The Liberals’ once-superior campaign model is well past its use-by date

In the end it wasn’t even close. The media hyped the idea that Dan Andrews might slip into minority government or even lose, but Victorian Labor cruised to a near-Danslide, clinching back-to-back wins four years and a pandemic apart. Meanwhile the much-vaunted “Greenslide” touted by the minor party was reduced to a collapsed planter bed in the courtyard garden.

The Victorian Liberals are now stuck in the same deep hole they woke up to four years ago — a fate richly deserved. None more so than conspiracy enabler Louise Staley losing Ripon. She can now take a gig on Sky News hosting documentaries on how woke, trans aliens are operating from a Bass Strait UFO base.

For the second time this year, the Liberals’ contemporary campaign strategy has delivered a massive defeat. The strategy, honed in 2019 for Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson in the UK by CIT alumni, revolves around pork-barrelling, culture war campaigns, close coordination with News Corp, and relentless demonisation of opponents and their policies.

The Victorian Liberals followed it to the letter, albeit with far less professionalism and competence than Morrison. The Liberals vowed to dramatically outspend the Andrews government. They focused their entire campaign on Dan Andrews. They tried to tap into extremism, conspiracy theorists and fringe groups; calls to prosecute or murder Andrews were aired during the campaign; Liberal candidates called for abortion bans and the irradiation of Alice Springs.

A lot of it was cack-handed stuff; by comparison, Scott Morrison’s disastrous attempt to make transphobia a “values” issue in his campaign looked smooth and professional. The spending was so out of control the opposition treasurer couldn’t even add up the complete cost of his promises; the Herald Sun was so feral it actually generated sympathy for Andrews. And the penny dropped for “Matt” Guy towards the end of the campaign that voters believed he led a pack of froth-mouthed extremists.

“We are safe. We are sensible. We are centrist and mainstream,” Guy tried to tell voters. It was the equivalent of Morrison’s humiliating “bulldozer” comments. The Victorian Liberals were none of those things. When candidates call for the premier to be prosecuted for murder, when you preference right-wing extremists and people who want the premier killed, when your senior frontbenchers peddle conspiracy theories and you truckle to anti-vaxxers, you don’t get to claim the mantle of the mainstream. Maybe in Wyoming or Mississippi, but not here.

As with the federal Coalition, the Victorian Liberals’ campaign strategy was a cover for not having a clear idea of what they wanted power for beyond stopping the other side. As on May 22 and onwards, the right of the party and News Corp extremists are using the defeat to argue the party isn’t right-wing enough, as if a party already relegated to the right-wing fringes needs to move further into exile in the hope voters relocate there from the centre.

It comes back to the current core division between the two major parties. One side embraces the idea of active government and wants to do things. The other side is stuck in an identity of small, passive government even as it promises big spending. Dan Andrews, whatever his faults and hostility to accountability and the integrity issues that plague Victorian Labor, wants to use power to get things done. The Victorian Liberals don’t even comprehend what that means. And now they don’t even have a functional campaign strategy to cover that up.