while the leadership dramas of August did not help Mr Guy’s chances of victory, Mr Andrews’ position as a first-term premier played a bigger role.

‘First-term governments almost never lose in Victoria, and I think they were seen to have ­delivered on their commitments especially on infrastructure: this wasn’t a surprise,” Mr Tudge said. “The federal leadership matter didn’t help … but I think voters go into polling booths and they can distinguish between state issues and federal issues”.

Mr Tudge said infrastructure was a policy area the Coalition was focused on, especially in terms of slowing population growth.

“Infrastructure is definitely a hot-button issue in Victoria and that’s because the population is growing so fast,” he said.

“That’s why we’ve signalled we will slow the rate of population growth.”

The federal MP for La Trobe, Liberal Jason Wood, said the Prime Minister should follow Mr Andrews’ lead and use the next federal election to spruik the ­federal government’s commitments to big Victorian infrastructure projects. “I think it’s fair and reasonable for us to sell what we’ve been ­delivering for Victorians,” Mr Wood said. “State Labor does it very well, I think we need to change tactics and do it better.”

Additional Reporting: Rachel Baxendale, Richard Ferguson, Rick Morton