On current polling, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews looks set for an even bigger win on November 26 than his monster 2018 victory. The most recent Morgan poll has Victorian Labor leading the Coalition by 20 points in two-party-preferred (2PP) terms, though that poll also shows a substantially higher independents vote.
But if a 60-40 outcome actually happens, the large number of very marginal Victorian Coalition seats could see the opposition lose 10. That would leave the Coalition with around a dozen seats, and maybe a bigger crossbench than opposition.
Such a fate would be richly deserved. Crikey readers hate it when I criticise Dan Andrews, but the Victorian Liberals are much worse — wholly lacking in competence, integrity or even basic political smarts, a party that abandoned its moderate history in favour of embracing religious fundamentalists and flirting with the conspiracy theorist far right. Even now some of its candidates are calling Andrews a murderer and urging he be “brought to justice”. What next — “lock him up” chants?
It’s a different picture in NSW, where Labor under Chris Minns has emerged as a credible alternative to the Coalition and now looks odds-on to win next March. Although, as in Victoria, the performance of independents is a major question, and one that could determine if Labor governs in its own right.
The states are at different points in their political cycles — Andrews’ is a two-term government, while Dominic Perrottet is seeking a fourth term for the Coalition. But NSW Labor was competitive at the 2019 election and picked up seats, while the NSW Nationals lost seats to crossbenchers, paving the way for what would eventually become a minority Coalition government.
In Victoria, the Liberals aren’t unelectable after two terms, and it’s not clear what their path back to credibility is in a third unless Andrews and his successor implode spectacularly.
What makes the failure of the Victorian Liberals far worse is that they started in opposition in relatively good shape — Denis Napthine’s 2014 loss was hardly a landslide. NSW Labor, in contrast, was obliterated in the 2011 election, reduced to just 20 seats, a richly deserved fate for a party that had become synonymous with corruption and dysfunction.
The other big contrast is in talent — Labor under Minns has a solid frontbench, with a strong opposition treasurer in Daniel Mookhey, veteran Penny Sharpe in the Legislative Council, and former leader Michael Daley as opposition attorney-general. The Victorian Liberals — well, where to start? Literally?
Despite numerous scandals during its time in opposition, NSW Labor’s formal structures have been retained and continued to function. The kind of open factional warfare that dogged the NSW Liberals and inflicted so much damage ahead of the federal election has been kept to a minimum. The Victorian Liberals’ internal structures, in contrast, have proven dysfunctional: entryism by Christian fundamentalists has been rife, along with branch-stacking, angry disputes with one of the party’s fundraising arms, and staffing scandals.
And unlike in NSW, where Labor has proven highly effective at holding the government accountable, the Victorian opposition, handed scandal after scandal by the Andrews government, has proven hopeless. The media — particularly on revelations about branch-stacking and the misconduct at Crown — has been the only effective opposition to Andrews.
The result is that the current government — one that should have been placed under huge pressure over its handling of the pandemic, the misuse of public funds by ministers and employment of taxpayer-funded electorate staff on political matters, and its overly close relationship with a major gambling company — is likely to increase an already massive majority. Like governments, oppositions have core functions. They get the hard, unglamorous and often unrewarding work of subjecting those in office to scrutiny. And the Victorian Liberals have comprehensively failed to do that, and in doing so have let down Victorians.
As the Andrews government ages in its third term and, like all ageing governments, grows more arrogant and complacent (see the John Barilaro scandal in NSW for a classic case), who’ll hold it to account? Not the smoking ruins of a once-successful political party.
Presumably the Victorian Liberals have never heard of Western Australia and are ignorant about the (well-deserved) fate of their WA colleagues in the last state election there. Or else they are past caring about how the public regards them, determined to indulge their own weird obsessions and internal fights at all costs.
Nationwide, the Liberals have drifted inexorably off the reservation, until the only things they understand are their “weird obsessions and internal fights”………….
………….reality is another world for the Liberals.
Typo: for “In Victoria, the Liberals aren’t unelectable after two terms” read “In Victoria, the Liberals aren’t electable after two terms”.
As you say, Bernard, you irritate a many of us with your bagging of Andrews..
Bernard, any chance of you doing an interview with Mr. Andrews? Might clarify a few of your (and other peoples) concerns?
Yes, I noticed the same error.
Not me.
I don’t read this august journal for partisanship.
There’s plenty of that elsewhere in the MSM.
If an arse needs to kicked then get stuck in.
I remember the 2012 Queensland elections when it was said that the Queensland Labor MPs could all fit in a maxicab afterwards. Maybe the Victorian Liberals can all share the same clown car soon.
and within 3 years that the LNP torched itself and went out of govt
The Liberals are on the nose in all jurisdictions of Australia. And similarly around the World with most Conservative Parties. Have they been found out?
Are people realizing that Conservatives really don’t do much when they’re in Government, except look after their own kind.
I’m not sure it’s conservatives who are on the nose, it’s right wing nut jobs who style themselves as conservatives. They are not conservative – they are radical ratbags who want to drastically change things.
But the Conservatives accept them with open arms,why?
Conservatives are in chaos in Britain (PM Truss now out), in Italy (Berlusconi – in vodka veritas ), in the US (hope they lock up Bannon soon) and on it goes. We could be like them with the likes of the mad and bad Victorian Liberals and can already see what the far right Sydney conservatives have done to that state (and the rest of the country when they had the chance).
How do you feel about the (no so covert) conservative PM in Canberra?
Do I detect yet another example of ‘scandalous’ false equivalence .
It’s quite the fashion these days.