Victorian election 2014: Be alert PM, and very alarmed • by: Andrew Bolt • From: Herald Sun • December 01, 2014 12:00AM IF you’re a Liberal, be scared. If you’re Prime Minister Tony Abbott, be alarmed. The Liberals should never have lost Victoria’s election. No other Victorian government in the past 59 years has been thrown out after just one term. This one shouldn’t have been, either. Its Budget is the healthiest in the country. It’s had no major scandals, and no Labor-style desalination plant disaster bleeding billions. It’s also had no inspirational Opposition. New Labor Premier Daniel Andrews is a man from the Socialist Left who vowed to tear up a massive road contract at God knows what cost, and made at least $24 billion of promises. Labor even remains formally tied to the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, many of whose officials have had charges recommended against them by the counsel assisting the royal commission into union corruption. The new Planning Minister is a CFMEU member. And to make things worse, the Greens, as predicted, may control the balance of power in the Upper House, and have at least one seat in the Lower House. When did Labor and Greens between them last deliver prosperity? Yet the Liberals lost. And the Abbott Government may well lose, too, especially if it’s now panicked into repeating the mistakes that helped lose Victoria. True, Abbott cost the Liberals votes. Labor didn’t put up posters of his face at every polling station because voters love him. But let’s not exaggerate. As Victorian Labor frontbencher Martin Pakula insisted on election night, the Abbott factor was small. The Victorian Liberals were in fact behind in the polls all year, since before Abbott’s Budget. Indeed, the Liberals had Ted Baillieu quit as Premier in 2012 in part because they were behind even then. This election result is actually simpler to explain than many commentators think. There were the usual local issues that hurt the Napthine Government — cuts to TAFE colleges and an eternal pay dispute that had paramedics turn the state’s ambulances into mobile billboards against the Liberals. But wait. Is this starting to ring bells in Canberra, where the Liberals spent half the year talking about foreign affairs, not the bread and butter stuff? Most importantly, though, the Victorian Liberals came to power with unemployment at 4.9 per cent. It’s now 6.8 per cent, and growth dangerously weak. It really is the economy, stupid. The Victorian Liberals could boast that the books balanced, but that didn’t matter that much while factories kept closing and the dole queues kept growing. Yet what did the Victorian Liberals do? For the first two years almost nothing. And under shy Baillieu they said almost nothing, too. They did not pin Labor’s disasters — especially the desal plant — around Labor’s neck and did not explain the future they were building. Again, does all this sound familiar to the Abbott Government, which let Labor off the hook and struggles to explain what it’s about — the sunny purpose to the pain it’s having to cause? Unemployment meanwhile edges upwards. Nor did the Victorian Liberals explain their philosophy. It was as if they lacked the courage of their few convictions, taking cues instead from the over powerful ABC and The Age. Yes, they did put more controls on wind farms. But they kept much of the Labor ideological detritus they could have junked to enthuse their base — the oppressive religious vilification laws, the apartheid justice of the Koori Courts, the anti-democratic charter of human rights. They banned fracking. Pre-selection candidates such as John Roskam, head of the Institute of Public Affairs, were even rejected for having threatening ideas. We can’t be ideological, Victoria’s Liberals agreed. So they became bland instead. The result was little enthusiasm from their own members, who couldn’t figure the point of the Liberals. Even former Liberal premier Jeff Kennett, no hardliner, could last week award the Napthine Government no more than eight out of 25 on his scorecard (while giving Labor just five.) The state’s few conservative commentators, me included, barely got out of first gear, and on the ground, Labor’s campaigners outran the Liberals. Is this, too, familiar to Abbott’s Liberals, who have ditched their promise to restore free speech, shied from workplace reform, bowed to the global warming gods and pledged to entrench race-based division in our constitution by recognising people with some Aboriginal ancestors as the “first” Australians? Yes, elections are won in the middle, not by pandering to your party’s extremists. But Liberal parties without the guts or wit to stand for Liberal values neither dismay their enemies nor inspire their friends. If they can’t even get the economy ticking they look weak. I can’t be too harsh on Abbott. He faces a spiteful Senate that blocks him at almost every turn. He, almost alone of his ministers, is also trying to sneak in conservative changes, including his admittedly unconvincing knighthoods. But the rest? Ask the trembling ministers now whispering that even this government is too Right wing and needs to move even more Left. Ask those now wondering whether they wouldn’t be better off under someone who won’t startle horses. Ah, which brings me to one more powerful warning from Victoria — that dramas are deadly. The worst of those dramas was Liberal MP Geoff Shaw, who was kicked out of the party for misusing his parliamentary car but then repeatedly revenged himself on the government with his casting vote. With Labor’s gleeful help, Shaw turned Parliament into an almost unworkable circus. How voters hate that kind of carry-on. They hated it from the independents and the Greens under the Gillard Government. They’re hating it now with Clive Palmer, Jacqui Lambie and the independents under Abbott. And to top it off, Victoria’s Liberals mysteriously lost their initial Premier, Ted Baillieu, after Shaw demanded his head. Switching to a second leader made the government look twice as aged come the election. Voters are so over the backstabbers, drama queens and clowns in Parliament. So over the screaming. Is that also resonating in Canberra, where the Government is letting the likes of Lambie kick its head in day after day? The Victorian Liberals played timid and lost. They were not punished for being too radical, but too meek. They should have been more like Queensland Premier Campbell Newman’s government, which got an inquiry to explain the state was headed for bankruptcy, then slashed total spending, scrapping even the Premier’s Literary Awards to drive home the point. Moreover, “Can Do” Newman always looks positive, even with an axe in his hands, and now, with the direction clear and the projected debt halved, he seems headed for re-election next year. Which lesson, then, will the Abbott Government learn? To defend or attack? To retreat or stand firm? To replace their leader or unite? To cringe or to fight, fight, fight?
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 02:19:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015