The Age: Victorian Liberal Party: To understand the party, just follow the hatreds, writes Chip Le Grand
Michael Barnett OAM
Opinion
To understand the Liberal Party, just follow the hatreds
A few years ago, a newsroom sage took me aside and explained that the best way of understanding the Victorian Liberal Party is to follow its hatreds.
Where Labor is organised by its factions, the Liberals are bound by a deep and profound loathing of one another.
Shadow treasurer James Newbury keeps a close eye on party leader Brad Battin.Wayne Taylor
Whether they are ancient feuds stretching back to Michael Kroger’s days as a student Lib in flared trousers or today’s grievances that led to the party’s administrative committee suing itself in the Supreme Court, it is hatred, rather than ideology or conviction, which most reliably determines party behaviour.
To successfully lead the Victorian Liberal Party requires deft navigation of its internal animosities. For Opposition Leader Brad Battin, who is nearing the end of his first year in one of the state’s least secure jobs, this has created a looming dilemma.
The decisions by Michael O’Brien and David Hodgett to quit politics before the next election, having each served 20 years in parliament and as ministers in the last Coalition government, effectively opens two vacancies on the opposition frontbench.
One of those vacancies should be filled by John Pesutto, who has informed Battin that 10 months after his own leadership was consumed by a bonfire of hatred sparked by his defaming of colleague Moira Deeming, he is ready to return from backbench exile.
If Battin wanted to make the most of Pesutto’s talents and experience, he would give him O’Brien’s post of shadow attorney-general, a position Pesutto held in the lead-up to the 2018 state election. Given Pesutto has also held portfolios across education, child protection and multicultural affairs, there are other paths open for Battin to bring the leader he toppled back into shadow cabinet.
Battin also knows that if he promotes Pesutto, it will enrage Deeming, her supporters in parliament, some branch members and anyone within reach of a live microphone at Sky News.
The long tail of the Pesutto/Deeming feud is still wagging its way through the Supreme Court, where members of the party’s governing administrative committee are challenging a decision taken by the committee three months ago to lend Pesutto $1.55 million to settle his legal bills and avoid bankruptcy.
Battin helped broker the deal and voted for it at the administrative council.
This episode says everything you need to know about the enduring power of Liberal Party hatreds. If someone could harness the ill will that courses between Deeming and Pesutto, Victoria would have enough renewable energy to stop burning fossil fuels.
John Pesutto and Moira Deeming defamation trial has had huge implications for the Victorian Liberals.The Age
Were the Liberal Party governed by the same, hard-wired instinct of the ALP to win elections, it would be a no-brainer for Battin to make better use of Pesutto’s policy nous and appeal to moderate voters.
If you follow the hatreds, Pesutto will remain on the backbench.
There is a growing push within the Liberal Party for Battin to use the opportunity created by the pending retirements of O’Brien and Hodgett to review all shadow portfolios and reshape the team he will take into an election year.
Battin’s current line-up, while rewarding those who supported his leadership ambitions during last year’s Christmas coup, has so far not produced the breadth or depth of policy needed to present a compelling case for change.
Liberal MP Jess Wilson did not play the politics right in the party’s Christmas coup but remains the Liberals’ best economic brain.Eddie Jim
Battin is strong on crime and community safety, but his party’s economic narrative is weak and underdeveloped. If the opposition has a credible plan to repair Victoria’s fiscal position and retire debt while reducing productivity-sapping business taxes and not cutting critical services, we’re yet to see it.
A consideration for Battin in any ministerial reshuffle is whether his most economically literate MP, Jess Wilson, is in the right job.
Wilson played the politics badly in the Christmas coup and passed up an opportunity to serve as Battin’s deputy leader and shadow treasurer. Instead, that portfolio went to James Newbury, an MP who played the politics brilliantly, outmanoeuvred Wilson and helped Battin secure the leadership.
A scenario proposed by Wilson’s supporters is for Newbury to be offered shadow attorney-general and Wilson, the party’s spokesperson for education, industry and economic growth, to become shadow treasurer. Another is for Wilson to become finance spokesperson, a portfolio held by Bridget Vallance.
In theory, these ideas have some merit. Before Wilson entered parliament, she was the executive responsible for the Business Council of Australia’s policies on energy, climate, tax, infrastructure and digital security. Newbury, although invested in the shadow treasurer portfolio, is a lawyer qualified to serve as attorney-general.
In practice, it doesn’t matter who is shadow treasurer if the party leader refuses to engage with economic and fiscal issues. Battin, a former policeman, is at his most comfortable when talking about crime and community safety. Opposition MPs, including some in senior portfolios, are frustrated at what they see as a myopic obsession with law and order.
“It is not as easy as saying we have to change the shadow minister,” one MP said. “That is not the problem. The problem is the steadfast focus from those at the top who believe crime is the only thing worth talking about.”
Battin, for now, is keeping any reshuffle plans tightly held. To predict which way he will go, just follow the hatreds.
Dumping Newbury as shadow treasurer would require more than deft navigation of internal animosities. All hell would break loose between Newbury and Wilson’s supporters.
If Battin somehow manages, in the one reshuffle, to infuriate both Deeming and Newbury – MPs united only by the hatred they have for one another – the fires which consumed Pesutto’s leadership could very well torch his own.
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
