'Fighting Greens, ignoring suburbs' to blame, says Bill Shorten

FEDERAL Labor minister and key Victorian powerbroker Bill Shorten has begun the recriminations over the disastrous state election result.

FEDERAL Labor minister and key Victorian powerbroker Bill Shorten has begun the recriminations over the disastrous state election result.

Shorten declared the party was distracted by the Greens from fighting its main enemy, the Liberals.

As dejected MPs expressed their frustration at Labor neglecting its suburban heartland, Mr Shorten, the Assistant Treasurer, said the focus on fighting the Greens in the inner-city seats meant resources were not as plentiful in other parts of the state where the Liberals were on the rise.

"You can't get obsessed with them," Mr Shorten told The Australian. "The pressure the Greens put on Labor distracted from our efforts against the Liberals and took resources away. The Greens took up valuable energy."

Labor MPs and insiders expressed similar sentiments, saying the campaign was too focused on winning the city and the regions, and forgetting their roots, while Jeff Kennett said the party erred by focusing its campaign on the leader, the same mistake it made in 1999 when he was premier.

Labor devoted considerable resources to saving four inner-city seats from the Greens and five regional seats from the Liberals, but lost a swath of seats in the outer suburban areas.

Many Labor MPs say the heavy campaign focus on "greening" Mr Brumby and playing up his climate change credentials - especially after the loss of the federal seat of Melbourne to Greens MP Adam Bandt - along with the emphasis on the Premier's connection to regional Victoria, lost them their traditional voters.

They say key issues such as the cost of living, lack of public transport and the "it's time" factor, especially among older men, were the reasons behind the unexpected,huge swing in the outer-eastern and southeastern suburbs.

"We sacrificed the heartland for a couple of wankers in the inner city," said one frustrated Labor insider.

"I think we forget the suburbs. We spent too much time navel-gazing about the Greens and too much time in the regions."

One Labor MP believed the party's "indulgence with the Greens had cost the tradespeople".

"There was not one tradie who asked for a how-to-vote card yesterday," the MP said. "Out of all the calls I have made in my electorate in the last two years, not one person has asked me about climate change."

Other criticism has also been aimed at the decision by Labor to make Mr Brumby the focus of the campaign, plastering his name on billboards, ads and saying he was the choice "for the times ahead".

One senior source told The Australian this was a bad decision because it ignored the fact that he was on the nose with the public.

Another said Labor failed to adequately attack the Opposition Leader's policies and Mr Brumby could not, despite attempts to overhaul his image, connect with the electorate.

Mr Kennett said yesterday that Labor had made the same key campaign mistake that contributed to him losing government in 1999.

"The Labor Party ran the campaign around Brumby," Mr Kennett said. "That was wrong. We focused in our campaign in 1999 on me as a leader and in retrospect, that was a mistake."

He said Mr Brumby made a terrible error that "cost him dearly" in attacking Ted Baillieu in the eastern suburbs where it offended voters.

Labor strategists yesterday defended their campaign, saying it was "good" and the best available option for them, given that the government was 11 years old.

"It was based on our research, which found Brumby performed significantly better against Baillieu on leadership," a source said. "It was our best frame. The research told us if we can get people to make a choice between Brumby and Baillieu, we would win."

The senior strategist said the party had carried out polling every day. It had initially dropped but picked up after the Labor launch in Bendigo.

But they recorded a significant drop in the polls on Thursday night, which they described as "alarming" and thought may be a statistical blip until they saw the Newspoll on Saturday.

"The main lesson of the polls was that the undecided had jumped to one side," he said of the late swing against Labor.

"On the Thursday, it was by far the biggest swing in a single day of the campaign."

The source defended the criticism of the campaign, saying the party did not "obsess" on the Greens and forget the Labor heartland.

"We spent thousands and thousands of hours making calls in all southeastern and eastern suburbs electorates," the source said.

But many believe the Liberals outplayed Labor in the political battle over the Greens, with Mr Kennett saying it was a "political masterstroke" to preference them last.

Mr Shorten also described Mr Baillieu's decision to place the Greens last powerful and defining.

"I think he got a lift because of his decision not to preference the Greens," Mr Shorten said. "He gave himself political definition. They are like a dinner party conversation gone viral."

He said that while the obsession with the Greens needed to be contained, ignoring them altogether was equally flawed.

"I don't think it's wise to write the Greens off at all," Mr Shorten said. "Labor is foolish to ignore the Greens."