Australia looks a lot like a one party state as Labor’s grip tightens and the Liberals lose theirs | David Penberthy

If a government is only as good as its opposition, Australia is in deep trouble and getting deeper, writes David Penberthy.

If it holds true that you get the best government when you have the most effective opposition, Australia is in massive strife.

The country now looks almost like a one-party state as the Liberals struggle to present themselves as an effective alternative.

The party is in power in Queensland – just – and clinging on for dear life in Tasmania ahead of what looks like a looming, inevitable defeat over the AFL stadium fiasco.

Everywhere else, both federally and at the state level, Labor is not only in power, Labor is in power so comfortably it looks like it will retain government for extended terms as the Liberals struggle to sort themselves out.

The goings-on in Victoria have been remarkable this week as that division continues to tear itself apart over an issue that has its genesis in the sort of culture wars nonsense that fails to resonate with voters who want politicians to be focused on their bread-and-butter needs.

Make no mistake – if the Victorian Labor government was a dog, you would have put it down years ago.

Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese in Western Sydney to attend the official unveiling of the Western Sydney International Airport terminal building. Photo: NewsWire/ Gaye Gerard

The once-great state of Victoria now resembles the failed European economies of the global financial crisis, Australia’s own version of Greece, saddled with unserviceable debt for generations to come, turning on the private sector to tax itself out of trouble, the same private sector which was mindlessly and unnecessarily clobbered by one of the world’s longest lockdowns.

Victoria under Labor is the worst of what’s happening at the hands of Labor governments almost everywhere.

Government is becoming bigger, it is becoming costlier, debt is becoming bigger, with no pressure to rein in the growth or expenditure of the public service on a year-by-year basis. Governments now boast that services are better than they have ever been because more money is being spent on things than ever before.

If you ran your household budget like this, you’d be broke. Imagine measuring your success as a domestic financial manager by boasting that with every passing year you’d spent more money than you ever had.

And because governments do run their budgets like this, our household budgets do suffer, because unchecked or frivolous government spending fuels inflation as the Reserve Bank has rightly warned on multiple occasions.

Amid this backdrop, for many people in the Liberal Party, a key question emerges.

Can a woman have a penis?

Victorian politician Moira Deeming speaks to the media at Parliament House in Melbourne after being accepted back into the Liberal Party. Picture: NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

When you type it down, it actually seems genuinely funny.

As for the transgender battle that has torn apart the Victorian Liberal Party, I am not intending to take sides here, save for making generalised observation that the whole thing is an absolute joke which has made them look like an unelectable rabble.

The reason I would not take sides is that fault exists on both sides – with the conservatives such as Moira Deeming who are obsessed with fringe issues to the exclusion of mainstream issues, as well as the bitchier moderates who become so enraged with the likes of Deeming that they end up martyring them.

Former Liberal leader John Pesutto obviously did defame Deeming by linking her to Nazi sympathisers who had crashed a rally without her knowledge.

But the manner in which the process has been handled since then is a farce.

This has now forced the Victorian Liberals to come up with a loan arrangement to help Pesutto pay his legal bills so the party can avoid a by-election in the event he has to quit politics as a bankrupt.

The heroic but forlorn attempts by the Libs to say this whole matter has now been resolved is a classic Frank Drebin moment from the great scene in The Naked Gun where the crowd gathers as the missile hits the fireworks store.

Please disperse, people, nothing to see here.

It is important to remember the Queensland LNP very nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of a seemingly inevitable victory by going to war with itself over abortion laws.

The same has happened with the party in South Australia, now on to its third leader since losing the election three years ago – one of them got done for supplying cocaine – in a state where Premier Peter Malinauskas could run naked across the Adelaide Oval at a Port Adelaide home game holding a can of West End and still win the next election.

(Come to think of it, that would probably increase his vote with supporters at a Port home game.)

Peter Malinauskas, Premier of South Australia during Defending Australia 2025 at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

NSW Premier Chris Minns addresses the media from the RFS Headquarters in Sydney Olympic Park. Picture: Christian Gilles/NewsWire

Labor’s Chris Minns is chugging along comfortably in NSW, the same state where at last year’s local government elections the Liberals forgot to get the forms in on time so their candidates could run.

In Western Australia – the only state which is in rude financial health under Labor, thanks to its minerals and its GST share – the Liberal Party has almost gone the way of the dodo.

The problem for the Libs is twofold – they have totally lost the ability which John Howard invented and mastered to manage themselves as a broad church.

And organisationally, perhaps because all the smart conservatives are off making a quid, they have none of the talent nor organisational grunt to campaign properly against a party which has automatic union backing, an army of Young Labor acolytes and volunteers, and the overwhelming electoral support of our burgeoning state and federal public services.

What this looks like in reality is debt will keep growing, government will remain bloated, and no pressure will be brought to bear on key policy failures, none bigger than the cost and reliability of power and the crisis in home availability and affordability.

Still, if it’s women with penises that keep you up at night, they’re all over that one.

Originally published as Australia looks a lot like a one party state as Labor’s grip tightens and the Liberals lose theirs | David Penberthy