Next November, the Victorian Liberal Party will fight to find people to run a campaign. Even exhausted professionals, press secretaries and associated lacastrophists who are now being evacuated from their Canberra apartments will be more concerned with finding work than with offering their skills without paying a local candidate with little chance of success.
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And then there’s the not-so-despicable issue of raising campaign money. Would a shrewd business donor be more interested in meeting with Andrews’ dominant government or Guy’s opposition at this stage of the election cycle?
This newspaper reported during the week that it is considering removing the complacent veteran Liberals from their upper house seats to inject new blood. Too late. Even if it happens next week, it doesn’t give novices time to learn the ropes and become effective scrapers in time for this year’s poll.
Andrews is not without its problems. You may lose key personnel to Canberra recruiters, who will choose their best and brightest back-office staff for key functions within the Albanian machine. His promotion creates a void and Andrews and his ministers will have to watch out for faction pirates who move Team B operatives to critical jobs. Merit is seldom looked at when plum positions appear for the prey.
The Liberals’ state campaign is unlikely to include Peter Dutton, who has a long history of reprimanding Victorians for everything from blockades to the alleged wave of African gang crimes. His efforts to reinvent himself will be a fascinating theater. We are already told that he has been playing the role of “tough cop” in the last government. Did he play himself?
Andrews and Dutton provoke a strong response one way or another. Make no mistake, there are many voters in Victoria who are not eager to slap the Prime Minister, as many did with Scott Morrison. But the line of “Dictator Dan” did not resonate with the majority as a meeting point for Josh Frydenberg, Katie Allen, Tim Wilson and others in the federal contest, and will be of less than decisive importance in the Victorian state poll. .
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As always, the November Victorian election will be a competition of values. Economic management, infrastructure, health services, ambulance delays, schools, housing, everything will be important. But with our increasingly presidential style of government, the focus will be on leaders.
The ALP brand has been tarnished by the Somyurek era of factional warfare. The reports of the IBAC and the Catalan Ombudsman must be made known by the survey. Nothing explosive is likely to be revealed. We already know that the flickering ideologues raised their personal feuds and ambitions before serving the public.
A critical point of difference between Victoria’s parties is the visible diversity of the ALP and its absence among the Liberals.
Doesn’t the Liberal Party understand, care or have anyone available but pale French males? Credit: Illustration: Matt Davidson
Watch a press conference or a policy announcement from Dan Andrews. The “nodding heads” theatrically placed in the background for the cameras will be gender and ethnically diverse, a reflection of anyone walking down the main street from any part of a large Victorian town or town.
Surprisingly, the Liberals have not yet learned this lesson, and all too often Matthew Guy will be flanked exclusively by pale, old men in dark suits. Does the Liberal Party not understand, don’t care, or have anyone at its disposal other than stale males?